RESULTS OP EXCAVATIONS AT BUBASTIS. 5 



It is to be noticed that the three early kings whose 

 names we met with were conquerors, or, at least, warriors, 

 who fought against the inhabitants of Sinai. What may 

 have been the motive of these struggles ? Perhaps the 

 possession of mines of copper, which have been worked 

 from a high antiquity in the peninsula, or perhaps also 

 the quarries ; for it is an interesting question, and one which 

 has not yet been solved in a satisfactory way, where the stones 

 came from with which some of the Egyptian monuments are 

 made, especially black granite. It has always been admitted 

 that it came from the quarries of Upper Egypt, situated in the 

 Arabian desert, at a place now called Hamamat, between the 

 present cities of Keneh and Kosseir. This explanation, which 

 holds good in the case of kings who had the command over 

 the whole land of Egypt, is not to be accepted for kings like 

 the Hyksos, who ruled only over Lower Egypt, and were at 

 war with the native princes of Thebes. Where was the stone 

 quarried for the great statue which is now in the British 

 Museum ? The solution of this question is rendered more 

 interesting by the fact that in the last discoveries of very 

 early Chaldgean monuments, at a place called Telloh, in Lower 

 Babylonia, it has been noticed that for several of them the 

 stone is the same as that used for some Egyptian statues. The 

 eminent Assyriologist, Dr. Oppert, maintains that this material 

 was found in the country, called in the cuneiform inscriptions 

 Naggan, namely, the Sinaitic peninsula and the part of Egypt 

 near the Eed Sea, while other Assyrian scholars think that it 

 came from the coast of the Persian Gulf. The question is an 

 open one, to be settled only by geologists, who will allow me 

 to direct their attention to the search for the quarries of the 

 Sinaitic peninsula. 



Two of the kings whose names have been recovered at 

 Bubastis, Cheops and Pepi, are mentioned in a text of a 

 much later epoch relating the construction of the temple of 

 Denderah. We read there in two Ptolemaic inscriptions the 

 following words : " The great foundation of Denderah. The 

 repair of the monument was made by King Thothmes III., 

 as it was found in ancient writings of the days of King 

 Cheops." And further : " The great foundation of Denderah 

 was found on decayed rolls of skins of kids in the time of the 

 followers of Horus. It was found in a brick wall on the south 

 side, in the reign of the King Pepi." We must not attribute 

 too great an importance to inscriptions which have a legendary 

 character, but they indicate that the authority of Cheops and 

 Pepi extended over Upper Egypt : and we know now through 

 the excavations at Bubastis that Cheops and Chefren reigned 



