10 EDOUARD NAVILLE. 



blocks of granite from the quarries cf Assooan to localities in 

 the Delta, which, no doubt, were then more accessible than now, 

 but which could only be reached at the cost of much labour. 

 We know what the difficulties are in our time of steam-engines 

 and railways ; my friend, Count d'Hulst, might write a book 

 on all the troubles he experienced in the ungrateful task of 

 transferring monuments of a total weight of about a hundred 

 tons from Tel Basta to an English steamer in Alexandria. 

 But in the time of the ancient Egyptians, thousands, tens of 

 thousands of enormous blocks, colossal statues weighing near 

 nine hundred tons, obelisks, etc., were taken out of the quarries 

 of Assooan, floated down the Nile, and dragged through the 

 marshes of the Delta, where they adorned the temple of San, 

 Bubastis, or Behbeit. I can assure you that when I unearthed 

 the magnificent columns of Bubastis I did not know which 

 was most to be admired, the perfection of the work or the 

 power of the men, who, with scanty and imperfect mechanical 

 means, had achieved such stupendous results. 



Let us now give the dates of the principal facts which we 

 have ascertained. In opposition to the generally-prevailing 

 opinion, we saw that Bubastis went back as far at least as 

 King Cheops; that is, to the year 3700 B.C., according to 

 Brugsch's chronology. After him, Pepi, about 3200 B.C., has 

 left important traces in the temple. We described the 

 transformation which took place eight hundred years after- 

 wards under the kings of the Twelfth dynasty. With the end 

 of the Fourteenth dynasty, we have reached the 24th or 23rd 

 century B.C., one of the most obscure periods of the history 

 of Egypt, but also one of the most interesting, and on which 

 the excavations of Bubastis have given us most unexpected in- 

 formation I mean the invasion of the Shepherds, or Hyksos. 



We read in Manetho, quoted by Josephus, the following 

 words : " The so-called Timaos became king. Egypt during 

 his reign lay, I know not why, under the Divine displeasure, 

 and, on a sudden, men from the East country of an ignoble 

 race, audaciously invaded the land. They easily got pos- 

 session of it, and established themselves without a struggle, 

 making the rulers thereof tributary to them, burning their 

 cities and demolishing the temples of their gods. All the 

 natives they treated in the most brutal manner; some they 

 put to death, others they reduced to slavery with their wives 

 and children. 



Subsequently also they chose a king out of their own body, 

 Salatis by name. He established himself at Memphis, took 

 tribute from the Upper and the Lower country, and placed 

 garrisons in the most suitable places . . . The general name 



