RESULTS OF EXCAVATIONS A'l’ BUBASTIS. 14] 
It is to be noticed that the three early kings whose 
hames 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 Kgyptian 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 Chaldzean 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 Hgyptian statues. The 
eminent Assyriologist, Dr. Oppert, maintains that this material 
was found in the country, called in the cuneiform inscriptions 
Magqgan, namely, the Sinaitic peninsula and the part of Heypt 
near the Red 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 IILI., 
as if 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 oreat 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 réeioned: 
