146 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 28rd 
century 8.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. Hgypt during 
his reign lay, I know not why, under the Divine displeasure, 
and, on a sudden, men from the Hast 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 
