496 



NA TURE 



[September 12, 1907 



tomb, made for the statue of his fea, and perhaps 

 commemorating his deification at tlie time of 

 his jubilee, the " Fcslival of the End," or heh-sci; 

 when, before he could be regarded as a god, the 

 king had to be temporarily regarded as dead, in 

 which case a funerary chamber might be built, and 



End of ihe Xllh Dynasty Temple 

 showing descent to tomb-sanctua 



even an elaborate tomb constructed, long before his 

 real death, when the real tomb would be built. The 

 real tomb of King Mentuhetep seems to have been 

 within the bounds of the temple. In the south-west 

 corner of the western hall was excavated a small 

 tomb containing a great alabaster sarcophagus which 

 probably once contained the body of King Mentu- 

 hetep. This may have been the real tomb, in an in- 





— . -^dii*'""" 



Fig. 4.— The two Temples of Di 



conspicuous spot. The imitation tomb descended 

 with a great open dromos in the sight of all men in 

 an open court between the Western Hall and the 

 Pyramid (.Fig. 3). 



All this constitutes a considerable addition to our 

 knowledge of Egyptian architecture and archaeology, 



NO. 1976, VOL. 76] 



and the authorities of the Egypt Exploration Fund 

 are to be congratulated on having brought their 

 great work at Deir el-Bahari (Fig. 4) to a successful 

 conclusion. 



Of other work in Egypt, the most successful seems 

 to have been tliat of the Oxford archaeologist, Mr. 

 Randall-Maciver, for the University of Pennsylvania. 

 Mr. Maciver has been excavating town-ruins of the 

 XVIIIth and XXVIth Dynasties near .Amada, in 

 Nubia, and in the XXVIth Dynasty town has found 

 remains of a peculiar art, very un-Egyptian in type, 

 and showing points of contact with that of Greece. 

 The painted pottery is especially remarkable. This 

 art would seem to be of native Nubian origin, in- 

 fluenced perhaps by Naukratis ; Naukratite wares 

 could easily be sent up the Nile into Nubia. We 

 await further details of this discovery with interest. 



Excavations at Alexandria have resulted in the 

 discovery, near Poinpey's pillar, of some fine 

 sphinxes; one, headless, of the reign of Horemheb 

 (XVIIIth Dynasty), and two others, made of line 

 wliite limestone, of the Ptolemaic period (Fig. 5). 



At Asyflt Mr. D. G. Hogarth has discovered and 

 excavated many new tombs of the Xlth and Xllth 



D3-nasties, with the usual funeral furniture, of model 

 boats, granaries, and so forth, like those found by 

 Prof. Garstang a few years ago at Boni Hasan. 



Prof. Garstang and Mr. Harold Jones have been 

 exploring cemeteries of tlie Xllth Dynasty and the 

 Roman period at ."^bydos with success. 



Outside Egypt, the chief discovery of the past 

 year of interest to Egyptologists has been Prof. 

 Winckler's find at Boghaz Koi, the ancient Pterion, 

 on the Halys, of cuneiform tablets containing the 

 records of diplomatic intercourse between the kings 

 of the Khatte or Hittites, whose capital Pterion 

 was, and King Rameses II. of Egypt. We 

 already knew from the Egyptian records that 

 Khetasil of the Hittites and Rameses of Egypt made 

 an extradition treaty according to which criminals 

 of either country were to be given up by the other, 

 but now we have some of the correspondence between 

 the two courts, found on the Hittite side. In these 

 tablets the Egyptian king is spol-cen of as " Ratnas.cs 

 mai-Amana salep-ni-riya." This transcription of the 

 Egyptian name is interesting, as giving us an 

 approximate idea of how the Egyptians pronounced 

 the name which we conventionally write " Rameses 



