616 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 
valuable work. The observations themselves, and the extensive series of aver- 
ages, standard deviations, and other numerical results already extracted by me 
from the data will be published in detail at the earliest possible opportunity. 
8. An Early Dynastic Cemetery in Egypt. 
By Professor W. M. Fuinpers Perris, D.C.L., F.R.S. 
An extensive cemetery was found by the British School only thirty-five miles 
south of Cairo, which dates from the earliest historic age down to the Pyramid 
period, during the five dynasties O to IV. About six hundred burials, spread 
over a mile of desert, have been recorded, and a great number in addition had 
anciently been destroyed. This cemetery (known as Tarkhan, from the name of 
the nearest village) will be one of the standard sources for our knowledge of the 
early historic civilisation. It is the most northerly settlement known of so 
early an age. The precise period was ascertained by a tomb with pottery of a 
pre-Menite king, and another very large tomb with pottery of Narmer-Mena. 
The presence of so large a cemetery, for the most part before the age of Mena, 
shows that there must have been a chief town of this period in the region of the 
present Kafr Ammar. This town preceded the founding of Memphis, and 
appears to have been started as the northern capital of the dynastic race before 
Memphis, and gradually fell out of use under the early Pyramid kings. 
The special feature of the cemetery is the extraordinary preservation of both 
woodwork and clothing. 
Although the Egyptian houses of that early age have all perished in the cul- 
tivated plain, yet some precious pieces of house timber were found re-used in 
the construction of the coffins. These pieces agree with the explanation of the 
panelled or recessed decoration in buildings, as copied from timber houses, built 
of overlapping vertical planks. The planks have rows of tie-holes cut in the 
edges for lashing them together, so that they could slide one over the other 
when shrinking or swelling. Some examples were deeply weathered outside and 
burnt inside, showing that a house had been burnt down and the scraps used as 
waste for coffin-building. : 
Coffins made of basket-work, reeds or withies, were also found. Wooden 
trays, both for domestic use and of large size for biers, were discovered in firm 
condition. The bed frames were varied in form and often perfectly preserved ; 
sometimes they even retained the rush-work webbing or decorative plaiting of 
palm fibre. The poles were beautifully tapered and jointed, usually with carved 
bulls’ legs to support them. : 
A great quantity’ of pottery was found, and some three hundred alabaster 
vases and dishes, mostly perfect. Pottery jars in one tomb had excellent draw- 
ings of the fore part and hind part of a zebra. That the sacred beetle was then 
venerated is shown by a reliquary carved in the form of a beetle, with the lid 
kept in place by the string for suspension. At Memphis a gigantic sphinx of 
alabaster has-been found, lying between the two well-known colossi. This is 
the largest sphinx that has ever been transported, being 26 feet long and 14 feet 
high, and weighing about eighty tons. At the north gate of the temple of 
Ptah, another sphinx has been found, carved in red granite, over 11 feet long 
and 7 feet high, inscribed by Rameses II. Near this was a fine group in red 
granite, representing Rameses II. and the god Ptah standing. Here also the 
faces are quite perfect. At Heliopolis the top surface is dated by the pottery to 
the sixth century B.c., and there is scarcely a trace of the Ptolemaic, Roman, 
or Arab ages. 
The temple enclosure was three-quarters of a mile long. It was surrounded 
by two great walls, each 40 to 50 feet thick, which have been traced on all sides 
and planned. This wall was built in the Nineteenth Dynasty. In the north- 
west corner was a fort, also of massive brickwork; but this could not be traced 
far owing to the obstruction of a cemetery and cultivation. The great surprise, 
however, was finding an earthen fortress of the same type as that at Tell el 
Yehudiyeh, attributed to the Hyksos. This fort at Heliopolis is of the same 
form, a rounded square, the same size across (quarter of a mile), and hag the 
