68 



the reason that he was succeeded hy his sister Nitocris. The 

 short reign of Ocaras (a single year) might be explained by 

 supposing that he was drowned in the Red Sea; but as there 

 is nothing in the sacred narrative which obliges us to admit 

 that the king perished in this manner, we may adopt the 

 account of Herodotus, that he was murdered by his subjects. 

 We may imagine that some of his nobles remained with 

 Pharaoh on the shore ; and that when they saw the sea re- 

 turn and swallow up all that had gone in after the Israelites, 

 they murdered the king, whose obstinacy had brought such 

 calamities on his people, and then placed his sister Nitocris 

 on the throne. As Nitocris was the daughter of Apappus, 

 there is nothing to prevent us from supposing that the queen, 

 now ninety years old, was the princess who had saved the 

 infant Moses. Weary of her life, she lived only to avenge 

 her brother. For this purpose, says Herodotus, she con- 

 structed a large subterranean chamber, to which, when it 

 was finished, she invited the principal agents in her brother's 

 death ; and there, by the waters of the Nile admitted through 

 a secret canal, they were drowned in the midst of the ban- 

 quet. The queen then threw herself into a room filled with 

 ashes, where she perished. 



Mr. Petrie, by permission of Colonel Colby, read the first 

 part of a paper " On the Antiquities of Tara Hill," being 

 a portion of the memoir written to illustrate the Ordnance 

 Map of Meath, now on the eve of publication. 



The author first gives a detail of the mode of investiga- 

 tion adopted. An accurate survey and ground plan of the 

 locality was first procured. Translations were then made by 

 Mr. O'Donovan of such ancient Irish MSS. as could be 

 found relating to the subject of inquiry; the different copies, 

 where such existed, having been carefully compared so as to 

 obtain the greatest possible accuracy in the text. Those of 

 chief value, two poems and a prose tract, are compositions 



