ON INTRODUCED ANIMALS AND PLANTS. 27 



Birch met with a mummy possibly belonging to this reign ; and 

 ascertained, that the dead were provided with funeral papyri (doubt- 

 less, as in later times, inscribed with portions of the Egyptian Ritual). 

 Bodies of this early period are rare ; but I saw at Thebes an un- 

 opened inner mummy-case, highly finished, and in the style of work- 

 manship of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties. 



De Rouge met with a sort of secret or cipher writing upon two stela 

 of the time of the "Eighteenth Dynasty :" and Champollion remarked 

 something of the same kind in the ro} 7 al tombs at Bab-el-Meluk. — 

 The art of writing in cipher, or in occult characters, is known to have 

 been long practised in the East ; and seems to be mentioned by 

 Homer, II. vi. 168. 



The reign of Ramses, the head of the Nineteenth Dynasty, was 

 evidently brief; the date of only his second year being found on the 

 monuments. He completed some of the columns at Luxor ; set up 

 a large stela at Wadi Haifa in Nubia ; and his unfinished tomb has 

 been discovered in the Royal cemetery at Bab-el-Meluk. 



Meneptha Sethos, the second king of the Nineteenth Dynasty, made 

 additions to the temple at Karnak ; commenced the temple at Gurna; 

 and set up obelisks (one of which is now at Rome). His name has 

 been found on other monuments throughout Egypt and Nubia ; on 

 the cave-temple near Benihassan ; at Wadi-el-Moyeh, in the Desert of 

 the Thebaid towards the Red Sea ; at Sarbut-el-Khadem ; at Elephan- 

 tine ; and at Silsilis, on an excavated chapel bearing the elate of the 

 twenty-second year of his reign. 



The completion of the Egyptian Cycle of time or Great Year, in 

 B. C. 1413, appears to have taken place under this king. The subject 

 will be again noticed ; with ancient computations in which this date 

 falls in the " fifth year of Concharis ;"* in verification of a statement, 

 derived in all probability by Syncellus from Manetho. 



Meneptha Sethos carried on foreign wars : and among the records 

 of his conquests on the temple at Karnac, the scene containing tufts 

 of fern and a forest of fir-trees (Abies picea) could not have been 

 x nearer than Lebanon (Rosselini, I. PL 46). The tall flag-staffs placed 

 on the Pharaonic temples, were doubtless trunks of fir or pine, im- 

 ported by sea, and probably from Syria. 



The plant in the hands of an Asiatic captive at Gurna (Champol- 



* The three Acencheres hold the same position in Manetho's list, as Meneptha Sethos 

 does on the monuments. 



