338 Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge. On the Orientation 



at 140°, one at 122°, one at 147°, and one at 139°. Of all the temples 

 which have been built at the foot of Gebel Barkal only two have any- 

 substantial remains, viz., those of Piankhi and Tirhakah ; the orienta- 

 tion of the former is 127° from the true north, and that of the latter 

 143°. Now it seems to me that we may fairly assume that both these 

 kings, with their ancestors and successors, were buried near their 

 temples; indeed from a common-sense point of view there was no 

 place more suitable for their tombs than the neighbouring hill or 

 mountain slope. I searched diligently, hoping that I might find some 

 trace upon some of the blocks of stone which had formed the shrines 

 or funeral chapels that had stood in front of their pyramids, but with- 

 out success. Every pyramid at Gebel Barkal must have had such a 

 shrine or chapel, but the size of the chapel depended upon the import- 

 ance of the man whose tomb the pyramid was intended to cover. 

 Pyramids Nos. 6 and 7 on the plan must, judging by the ruins, have 

 had very large shrines enclosed by walls, and we may assume, from the 

 absence of similar buildings in the fronts of the other pyramids, that 

 they were royal tombs. The masonry, however, and the general appear- 

 ance of them somehow suggest that they were not the oldest of the 

 group, though, arguing from archaeological considerations, they should 

 be as old as B.C. 700. 



Passing to the most northerly end of the pyramid field of Gebel 

 Barkal, we find lying there the remains of a " step " pyramid, and as it 

 has an entirely different orientation from that of the other pyramids 

 there, and the masonry is of a better class of work, and the whole 

 building is on a scale mi generis, it is clear that it belongs to a 

 different period. It is a striking fact that archaeological considera- 

 tions indicate that the pyramids which have different orientations 

 belong to different periods, and at the end of this paper it will be seen 

 that the results deduced from astronomical considerations point the 

 same way. 



The official instructions which I received before I went to the Sudan 

 in 1897 allowed me to make a trial excavation of one pyramid. I 

 therefore selected No. 5 of my plan, as on its shrine there were sculp- 

 tured scenes in which funeral offerings were being made to the royal 

 personage who had the pyramid built, by priests, by Anubis the god 

 of the dead, and by a number of gods whom it is not easy to identify. 

 This royal personage was assumed to have identified himself with 

 Osiris, and the goddesses who usually attended the god were here seen 

 attending the king or prince. That he was royal there is no doubt, 

 for one relief showed him in the act of grasping the hairy scalps of 

 representatives of a number of captive or subdued nations, and brand- 

 ishing a Sudani club over them, much in the same way as the kings of 

 the XVIIIth and XlXth dynasties of Egypt are depicted on the walls 

 of their tombs and palaces. To indicate the greatness and power of 



