43 
TANIS. 
ornament. Above this cellar there were on the 
ground-floor two or tliree rooms, in one of which 
was a large recess in the wall, for placing valuables 
or ornaments in; and above these rooms there 
was an upper floor, or perhaps two floors, now 
entirely destroyed ; for though no part remains of 
the walls of those upper rooms, yet the amount of 
burnt dust, lying in the cellar and ground floor, 
mingled with antiquities, proves that there were 
one or two upper stories. 
49. In the cellar was found the portrait statuette 
of “ Bakakhuiu (the servant of light), son of his 
mother Ta-ankh (possessing life),” as he is called 
on the pedestal (Frontispiece, no. 7), according to 
the reading of M. Bevillout. This figure is carved 
in limestone, and though burnt with the house it 
is not injured, except that the head has been 
cracked off when found. The height is twenty-one 
inches, with the pedestal. That this is the portrait 
of the owner of the house is scarcely to be doubted ; 
it represents a private person, and would therefore 
not be kept like a divine or imperial statue; and 
it is not an ancestral figure, since there are no 
titles, such as makhem, implying a deceased 
person. Again, it is but very seldom that any 
private statuettes of Greek or Boman times are 
found, and such a figure shows therefore wealth 
and taste on the part of the person who had his 
portrait thus executed; and as we shall see below, 
there are several indications in this house of a love 
for ornament and for dabbling in the fine arts on 
the part of the owner. 
Of the papyri found, but little has been yet 
read. There were about a hundred and fifty saved 
from this house; they appear to have been all waste 
papers, roughly shoved into six plaited baskets, 
without any care or order. They are of all kinds— 
hieroglyphic andhieratio, with vignettes and rubrics, 
fine uncial Greek, demotic memoranda, receipts, 
and legal papers of various sorts; some rolls, 
some documents of a few columns, some mere 
scraps of a few lines. The rolls have been flat¬ 
tened and crushed by the other papers, the folded 
slips have been twisted across, and the whole has 
served as a nest for mice, who have brought in 
almonds and hazel nuts, the broken shells of 
which I found amid the documents. Unhappily 
most of the basketfuls had been burnt to white 
ash in the conflagration of the house; but about a 
quarter of the whole bulk remains, reduced to 
black tinder, but still legible. The greater part 
of tins, however, is made up of fragments of 
larger rolls, and nearly all the papyri have 
suffered more or less by cracking to pieces at the 
folds. Bad as is the condition of these remains, 
yet it is far better than if they had not been burnt, 
as in the neighbouring house some unburnt 
examples were found which have so completely 
rotted from damp that they fall to powder with 
the gentlest handling. We cannot hope to obtain 
better papyri than these thoroughly-burnt ex¬ 
amples from such a wet district as San. That 
these papyri are of various ages is shown by the 
names that have been already observed—Hadrian, 
the Emperor Titus, and on a demotic papyrus one 
of the Ptolemies. Under the skilful management 
of the Manuscript Department of the British 
Museum, in which these documents at present 
are, we may hope for many further details when 
they have been completely examined. 
60. Of figures of deities several were found. 
An alabaster statuette of Tahuti, 14 inches high : 
this seems to have had an inlet beak of different 
material, very probably of silver. As such figures 
were unknown at Bulak, this is now in that 
Museum. A terra-cotta of Venus (Frontispiece, 
11) was also found ; this is 9 in. high, and is of 
better work than most of such figures : it had 
some gilding on the anklets when dug up. A 
bronze Isis and Horus (4J in. high), and a rough 
small Osiris, show that such figures belong to 
this late time. There was also a limestone 
tablet of Horus standing on the crocodiles, with 
serpents in his hands; this was about 7 inches 
high, and inscribed on the back and sides, but it 
is broken up and burnt. A set of figures of various 
