20 
TANIS. 
order to take in tliis corner, some earlier building 
must have existed here. The south wall may 
have been built askew either in order to include 
some area at the south-west corner, or else to bring 
the wall of the west front to an equality on each 
side of the pylon. 
All over the area, from the temple to the north 
gate, there is scarcely any earth on the top of the 
original sand island; the long trench cut there 
only going two or three feet deep, though I had 
it out well into the sand. On the east of this, as 
stated, there is eighteen feet of mud. over a pave¬ 
ment, and the sand drops therefore about twenty 
feet down to that point, falling very sharply at a 
few feet west ofMariette’s excavation (l). If this 
sinking has not been excavated, and there seems 
no reason for supposing so, then this must have 
been a steep sand dune originaliy. The sand 
also falls away, but more gradually, tow'ards the 
west; and at e, where an old house gave a good 
opportunity of making a deep hole, we cut down 
to the level of the original sand foundation, over 
which lies about fifteen feet of mud at this point. 
The Roman stratum, marked by pieces of red- 
baked bricks, which appear to be characteristic 
of late Roman times, is at about four feet down 
in all this region north of the hall of columns. 
At D some houses adjacent to, but separate from, 
the great w’all, were cleared, and others at b, 
while at A two walls were uncovered; but in no 
case was anything of interest found, beyond a few 
clay seals, in a chamber at n. Between b and c 
are quantities of chips of lapis lazuli, and other 
stones, and about b the ground is thick with 
scraps of copper slag: evidently workmen’s rub¬ 
bish was thrown away in this district. 
At H there is a group of houses built in the 
first century, as a coin of Agrippina the younger was 
found in one of them; but nothing of value was 
found beyond some fragments of glass and pottery, 
and a figure of Bes, the worth of which consists 
in their being dated by the coin. On this 
northern side of the temple, however, one good 
house was found, on the inside of the west wall. 
at M. This house had been burnt, and hence 
many objects were found in the ruins. This is 
described in Chap. III. as house No. 15. 
Next we should note the remarkable well, num¬ 
bered (40) in the Plan. This well has a long stair¬ 
case descending to it, and is very carefully built 
of limestone. It will be more fully described in 
the subsequent publication. 
On the south side of the temple, a little way 
south of column (39), a deep pit sunk down to the 
sand island shows that nearly all the accumula¬ 
tion in this part has taken place since Greek 
times. At fourteen and a half feet down I picked 
out Greek pottery from the strata, at only three 
feet above the clean sand of the island. The 
houses at k and J appear to be of Ptolemaic age, 
and to have been built after the temple was 
deserted. 
27. We will finish this chapter by a sketch of 
the history of the temple area, so far as it can 
now be distinguished. 
We have already outlined the structures of 
the great Ramessu, of the new dynasty which 
rose in this city and adorned it as their capital, 
and of the Bubastites, who carried out their 
works here on a largeness of scale, and with a 
ruthlessness of appropriation, worthy of the ego¬ 
tists of the empire. But our knowledge of all 
the constructions here can never be anything but 
an incomplete guess-work, after the greater part 
of the walls, and in some cases the whole of 
them, have been carried away, leaving behind 
them nothing but mounds of chips. Two cen¬ 
turies, however, after Sheshonk III. had built the 
great granite pylon out of the destroyed colossus 
and architraves of Ramessu II., the temple must 
still have possessed some dignity, and have had 
some care bestowed upon it, as we find , that 
Tahraka—or Tirhaka—the Ethiopian left here a 
granite stele. The lower gart of this stele (nine¬ 
teen lines) had been already published by Be 
Rouge,* but the upper part (seven lines), which I 
* See Etudes sur des monuments du regne de Tahraka^ 
