NEW EMPIRE MONUMENTS.
23. Singularly little is left in El Kab of any period later than the
Middle Kingdom, unless, indeed, the great walls be of later date than
we have supposed. The broken pottery inside the town enclosure, that
is the south-west corner of the great square, seems to be of various
periods, but to contain a large quantity of a fabric most like that
of the XXVIth dynasty. As Nectanebo rebuilt the temple here, it is
natural to suspect that this late pottery is of his reign or near it.
Masses of similar pottery are to be found thrown out from several of
the large tombs, in and behind the hill of Paheri. These tombs are
probably of the XVIIIth dynasty, and were re-used for piles of poor
burials at the later date. Of poor burials of the XVIIIth dynasty only
two were found. These were in the long coffins of that coarse red
earthenware, fragments of which may be seen by the tourist on his way
to the tomb of Paheri. There are a few robbed tombs near the foot of
the hill, but no large cemetery is known. It is possible that El Kab
was not a very large town at this period; the family of Paheri and
Aahmes may have been the only great house of the district.
24. Some examination was made of the beautiful little temple of
Amenhotep III, which lies an hour's walk up the desert, not with the
view of copying it, for that work had already been undertaken by Mr.
Clarke, but in order to discover, if possible, where the original
temple was. It seems more than probable that all the VIth dynasty
inscriptions on the great detached rock near the temple were made by
pilgrims visiting a shrine; many fragments of Old Kingdom vases also
are to be found lying near. It at first occurred to me that a cemetery
of the Old Kingdom might lie here, and a search was made in all
likely, and some unlikely, places, but nothing was found, except a
broken water-jar with a late Greek inscription. The early pottery near
the temple was then turned over; it appeared to be a mere rubbish
heap, with no sign of tomb or of brick building. It lies on the slope
of the bank of loose detritus, on which the temple itself is built.
The torrent which, from time to time, sweeps down the old river-bed,
is, at this point, wearing away its southern bank. Below the heap of
old pottery is a little vertical cliff, 4 m. high, in so soft a rock
that it is clear the steep face has been recently formed, and the
temple itself is threatened by a small stream bed behind it. It may
be, then, as Professor Sayce first suggested, that the original temple
stood on the northern part of the shoal which is now washed away; this
idea is confirmed by our finding in the stream bed opposite the
present temple the early table of offerings shown in PL. IV, 1, with
many more small fragments of inscription on pieces of sandstone. The
original temple, then, has gone, the pile of pottery thrown out from
it will be carried away too; even the temple of Amenhotep may be
undermined within no very long period. The effects of sudden storms in
the desert are greater than might be supposed. There is no vegetation
to stop and absorb the rain, the ground is excessively hard, and all
that does not immediately sink into the soil runs rapidly down into
the larger watercourses, and forms in a few hours a deep and broad
stream. Such a storm occurred three years ago at El Kab, and the
inhabitants tell us that, for two days, a tributary stream entered
the Nile there. The railway engineers have had to provide for the
recurrence of such spates.
25. The foundation deposits may be considered together. They came from
two temples--the large one within the walls, and the small temple of
Thothmes III, which lies to the north of the town, and west of the
hill of Paheri. In the latter the deposits were very numerous for so
small a temple (_v._ PL. XXVI). Under each corner of the main wall was
one of the little pits filled with sand, which have now become so
familiar, and at a metre's distance along the side wall was another
and larger deposit. The pits were about .60 m. in diameter; in two,
there was at the bottom a recess, filled with the small cups of brown
clay. The objects are all closely similar to those found in the other
deposits of this reign at Koptos and Nubt. One shape of pot, however
(XXI, 14), has not been seen in a foundation deposit before, and the
flat tiles (15 cm. long) of blue glaze, one in each deposit, must be
mentioned. All the deposits were carefully unearthed, and the position
of the different objects noted, but there was no obvious design in the
arrangement.
The deposits found under the great temple are of more interest; those
of Amenhotep II, under walls covered with inscriptions of Rameses II,
give one more instance of the latter's usurpations. Deposits of two
other distinct classes contained no inscriptions of kings' names, and
cannot be dated. Their position is shown in the very rough sketch of
the plan of the temple in PL. I.
The contents of the different deposits is given below:--
N. 1. A polygonal sandstone mortar (XXI, 46), twenty small cups (43),
three small round dishes, three taller pots (44), flat tablets of red
and green glass, a bronze pan (30), five long glass beads (38), the
green glaze figure (29) like a small ushabti, a small green glaze
model of an ox with the legs tied together, the bronze models (33, 34,
35), a tile of dull green glaze, a model clay brick, a small piece of
bitumen, and a piece of resin which burns with a smell like myrrh.
N. 4. Sandstone mortar, eye in green glaze (28), the other objects as
in N. 1, but with the addition of tablets of calcite and lead.
N. 5. contained the glaze block (40), a bronze knife, a little brick
of myrrh, and pottery, as in the others.
N. 2. and N. 3. consisted each of a single object, one a small oblong
block of iron 1-1/2 inch long, and the other a tablet of blue frit
(like 37).
These last two deposits clearly do not belong to the same builder as
the rest.
The deposits of Amenhotep II contained alabaster models, the
inscriptions identical with those of Thothmes III, excepting the
change of cartouche.
26. The temple to the east of the central eastern gate of the town
was excavated, and a XIIth dynasty tomb was found beneath it. The
walls had been carried away, but the floor of the temple was nearly
complete, and from the scratches made upon it by the masons the plan
was recovered. This will be published by Mr. Clarke. No foundation
deposits were discovered, and the only scrap of inscription was a part
of the cartouche of Nectanebo.
27. No certain solution can be given of the question of the date of
the great wall. Reasons for thinking it to be the work of Usertesen II
have been already given, but several attempts were made to test this
hypothesis. The base of the wall was cleared at several points to
search for any accumulation of rubbish left by the builders, and all
the gateways were examined for foundation deposits. In the east gate,
at a height of 3 feet above the stone pavement, there was a layer of
potsherds, painted with a rough decoration of comma-shaped dashes, and
with them were some fragments of an ostracon written in late demotic.
This would show that the gateway was already partly ruined and blocked
in Roman (?) times. And between the row of mastabas to the north and
the great wall were found the foot of an ushabti, perhaps of the
XXVIth dynasty, and a pot (PL. XX, 13), probably Roman. The first was
on the ground level, the second 5 feet above it. But the position of
these objects only shows that the sand-heap had not reached its
present level when they were dropped, and I observed nothing quite
inconsistent with the early date suggested. It should be added,
however, that the stonework of the gates and the arch in the north
wall seem, to Mr. Somers Clarke's experienced eye, to show some
features of a much later style. These he will describe in his own
work on El Kab.
28. A group of late bronzes were found at one point in the south of
the great enclosure. They were 800 in number, each mounted on a little
wooden base. One (PL. V, 3) was a fine piece, representing Nekheb
adored by a kneeling figure. The rest were Osiris figures, except one,
which represented Imhetep. About a hundred were 5 inches high, or
upwards, of fair workmanship, made in thin bronze cast on a core.
They were all piled together in a space 1.1 m. by .6 m., not near to
any tomb.
29. Near the south-east corner of the town (PL. XXIV) was a peculiar
brick building, consisting of four rows of brick pillars, six in each
row, enclosed in a surrounding wall. The pillars were about 2 m. square,
the passages between them only about .80 m. wide. The actual height of
the brickwork was 1.50 m. or less, but the building may have been a high
one, for the base of a brick staircase remained between two of the
pillars. Throughout the building were great numbers of pots, chiefly
broken, of a long bottle-shape with a wide mouth, and pierced at the
bottom, with a hole an inch wide (XX, 14); these pots exactly fitted
certain holes left at regular intervals in the brickwork. Pots nearly of
this shape, but shorter, are still used in Egypt, being built into the
walls of pigeon-towers to serve as nesting-places for the birds. So far
as the pottery guides us, the building might then be of Arab times, but
the large size of the bricks (34 cm. x 17.5 x 11), part of a stone
window found on the south side, and the smooth surface of the site
before we began to dig, make it unlikely that the structure is recent.