BY J. E. QUIBELL. IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE WORK OF SOMERS CLARKE and J. J. TYLOR. LONDON: BERNARD QUARITCH, 15, PICCADILLY, W. 1898. LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, Limited , STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS....

1. It was on Mr. Somers Clarke’s proposition that El Kab was selected for last winter’s work of the Research Account. Mr. Clarke has for some years been interested in this site, and has published some of the XVIIIth dynasty tombs there. He wished to see the smaller tombs excavated, and the great area inside the town examined, so, with his colleague, Mr. J. J. Tylor, he offered a considerable subscription to the funds, on condition that El Kab should be the selected site. To Mr. Jesse Howarth, eq

THE EARLIEST TOMBS. 4. The lower parts of the ground inside the enclosure had been very thoroughly looted, chiefly by the natives of El Kab, when cultivating. We found many small graves about 6 feet long, 2 feet wide, and waist deep, but containing no bones, and with so little pottery in them that it took some time to determine their period. But in the two low mounds to the north, and the larger one in the south, graves of several kinds soon appeared. Of these one set were clearly later than the

DATE OF THE “NEW RACE” REMAINS. 14. The greatest interest of El Kab lay in the light that it shed on the same civilisation which had been disclosed two years before at the cemeteries of Naqada and Ballas. In these we had examined 3000 graves of a type till then unknown, and as different from the graves of the historic Egyptians as if they had come from China or Peru. The most obvious characteristic of these burials was the position of the body, which always lay in a contracted attitude, with the

MIDDLE KINGDOM CEMETERY. 19. Inside the town walls, never outside, were found a few examples of a distinct type of tomb, with underground brick arches, pottery akin to that of the usual XIIth dynasty, but not identical with it, and stone vases of distinctive shapes. The types of pottery are shown in Pl. X , 1-28, the alabaster vases in X , 1-6. In Pl. XXIV some walls in broken line are seen which cut through the walls of three mastabas, which last are shown in dead black. The tombs in question l

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

DESCRIPTION OF PLATES. 30. Pl. I —Nos. 1, 2 and 3 are the plan, elevation, and longitudinal section of one (264) of the sunk arch tombs believed to belong to the early XIIth dynasty. No. 4 gives the plan of the chamber in the IVth dynasty tomb of Ka-mena; 5 and 6 are rough notes of the stone walls on the east and south sides of the same chamber. No. 7 gives the plan of the important tomb in which an inscribed cylinder was found in association with Neolithic pots (No. 166, § 13). No. 8 is a rough