Brugsch, Heinrich: Egypt under the pharaohs: a history derived entirely from the monuments (London, 1891)

DTN. vi. INSCRIPTION OF UNA 49

' His Majesty,' so speaks Una himself, ' sent me to the country
of Abhat,1 to bring back a sarcophagus with its cover; also a small
pyramid and a statue of the king Mer-en-Ea, whose pyramid is

called Kha-nefer,' * I i (' the beautiful rising ').

Scarcely had he executed these orders when he was
commanded to cut blocks of alabaster and bring them
to his lord. The gigantic load was to be sent by water
on great rafts 60 cubits in length and 30 in breadth
(1031 x 51f ft.), which had been previously specially
constructed for this purpose. But the river was found
to have fallen so low that it was impossible to make use
of such large rafts, so the governor was obliged to
build smaller ones in all haste. The wood for this
purpose had to be felled in the neighbouring country,
inhabited by the negroes. It is thus related by Una :—

His Majesty sent me to cut down four forests in the South, in
order to build three large vessels and four towing vessels out of the
acacia wood in the country of Ua-ua-t. And behold the officials of
Araret, Aam, and Mata caused the wood to be cut down for this
purpose. I executed all this in the space of a year. As soon as
the waters rose, I loaded the rafts with immense pieces of granite
for the pyramid Kha-nefer of the king Mer-en-JU.

This narrative of the life and actions of a single
man among the contemporaries of the kings Teta, Pepi,
and Mer-en-Ea, exhausts all that we know of their
history. [The mummy of Mer-en-Ea is now in the Gizeh
Palace.]

After his brother's death Nefer-ka-Ea, o J u ,

followed in the kingdom. His pyramid is called Men-

ankh' TZ ?A' 'the station of life-' Tllis king is
named in an inscription on the rocks of Wady-Magharah,
in which an officer speaks of him in the second year of
nis reign. The tombs also in Middle Egypt frequently

1 Probably near the southern frontier of Egypt.