42

THE FOREIGNERS.

On looking to the older town of Kahun, of the
Xllth dynasty, the same evidence of the weights
meets us there. Of eight weights, half are on the
Egyptian standard, but not one is a pure Egyptian
weight; of the forms two are rectangular, one a dome,
another a disc ; of the materials two are alabaster and
one limestone, only one being of hard stone; and of

the multiples one is 30, one 12, and one four, none of
these being Egyptian multiples.

Here then there is not a single regular Egyptian
weight. Two weights occur of the yEginetan standard,
which is already known as far back as the XVIIIth
dynasty, on a weight in the British Museum.

No. 4914 has four strokes on it, showing a super-





Egyptian

Kat (4).







No.

Material.

Form.

Present.

Original.

x.

Unit.

4913
4914
4915
4916



44
63-166

IS
166—171

I767S
2951 '3
151-8
22235

22860

120

20

1

150

147-4



147-6
151-8
152'4





4917

4919
4920

Limestone

4918 I Syenite, gy.

Limestone
Limestone

Assyrian Shekel (i).
...| 62 I 3708 I 3760

Attic Drachma (i).

...| 9 1 6878

^Eginetan Stater (2).

I

54—66
171

9625
12040

9670?

30

50
60

125-3

i93-4
200'7

unit of 5 kats. It will be seen how the Gurob weights
are all of the light kat 141-144, only one being 147 ;
whereas at Kahun the heavy kat, 147—152, was in
use: this shows a change, due to the period. Nos.
4916 and 4920 are both marked find = 3°; one
being of 30 super-units of 5 kats, like No. 4914; and
the other 30 units of the double stater. Another
weight found since I left Kahun is of 3960 or 20
^Eginetan staters of 198.

82. Two other traces of foreign intercourse occur
at Kahun. The bluish marble of the ^Egean is found
in many examples there ; the only dated one that I
know of before being a piece with the cartouches of
Usertesen I (Loftie Collection). And many pieces of
the black pottery, like that found by M. Naville at
Khatanah with scarabs of the Middle Kingdom, were
scattered in different chambers of the town. Most of
it is decorated with Vandykes, filled alternately with
a spot pattern impressed by a comb (XXVII, 202),
some is plain (XXVIII, 201), and two pieces have
incised designs (199, 200). This pottery is unknown
in Egypt hitherto in any period but the Xllth and
Xlllth dynasties ; but it is the same as the black
Italian pottery, which bears similar patterns. More-
over, the designs incised are certainly not of Egyptian

work, but rather Babylonian in arrangement. Some
Phoenician trader, therefore, we may suspect of im-
porting such foreign pottery (probably Italian), and
decorating it with designs copied from those of his
Asiatic neighbours.

At Gurob the pottery at once arrests us by its
completely foreign nature. In paste, in colour, in
design it is indistinguishable from the earliest pot-
tery found on Greek soil, at Mykenas, at Thera, and
at Mitylene. The false-necked vases (XXVIII, 1, 7)
are repeatedly found; one (fig. 1) was taken by my
own hands from the sand filling of a coffin (Tomb 23)
which contained a yellow-haired person with black
wig, and which, from the similar tombs around it,
may be dated to 1300 B.C., as we have seen above.
The other (7) was found in a house with a piece of
wood carving of the early XlXth dynasty, and a blue
glazed ring of the end of the XVIIIth dynasty, thus
fixing it to just the same age. A similar one was
found with scarabs, pottery, and an ushabti which
requires us to date it to the beginning of the XlXth
dynasty again. Others were found beneath the
walls of a house probably built in the end of the
XVIIIth dynasty; and also in a tomb with glass beads
exactly like those found with a ring of Eamessu II in