DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11365#0034
24
the houses.
spoilt by the present conditions attaching to such
discoveries in Egypt. The tablets were all grubbed
out by the fellahin, many were broken, or ground to
pieces, during transit on donkey back ; the autho-
rities to whom the things were shewn, despised them ;
and it was very fortunate that the whole discovery
was not irrevocably lost. What is saved is but a
portion—perhaps not half—of what might have been
preserved with proper care.
I searched the site, and all around it, thoroughly.
Each of these chambers we dug out down below the
walls, until native sand was reached. Thus we
descended about 8 feet in parts, and so found the
two early rubbish-pits. These proved that the cunei-
form scribe lived close by this spot, before the
chambers were built to receive the archives. The
pieces of tablets which I found are more of them dic-
tionaries and working materials than actual letters.
Apparently we have recovered even the very names of
the Babylonian scribe and his Egyptian servant, on
the little cylinder of clay which he had moulded,
perhaps to please the servant who longed to have a
cylinder seal like that of his master, as Egyptians now
covet a duplicate of anything curious or important.
It is inscribed for Tetuna, probably an Egyptian,
servant of Samas-niki, which would be the name of
the scribe. The fancy for it once past it was thrown
into the waste-pit as being useless.
Beside clearing the chambers I cleared all the
ground north of them for 200 feet, up to the end of
the chamber No. 18. West and south of them was
open ground with only a few inches of rubbish over
it, which we turned over for the chance of more pits.
East of the chambers was a road, and then a house,
partly destroyed, No. 21, which I also cleaned out ;
beyond this were other houses which we cleared, and
found one stray piece of a tablet. Thus it is certain
now that no other deposit of tablets exists for about
200 feet around the store-rooms.
While digging just south of the cuneiform chambers,
No. 19, we found the ground very low, and in the
filling up of it were some rolled lumps of desert
limestone. These were inscribed in ink, and recorded
the boundaries of the plot of ground belonging to an
official. The longest inscription is " side, south-east,
of the royal scribe Ra-apiy." It is quite possible that
this person was the Egyptian scribe of the archives,
as the stone evidently belonged to an allotment of
land to a royal scribe close to the archive chamber.
We see how on laying out the town, the largest handy
piece of desert-stone was picked up and inscribed for
a boundary stone, until the plot was walled in ; and
then it was thrown aside as waste.
The building at Fig. 20, Pl. XLII, is a rude walling
of loose stone on a platform in front of the north-
most stele V. It is most likely that this belongs to a
later period, when this vertical face of the stele was
selected for one side of a hut, and it is rather of the
Roman age than of the period of the stele.
We return now to consider the peculiar structures
that we have passed over in describing the houses and
store-rooms.
49. No. 15 is a building near the south end of the
town. The walls slope down gradually to the north,
and it is highest at the south end of the rectangular
part, where it is still about ten feet high. Such large
circular buildings (for the extraneous buildings at the
sides are later additions) seem most like the usual
Egyptian granary on a great scale. The use of the
long walls to the north, would then be for a sloping
way by which the men would walk up to shoot the
grain-sacks into the conical granaries on either hand.
The circles are 26 feet 6 inches and 29 feet 11 inches
inside diameter ; the sloping ascent being 100 feet
long is not likely to have been under 25 feet high ;
if then the corn averaged 20 feet high in the granaries
they would hold corn enough for three or four thou-
sand men for a year. So this building may well have
held the whole of the store for government and
official use.
As I have said, the side-chambers are later addi-
tions, possibly first added to strengthen the walls.
The doorways were cut in the sides, and afterwards
roughly blocked up. In each of the four chambers
added to the east granary there was a body deposited ;
one was a boy with the front permanent teeth not
through, another a lad yet without wisdom teeth. In
the space between the granaries, closed by a short
cross wall, was a mixture of bones of men and animals
in the earth-filling, some three feet above the ground,
and hence deposited when the building had begun to
fall into decay.
Lastly there is the remarkable building N0.jy2.__ It
consists of two circles of brickwork, which were
traced all around without finding any opening. As
the outer circle, which is over 100 feet across, is still
about 4 feet high it is tolerably certain that no
entrance ever existed. In the inner circle are two
irregular pits lined with brickwork, 5 feet deep.
These contained nothing noticeable according to
Mr. Carter's examination, except a very rough head-
rest of limestone ; and I picked up a scrap of calcined
the houses.
spoilt by the present conditions attaching to such
discoveries in Egypt. The tablets were all grubbed
out by the fellahin, many were broken, or ground to
pieces, during transit on donkey back ; the autho-
rities to whom the things were shewn, despised them ;
and it was very fortunate that the whole discovery
was not irrevocably lost. What is saved is but a
portion—perhaps not half—of what might have been
preserved with proper care.
I searched the site, and all around it, thoroughly.
Each of these chambers we dug out down below the
walls, until native sand was reached. Thus we
descended about 8 feet in parts, and so found the
two early rubbish-pits. These proved that the cunei-
form scribe lived close by this spot, before the
chambers were built to receive the archives. The
pieces of tablets which I found are more of them dic-
tionaries and working materials than actual letters.
Apparently we have recovered even the very names of
the Babylonian scribe and his Egyptian servant, on
the little cylinder of clay which he had moulded,
perhaps to please the servant who longed to have a
cylinder seal like that of his master, as Egyptians now
covet a duplicate of anything curious or important.
It is inscribed for Tetuna, probably an Egyptian,
servant of Samas-niki, which would be the name of
the scribe. The fancy for it once past it was thrown
into the waste-pit as being useless.
Beside clearing the chambers I cleared all the
ground north of them for 200 feet, up to the end of
the chamber No. 18. West and south of them was
open ground with only a few inches of rubbish over
it, which we turned over for the chance of more pits.
East of the chambers was a road, and then a house,
partly destroyed, No. 21, which I also cleaned out ;
beyond this were other houses which we cleared, and
found one stray piece of a tablet. Thus it is certain
now that no other deposit of tablets exists for about
200 feet around the store-rooms.
While digging just south of the cuneiform chambers,
No. 19, we found the ground very low, and in the
filling up of it were some rolled lumps of desert
limestone. These were inscribed in ink, and recorded
the boundaries of the plot of ground belonging to an
official. The longest inscription is " side, south-east,
of the royal scribe Ra-apiy." It is quite possible that
this person was the Egyptian scribe of the archives,
as the stone evidently belonged to an allotment of
land to a royal scribe close to the archive chamber.
We see how on laying out the town, the largest handy
piece of desert-stone was picked up and inscribed for
a boundary stone, until the plot was walled in ; and
then it was thrown aside as waste.
The building at Fig. 20, Pl. XLII, is a rude walling
of loose stone on a platform in front of the north-
most stele V. It is most likely that this belongs to a
later period, when this vertical face of the stele was
selected for one side of a hut, and it is rather of the
Roman age than of the period of the stele.
We return now to consider the peculiar structures
that we have passed over in describing the houses and
store-rooms.
49. No. 15 is a building near the south end of the
town. The walls slope down gradually to the north,
and it is highest at the south end of the rectangular
part, where it is still about ten feet high. Such large
circular buildings (for the extraneous buildings at the
sides are later additions) seem most like the usual
Egyptian granary on a great scale. The use of the
long walls to the north, would then be for a sloping
way by which the men would walk up to shoot the
grain-sacks into the conical granaries on either hand.
The circles are 26 feet 6 inches and 29 feet 11 inches
inside diameter ; the sloping ascent being 100 feet
long is not likely to have been under 25 feet high ;
if then the corn averaged 20 feet high in the granaries
they would hold corn enough for three or four thou-
sand men for a year. So this building may well have
held the whole of the store for government and
official use.
As I have said, the side-chambers are later addi-
tions, possibly first added to strengthen the walls.
The doorways were cut in the sides, and afterwards
roughly blocked up. In each of the four chambers
added to the east granary there was a body deposited ;
one was a boy with the front permanent teeth not
through, another a lad yet without wisdom teeth. In
the space between the granaries, closed by a short
cross wall, was a mixture of bones of men and animals
in the earth-filling, some three feet above the ground,
and hence deposited when the building had begun to
fall into decay.
Lastly there is the remarkable building N0.jy2.__ It
consists of two circles of brickwork, which were
traced all around without finding any opening. As
the outer circle, which is over 100 feet across, is still
about 4 feet high it is tolerably certain that no
entrance ever existed. In the inner circle are two
irregular pits lined with brickwork, 5 feet deep.
These contained nothing noticeable according to
Mr. Carter's examination, except a very rough head-
rest of limestone ; and I picked up a scrap of calcined