The era of Burnaburyas is fixed by the synchronistic history and the tablets of Tell-el Amama in the first half or not later than the middle of the fifteenth century, B. C. Adding seven hundred years to this, would give the date of Hammurabi, and also of Abraham, whose contemporary he was, as, in round numbers, 2150. The results of the recent studies of Dr. Jules Oppert have led him to fix the era of Hammurabi some two centuries earlier than this, or from 2394 to 2339 B. C. Unless, therefore, there were another Burnaburyas of whom there is no historical indication the date of Khuen-Aten will have also to be set back two hundred years. Such an adjustment of the chronology would allow ample time for the four hundred years of the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt and for the four hundred and eighty years from the exodus to the beginning of Solomon's temple. Babylonian and Hebrew Analogies.-An analogy has been found by Mr. W. St. C. Boscawen between the Cherubim with flaming swords whom the Lord set to guard the gate of Eden and the scorpion-men, " consuming in their terribleness and their aspect of death," that the hero Ghizdubar found guarding the gates of the sun at the mountains of Masu. As in the narrative of the Garden of Eden, beyond these scorpion-men lay a beautiful garden which is described as "equal to the trees of the gods in aspect,

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bearing emeralds as its fruit, where branches bend not to uphold the crystal covering they bear as foliage," and "pleasant to the sight"-just as the Garden of Eden-contained "every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food." The guardians of the garden also exclude Ghizdubar from it and prevent his reaching the tree of Life.

Mr. Theodore G. Pinches, of the department of Assyrian antiquities in the British Museum, declares that he has recognized in certain Assyrian and Babylonian proper names elements representing the Hebrew Ya and Yaveh. These people were thus acquainted with the Hebrew Jehovah and recognized his divinity, as they did that of other foreign gods; and the occurrence of such combinations as Assur-Aa, Nergal Aa, Samas-Aa-Assur is Ya, Nergal is Ya, Samas is Ya -etc., identified some of their deities of foreign origin with Ya, as different manifestations of one god. From other features in the structure of these names the author concludes that the Assyrians employed Ya from the earliest time as a word common to them and their kindred and neighbors, and became acquainted with Yaveh at a later period.

Egypt. Pyramids of Hawára and Illa. hún. Mr. W. F. Petrie began the exploration of the pyramid of Hawára, which stands by the supposed site of the Labyrinth, in the season of 1887-88, and succeeded during that season in tunneling a passage from the north face of the structure as far as the stone casing of the central chamber, which proved to be so massive as to resist all his efforts. Returning to the work in November, 1888, he made various trial excavations at points round the base of the pyramid, in hopes of discovering the original entrance. It was not found. Then masons were employed to quarry down through the roof of the central chamber, and three weeks were spent in cutting

a small vertical shaft through the fifteen thicknesses of stone. From the central chamber the clew to the original entrance was disclosed. It was from a point outside the pyramid, and apparently at some distance from it The passage, which is underground, strikes the south side of the pyramid at some distance from the southwest corner, and is intricate in its windings. According to Mr. Petrie's description:

It does not run straight into the chamber, but slopes down northward for some distance. Then a branch passage leads eastward, the main line continuing on, as a blind. The branch passage (still going eastward) ends blank, but the issue from it is by a large trap-door in the roof. This trap-door opens into an upper passage leading north, which presently turns off to the west. Here it again ends blank, and another roof-trap gives access to another upper passage running farther west. This passage ends in a well leading to a short passage southward, which erds in another well now full of water. This well, I imagine, must lead to another short passage going eastward, whence a last well would ascend into the

chamber.

The chamber had been entered through a forced opening made from the second roof-trap into the sepulchral chamber, and whatever of portable value it contained had been carried away. There were evidences also of fire, and it is supposed that the mummies and their cases had been burned. Remains of Roman amphoræ indicate that the violation of the tomb had been committed at least as early as the Roman dominion. The chamber measured inside 22 feet by 8 feet. The floor and the four sides up to a height of 6 feet (inside measurement) had been hollowed out of a single block of sandstone. The chamber contains one large and one smaller sarcophagus of polished sandstone both plain and uninscribed, the base of the larger one being bordered by a projecting plinth decorated with paneled ornaments. The second sarcophagus had been contrived by the insertion of a head and a foot slab between the large one and the wall, and had been closed by a narrow lid. It appears to have been an afterthought. There were also two boxes of polished limestone in the chamber decorated around the base with the same paneling as the large sarcophagus. Many fragments of alabaster vases and bowls, were found, some inscribed, others not, representing the funeral vessels of the buried Pharaoh. One of these bore the throne name of Amenemhat III, confirming the other circumstances that contribute to identify the pyramid with the tomb of that king. The smaller sarcophagus was found to belong to the Princess Ptahnefru, daughter of Amenemhat III. This was established by the inscriptions on two objects that were found in the passages. One was an alabaster vessel, 18 inches in length, carved in the shape of a trussed duck, on which was engraved the hieroglyphic legend, "The royal daughter Ptahnefru." The other was an alabaster table of offerings, surrounded by fragments of nine alabaster duck-vases. It is a rectangublock, 264 inches long by 16 inches broad and 9 inches thick, bordered by a funerary invocation of the ordinary type, praying for oblations of food and drink for the Ka" of the royal daughter Ptahnefru, while the inclosed surface is carved in low relief with 110 miniature representations of vases, bowls, cups, plates, loaves,

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cakes, birds, fruits, and the like. Each object has its name engraved beside or above it, thus giving a list of between seventy and eighty varieties of wines, poultry, cakes, etc., and the complete schedule of a royal funerary feast of the period. It is remarked that the ducks, geese, and other birds are represented without legs. Except for a flake off from one corner, this block is perfectly preserved. The discovery of calcined fragments of quartz and mica, together with a lapis lazuli inlay carved in the form of a false beard of the kind represented on the chins of gods and Pharaohs, is regarded as evidence that the destroyed mummy cases had been decorated with mosaic ornamentation in fine stones. The chamber was filled with water to the depth of three feet. After completing the examination of this pyramid Mr. Petrie began operations at the pyramid of Illahûn, which stands at the gate of the Fayoum, in the position commanding the spot that must have been occupied in ancient times by the locks by which the influx of the Nile into the lake was regulated. He had not succeeded in finding the entrance to the pyramid chambers when the working season closed at the end of May, but he made many other discoveries of great interest. The ruins of the pyramid chapel and the shattered remains of a shrine adjoining the pyramid yielded many fragments of the cartouches and "Ka-name" of Usertesen II. The building, erected most probably by this king, had been pulled down in the time of Rameses II and the granite removed to build a sanctuary at Heracleopolis, leaving the place to be identified by traces of the limestone boundary wall and a square area of limestone chips. The site had again been used as a Christian cemetery in the fifth and sixth centuries of our era. This cemetery yielded numerous specimens of clothing in a fine state of preservation. Digging below the Christian graves and the bed of limestone chips, Mr. Petrie discovered in a square hole sunk in the bed-rock the foundation deposits of Usertesen II. The hole had been fitted with two blocks of stone as stoppers, both of which were cut with rope-grooves for lowering them into place. Beneath them appeared a bed of mixed sand and stone-flakes about a foot deep, and below this a mass of smashed pottery, four pairs of sandstone corn-rubbers, eight bronze knives with pointed blades, eight with ordinary blades, four small chisels, four large chisels, four bar chisels, four axe-heads, four pieces of ore, and twelve strings of carnelian beads of a rich, translucent red color. The threads connecting the beads had rotted away, but the beads lay in lines. The use of the beads has not been determined. Mr. Petrie suggests that they may be bead-money-the earliest examples yet discovered-or that some mystic meaning may have attached to them.

An Ancient Village.-Adjoining the pyramid temple, and built square with it, were the remains of a town of the same period. It was symmetrically laid out in parallel rows of storehouses and chambers, the chambers being planned to round numbers of cubic measurements, as two by five, four by three, and the like. The whole was evidently planned at one time, and was in all likelihood designed for the architects, artists, workmen, and officers employed in the

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construction of the temple and pyramid. Somewhat similar structures have been found elsewhere, as at Ghizeh. In some of the chambers masons' tools were found, carpenters' tools in others, and plasterers' tools in others. Thus, for the first time, a complete, untouched, and unincumbered settlement of the twelfth dynasty is brought to light." The decorations and furnishings, domestic objects, and manner of life of the people of the remote age of the Usertesens are illustrated by other objects discovered in these chambers. A style of pottery, with incised patterns in imitation of basket-work, found here was hitherto unknown. Very many papyri of the period were found almost perfectly preserved. Some of them were still rolled up and sealed with clay impressions of scarabs of early patterns. One bears the seal of an officer of one of the Amenemhats. Some of the material of these papyri is described as being of "marvelous" quality, and the texture as thin as "foreign note paper.' Some new-born infants were found buried under the floors of the chambers, in very careless fashion. The cemetery of this town extended for some distance around the base of the pyramid, but the ancient graves had been plundered. The ground was also occupied as a cemetery from the twenty-first to the twenty-fifth dynasties, but the later interments afforded little of historical or archæological value. The name of the town appears from seals attached to some of the papyri to have been Ha-Usertesen-Hotep, or, "the Votive Temple of Usertesen." The site is now called Tell Kahun.

Village at Tell Gurob.-A few miles distant from Illahûn, on the other side of the Bahr Yusuf, Mr. Petrie discovered the remains of another town of the latter part of the eighteenth or early part of the nineteenth dynasty. It was surrounded by a wall, and outside of the wall was the necropolis. The modern name of the place is Tell Gurob; the ancient name has not been ascertained. The earliest relics gave the names of Thothmes III, Tutankhamen, and Horemheb, while the place had apparently ceased to be occupied in the reign of Seti II, the son of Menephthah (the Pharaoh of the Exodus). The cemetery, however, continued in use for a much longer time, for mummies of the Ptolemaic age were exhumed from it. The head cases of the later mummies were made of a cartonnage built up of papyri instead of the usual thicknesses of linen, and the layers were easily separated, in good condition, by soaking. By this process, Mr. Petrie obtained a considerable number of Ptolemaic documents in pieces as large as one's hand. Among them were fragments of royal decrees, beginning, "King Ptolemy to greeting, etc."; an ephemeris, or daily record of court affairs and regulations of the fourteenth year of Ptolemy Philadelphus; letters, including part of an epistle from a youth at college, telling his father how he was getting on and saying that he at last understood mensuration and could draw a plan of a house; and a letter from one of the royal goose-herds, saying that he could not supply twelve geese for King Ptolemy's festival. The bronzes, including knives, chisels, axe-heads, mirrors, etc., are described as being the finest in the way of domestic objects yet found in Egypt. Two inscribed shallow pans-votive offerings

are triumphs of hammer work," so thin as to be quite elastic and flexible, but having thick rims. The potteries were partly of the Cypriot and partly of the Mycenean types and distinct in style from those of the Illahûn settlement, but having the common feature with them of bearing incised characters that are neither hieroglyphic nor hieratic, but apparently very early Cypriot or Greek. The signs traced on the pottery of the twelfth dynasty are distinctly Cypriot, and Phoenician is found on the later pottery at Tell Gurob. At this place "the evidences of a foreign settlement are overwhelming." The weights were of the Assyrian standards. Interments of an alien race with yellow hair and foreign names were detected in the cemetery. One of these cases bore the name An-Tursha, pointing to the Tursha nation who are mentioned in the Egyptian inscriptions as allies of the Achaans and Libyans against Egypt.

Domestic Relics of the Twelfth, Eighteenth, and Nineteenth Dynasties. The smaller objects found in these villages were brought to London, and were exhibited to the public in the latter part of September, a separate apartment in the Oxford Mansion being allotted to the collection from either village. Among the objects in this exhibition which are figured in the illustration are, from Tell Kahun (twelfth dynasty, about 2600 or 2800 B. c.), a wooden statuette of a dancer or mummer, dressed only in a tail and a mask (see plate, p. 26, No. 1); a pair of ivory castanets found with this image (Nos. 2 and 3); the actual mask of the mummer (No. 4), found in the next room. It was made of canvas and plaster, and was painted black, with crescents of color around the eye-holes, and patches on the cheeks. These articles were probably part of the outfit of a professional dancer who occupied the apartments; a child's playball (No. 10); a toy boat (No. 5), and a hippopotamus (No. 9), chipped out of flint; a firestick, in the notches of which an upright stick was rotated to produce fire by friction (No. 6); a wooden spoon in the form of a shell supported by a serpent (No. 7); a sling, with the loop that was slipped over the finger (No. 8); a plummet (No. 11); a brick-mold (No. 12); a plasterer's float, (No. 14), cut out of a solid block of wood, and of precisely the form in use to-day; a wooden hoe (No. 13); a sickle, cut in two pieces and having three small flint saws cemented into a groove sunk in the edge of the wooden handle (No. 15); a figure of a boy playing on double pipes (No. 16); a name inscribed on a piece of wood (No. 17); other alphabetic signs (Nos. 18 and 19). Of the objects from Tell Gurob (eighteenth dynasty, about 1400 to 1500 B. c.), there are represented in the illustration a false-necked vase (No. 21); a figure in pottery (No. 20); a head carved in wood from a coffin of about 1300 B. c. (No. 22); and another similar head of a later period (No. 23). Many of these objects are represented by several specimens. The collection contains a large number of workmens' tools and other articles besides the objects illustrated, including chisels of bronze and flint; thirty or forty flint saws; wooden cramps; wooden "off-set pegs," employed for dressing stone facings; the handle of an adze; bow drills; three cubit measures, one of which, a "short "

cubit-the first that has been found--consists of a massive piece of dark wood, beveled at one side and marked off into divisions of six palms; clay molds for casting bronze hatchets, knives, and the like; a collection of knife and hatchet blades and other tools, some of which had probably been cast in these very molds and afterward hammered; a bronze mirror, the plate having a diameter of eight and a half inches, mounted in a massive handle of solid ivory carved in the form of a lotus scepter; hoes of two shapes; "five very clumsy, archaic-looking wooden rake-heads"; two grain scoops; articles of pottery, plain and blue-glazed; wooden-tooth combs; bronze needles; hair-pins of bone; strings of beads; spindles and whirls; fishermens' and weavers' furnishings; rope-ring cushions for supporting loads on the head; sandals in a considerable variety of styles; and a fragment of a black basalt statue in heroic size, as well as a colored portrait-head of the Pharaoh in bas-relief. The eighteenth dynasty is represented by jewelry, ivory carvings, amulets, scarabs, and other small articles of value, sarcophagi, mummy-case lids carved into human forms, and funerary images from Tell Gurob and the cemetery at Hawára, with the mummy case and skull of the (Etruscan) foreigner An Tursha. Completion of work at Bubastis.-Miss Edwards, as honorary secretary, represented at the annual meeting of the Egypt Exploration Fund, April 12, that the excavations at Bubastis had been completed with the close of the season of 1888-'89. Every block of stone had been lifted and rolled; every bas-relief had been reproduced in paper casts; and every inscription copied. Even though the results had been negative rather than positive, it was a source of satisfaction that the task had been performed. The only large work of art found during the year had been a colossal group of two figures in red granite. Several inscriptions, however, had been recovered; as, for instance, part of a large tablet in praise of Rameses II; an inscription of Usertesen I, showing that the earliest temple built upon this site was still standing at the beginning of the twelfth dynasty; and two inscriptions which carry back the date of that earliest temple to 4000 B. C. (Mariette's chronology); namely, one containing the throne-name of Khafra (Chephren), the builder of the second pyramid, and one containing the so-called "banner-name" of Khufu (Cheops), the builder of the Great Pyramid. The history, therefore, of the famous temple of Bast is now found to extend from the time of Khufu to the time of Ptolemy Epiphanes II. Before leaving Tell Basta, M. Naville had made a tentative excavation in a spot near the Great Temple, which has long been identified with the Temple of Thoth, decribed by Herodotus as "the Temple of Hermes." This excavation disclosed only a few blocks bearing the names of Osorkon II and Rameses II, and a large tablet recording donations made to various temples.

The monuments derived from these excavations have been brought to England and distributed to various museums in Europe and the United States, whose friends have interested themselves in the work of the Exploration Fund. The removal of these monuments from Egypt