frontier life on these tombs, to which we shall soon descend, and there we may read of their adventures.

As we shuffle down the steep cliff on the east face, we discover a large doorway with a figure of the deceased noble sculptured on either side as on the doorways of the great mastabas at Gizeh. It is Harkhuf, "Warden of the Door of the South," nearly 2600 B. C. These figures are accompanied by long inscriptions telling of his four trading journeys to the distant Nubian land of Yam. On his fourth journey thither he secured a native of one of the pygmy tribes of inner Africa, whom he brought back as a present for the king, then only a child. Having sent on information of the coming gift, he received a letter from the king on his arrival at the frontier, expressing the greatest delight. Harkhuf was so proud of his letter, that he had it engraved on the front of his tomb. The original on papyrus has long ago perished, but the copy on the front of the tomb is still in perfect condition, the oldest surviving royal letter in human history. We can still discern in it the delight of the child-king, and his solicitude lest the dwarf should meet with any accident on his way down river to the court. Let us read one or two passages:

After the address the king begins: "I have noted the matter of this thy letter, which thou hast sent to the king, in order that the king might know that thou hast returned in safety from Yam with the army which was with thee. Thou hast said in this thy letter, that thou hast brought a dancing dwarf of the god from the land of the spirits, like the dwarf which the treasurer Burded brought from Punt in the time of king Isesi. Thou hast said to my majesty: 'Never before has one like him been brought by any other who has visited Yam.' . . . I will make thy many excellent honors to be an ornament for the son of thy son forever, so that all people shall say when they hear what I do for thee: 'Is there anything like this which was done for Harkhuf, when he returned from Yam?' Come northward to the court immediately. . . Thou shalt

bring this dwarf with thee. When he goes with thee into the vessel, appoint excellent people, who shall be beside him on each side of the vessel, take care lest he fall into the water. When he sleeps at night appoint excellent people who shall sleep beside him in his tent; inspect ten times a night. If thou arrivest at court having this dwarf with thee alive, prosperous and healthy, I will do for thee a greater thing than that which was done for the treasurer Burded, in the time of Isesi, according to my heart's desire to see this dwarf."

This little king, whose chance letter has thus been preserved, reigned over ninety years, the longest reign in history. From this peep into the child-life of a Pharaoh, we pass around the promontory, enjoying the view across Elephantine, where Harkhuf lived, and the wild and tumbled surface of the eastern desert beyond, stretching melancholy and forbidding to the distant horizon. The danger of this region to these hardy borderers is illustrated by the boast of one of the lords of the court in Harkhuf's time, that he led an expedition to the granite quarries below us, with a guard of "only one war-ship." We can understand then the story which we find on the front of the next tomb. It tells us how Sebni, one of these old lords of Elephantine, received news that his father, then on an expedition in the south, had been slain by the barbarians. Without hesitation he pushed southward with a rescue party, punished the offending tribe, and rescued his father's body for embalmment and burial in the family tomb. For this pious deed he was richly rewarded by the Pharaoh. Pepinakht, another of these ancient frontiersmen, records on his tomb how he was dispatched by the Pharaoh to bring back the body of a royal sea-captain, who had been slain while building a ship on the shores of the Red Sea, for the voyage to Punt (Ophir). These silent tombs thus tell us a vivid story of the active and hazardous lives of these earliest borderers 4,500 years ago, in a region which has been made safe for trade and exploration only within the last few years.

The market which these Elephantine nobles made possible by the maintenance of the southern trade routes, and the protection of the caravans was on the other side of the river. The residence-town of Elephantine has perished, but the market-town of Aswan on the other side of the channel still flourishes, and still bears its ancient name, changed but slightly, as it was known to Ezekiel (Ezek. xxix, 10; xxx, 6) and the Greeks. Aramaic papyri recently found upon the island show that the Jews after the destruction of Jerusalem had a temple of Jahweh (Jehovah) here, in spite of the enactments of the Book of Deuteronomy. A walk through the small bazaar is worth the trouble, but the remainder of the visitor's time should be spent upon the islands of the cataract themselves, and the adjoining granite cliffs.

A stroll about the Island of Elephantine reveals the meager ruins of the ancient town at the south end. On the east side of the town is the massive Nilometer, where we discern the figures and the scale by which the level of the rising river was read for ages and is still read. For five miles the granite islands and the masses of granite in the channel obstruct the course of the river, which in places is broken into fierce rapids approximating those below our Niagara Falls, although the volume is less and the current is divided by the rocks into often narrow channels. The islands are high, picturesque masses of granite, rising from the bed of the river, which winds along through a desolate wilderness of such rocks flanking either shore. A ride along the east shore following the ancient footpath overlooking the river is of the greatest interest. Here was the southern boundary of Egypt at this vast granite barrier over five miles wide. For thousands of years the officials of the Pharaohs have crossed this frontier going and coming upon business of the state. Whenever time and opportunity permitted, their scribes and secretaries have left some memorial of their passage upon these rocks, until they have gradually become a great "visitors" book," the oldest and certainly the

most interesting of its kind in all the world. We might spend days reading this vast "visitors" book" for miles up and down the rocks and islands, beginning nearly 3000 B. C. and continuing some three thousand years. Over on the island of Sehêl in the middle of the cataract is a curious document containing among other things the record of a seven years famine.

Leaving the picturesque river-path and turning eastward among the granite hills, we shortly enter the granite quarries, where Uni took out granite in the twenty-sixth century B. C., "with only one war-ship." All around us are the long lines of wedge-holes into which the ancient workmen drove wooden wedges. When water was poured upon these, their resulting expansion as they "swelled" (capillary attraction), gently but irresistibly split the granite along the line of the wedges. A colossal statue of Amenhotep III, identified by an inscription of the workmen near by, and a huge sacrophagus, both unfinished, together with many a rough block, convey the impression that the workmen of several thousand years ago have but "knocked off" for lunch. We almost expect to hear the tap of their mauls again. The most impressive witness to the colossal works once wrought in this place, however, is a prostrate obelisk which has never been separated from the rock of the quarry to which it is still attached. This prostrate giant if he were set upright, would be ninety-two feet high and ten and a half feet thick at the base. All the obelisks that we have seen, once lay here embedded in the heart of these hills. They were dragged down to the river on sledges, and loaded upon vast barges over two hundred feet long, with a thousand oarsmen manning the galleys by which the barge was towed. Thus they floated the huge monoliths down river, even as far as the Delta,-not one or two in a century but by the score. At Tanis alone Ramses II erected fourteen huge granite obelisks from these quarries. This prostrate shaft weighs some three hundred and fifty tons, but a colossus of Ramses II from these quarries found at Tanis (in