Here I observed a trait of Arab hospitality which I must mention. At the parting meal in Qeneh, a fresh draught of the well-tasted Nile-water was handed me in a gilt goblet, elegantly ornamented with pious passages from the Koran. The simple yet pleasing form of the segment of a ball pleased me, and I told old Hussên so without expecting the answer: “The goblet is thine.” As I had nothing with me to give in return, I passed over the politeness, repeatedly declining the gift, and letting the cup remain without further remark. When I went to rest at night, I found it at my bedside, but gave express orders not to pack it up the next morning. We departed, and I did not open my travelling-bag until we reached Leqêta. How astonished was I, when my first glance again fell upon the carefully-packed goblet. Gabre Máriam had closed my luggage, and he confessed, on my angry question as to how the cup had come there against my order, that he had placed it there at the particular desire of old Seid Hussên. Now I was finally beaten, and had to think of some gift for my return. We set out the same night from Leqêta, and rode three hours forward to an old, now little used, and waterless station at the Gebel Maáuad. Our Arabs of the Ag’aïze tribe, are not so animated as the Abâbde or Bisharūn, and their camels are worse. Beyond Gebel Maáuad, we entered the hilly sand-plain Qsûr el Benat, and then again behind another pass, the plain Reshrashi. At the end of them to the left, rises the Gebel Abu Gûeh, on which we turned our backs, and passed round the corner of a rock, on the sandstone walls of which I found the cartouches of the sun-worshipper Amenophis IV. and his queen, with the shining sun[103] sculptured over them. Their names were partly erased as everywhere else, although the king had not then assumed the name of Bech-en-aten. Toward noon we entered the mountain, and in three quarters of an hour we arrived at the well Hamamât. Here there seems to have been an ancient Koptic colony, and the broad wall built down to the depth of nearly eighty feet, in which a winding stair leads to the bottom, is still ascribed by the Arabs to the Nazâra, the Christians. The ancient quarries, our next goal, were distant about half an hour from the well.