On the 31st of March we again reached the mountains turning eastward, and entered by Wadi Qeneh, the little branching Wadi Maghâra, in which sandstone and primary stone bound each other. Here we found, high upon the northern cliff, the remarkable Egyptian rock-steles belonging to the earliest monuments of Egyptian antiquity with which we are acquainted.[111] Already, under the fourth dynasty of Manetho, the same which erected the great pyramids of Gizeh, 4,000 B.C., copper mines had been discovered in this desert, which were worked by a colony. The peninsula was then already inhabited by Asiatic, probably Semetic races; therefore do we often see in those rock sculptures, the triumphs of Pharaoh over the enemies of Egypt. Almost all the inscriptions belong to the Old Empire; only one was found of the co-regency of King Tuthmosis III. and his sister. I wished to get from hence by the shortest way to the second place on the peninsula Sarbut el Châdem. But there was no direct road over the high mountains to the descent on the north-east side. So we were obliged to return to Wadi Mokatteb, and going a long way round to the south-east through Wadi Sittere and Wadi Sîch, to avoid the mountain. When we came out of the valley, we had before us the wide-spreading plain, which includes the whole northern part of the peninsula, and which consists entirely of sandstone. This falls, however, towards the south, into a double descent, so that the view appears, at a great distance, to be bounded by two lofty mountain walls, of the same height. The next southern descent, called E’ Tîh, leads down to a wide sandy valley-plain, Debbet e’ Ramleh, while the near side of the sandstone rocks appears to reach the height of the immense plain. Upon one of the projecting terraces in this broad valley, which we had to climb with great fatigue, lie the monuments of Sarbut el Châdem, most astonishing even to one prepared for the sight of them. The most ancient representation here carried us back into the Old Empire, but only into the last dynasty of the same, the twelfth of Manetho. At this time, under Amenemhra III. there was a little grotto hewn out of the rock, and furnished with an ante-chamber. Outside it high steles were erected at different distances without any particular order, the most distant of which was about a quarter of an hour away on the highest point of the _plateau_. Under the New Empire, Tuthmosis III. had enlarged the building towards the west, and added a small pylon, and an outer court. The later kings built a long row of rooms in the same direction, one before the other, occasionally, as it appears, for the purpose of preserving the steles within from the weather; particularly from the sharp, and often sand-filled winds, which had all through eaten up the ancient undefended steles. The youngest stele bears the cartouches of the last king of the nineteenth dynasty. Since that time, or soon after, the place was deserted by the Egyptians.