On the 16th of August, I went from Cairo to the Faiûm, where our camp was broken up on the 21st. Two days later we sailed from Benisuef, sent the camels back to Cairo, and only took the donkeys with us, as it was found, upon careful consideration, that the originally-intended land journey by the foot of the mountains, far away from the river, was altogether impossible during the season of the inundation, and, on the eastern side, it was not only too difficult, but perfectly useless for us, by reason of the proximity of the desert, towards which there is nothing more to be found for our purposes. We have therefore made excursions from our bark, on foot, and with donkeys, principally to the east and some attainable mountains, though we have also visited the most important spots on the western shore. Even on the day of our departure from Benisuef, we found, in the neighbourhood of the village of Surarîeh, a small rock temple, not mentioned by former travellers, indeed, not even by Wilkinson, which was dedicated already in the nineteenth dynasty of Menephthes, the son of Ramses Miamun,[39] to Hathor, the Egyptian Venus.[40] Farther on, lie several groups of graves, which have scarcely received any attention, although they are of peculiar interest by reason of their great antiquity. The whole of middle Egypt, to judge from the tombs preserved, flourished during the Old Empire, before the irruption of the Hyksos, not only under the twelfth dynasty,[41] to which period the famous tombs of Benihassan suit, and Bersheh belong, but even under the sixth dynasty[42] we have found extensive series of tombs, belonging to these early times, and attached to cities, of which the later Egyptian geography does not even know the names, as they were probably already destroyed by the Hyksos. In Benihassan we stayed the longest time--sixteen days; through this, the season is far advanced, and it must not be lost in our journey southward. At the next places, therefore, only notes were taken, and the most important forms in paper, so also at El Amarna, Siut, at the reverend Abydos, and in the younger, but not less magnificent, almost intactly preserved, temple of Dendera. At Siut, we visited the governor of Upper Egypt, Selim Pasha, who is working an ancient alabaster quarry between Bersheh and Gauâta, discovered by the Bedouins some months ago.