In Stairway 9 the sides of the shaft had been plastered with mud. The stone door of the burial chamber was still standing, the robbers having apparently found it easier to force their way through the comparatively soft earth above the great slab. We were frequently able to trace their mode of entrance, and found that they sank their shafts at the deep end of the stairway, never clearing the long flight of steps. This would seem to show that the robberies took place while this method of burial was remembered. This tomb contained fragments of one of the large hemispherical pots used as coffins (_majūrs_), and pieces of a large jar of polished red ware, the lines of polish on which run lengthways; this ware again cannot be distinguished from the Libyan. There was also a vertical jar of veined marble, the horizontally-pierced handle of a typical Libyan stone vase, an alabaster bowl and a vase (X, 43), with a couple of coarse pottery bowls of IVth dynasty type (XII, 37). Stairway 10 contained only the coarse pottery, but the common jars (XII, 23) bore a series of simple marks made before firing (XVIII, 21-4, and a triangle). Stairway 12 had been robbed, though the sandstone door had not been moved. The body had been laid in a wooden box (80 cm. long), which nearly filled the chamber. The wood had disappeared, but the thin layers of paint still kept their place. The body lay on the left side, contracted, the head to the north. A small diorite bowl stood near the head of the coffin, and a common alabaster vase in the earth above it. Round the bones of the arm were carnelian beads of short barrel shape. No. 226 was exceptional in the position of the entrance to the tomb chamber. On descending the stairway, one found oneself at the base of a large well, in the east side of which, and not visible from the stairway, stood the great door. In the filling was found a good flint knife, of the usual early type, with small handle, but much inferior to the finer Neolithic work. The contents of this series of tombs have been given thus in detail, in order to show that the same grouping of objects occurs over and over again, and that they can therefore be with confidence attributed to the original burials, though if only a single tomb had been examined there would be no proof of the contemporaneousness of any object in it. It will be observed that the contents of the stairway tombs are very closely similar to those of the mastabas with square wells, but that objects characteristic of Neolithic tombs--green paint, double vases, marbles, etc.--are rather more numerous in the stairway tombs. This makes it seem likely that the stairway tombs here at El Kab are earlier in date than the mastabas with square wells.