In nearly all the early tombs pottery cones were found, sometimes in great numbers, but not in a single case did we obtain one that was inscribed. They were always found in the front courts and were certainly contemporary with the tombs of the Early Middle Kingdom. In all other parts of the Theban necropolis these cones date from the beginning of the New Empire[5] downwards, and, with rare exceptions, they have the names and titles of the deceased persons for whom they were made. Their real meaning has always been an open question. Maspero has suggested that they are model cakes or loaves of bread, made in burnt clay for the sake of permanency. Rhind found them built into a wall in a tomb court; and he and others have asserted that they were intended for ornament in the construction of the tombs. The same argument that they were meant for decoration might be used in the case of the pots that the modern natives frequently use when building light walls at the present day in the same tombs. The bas-relief in the tomb of Kha-em-hat, shown in Fig. 7, together with the fact that the cones are found nearly always on the floors of the open courtyard of tombs, tends to corroborate the theory of Maspero. Distributed over the surface of the hillside were numbers of chert hammers and chisels, and also heaps of flakes, showing that they had been made on the spot. These are exactly similar to others that have been found at Beni Hasan and other rock-cut tomb sites of Egypt. They were probably used for the rougher work when hewing out the rock. Our trenches near to the Dêr el Bahari temple exposed the workmen’s dwellings and part of a large wall bearing the names, stamped upon its bricks, of Aahmes-nefert-ari and Amenhetep I. Here also were found votive offerings, as well as leaf offerings[6] in small pottery vessels, and oblations to trees. These offerings to trees had already been noticed during the excavation of Hatshepsût’s temple by the Egypt Exploration Fund,[7] when trees were discovered in the Lower Terrace with similar votive objects buried in the earth around them. In the tombs of the XVIIIth Dynasty and later periods representations of people offering to trees are often found; while even at the present day a general feature of the Mohammedan cemetery is its tree (generally a _gemmêz_, ‘sycomore-fig’[8]), under which water and other offerings are often placed by mourners, while rags are attached to its branches or twigs. In the tomb of Thothmes III the deceased king himself is depicted[9] as receiving nourishment from the tree through a breast that protrudes from one of its boughs. It is interesting to note in regard to the votive offerings that within 600 yards of the scene of our excavations the tomb of Sheikh Abd El Kurneh, the local Mohammedan saint, is surrounded by heaps of mud model houses, small vessels of henna, and even the latest European wax candles, to invoke his assistance for the public weal. CHAPTER I