Progress had been no less marked on the left bank of the river. As long as Thebes had been merely a small provincial town, its cemeteries had covered but a moderate area, including the sandy plain and low mounds opposite Karnak and the valley of Deir el-Bahari beyond; but now that the city had more than doubled its extent, the space required for the dead was proportionately greater. The tombs of private persons began to spread towards the south, and soon reached the slopes of the Assassif, the hill of Sheikh-Abd-el-Qurnah and the district of Qurnet-Murrai--in fact, all that part which the people of the country called the "Brow" of Thebes. On the borders of the cultivated land a row of chapels and mastabas with pyramidal roofs sheltered the remains of the princes and princesses of the royal family. The Pharaohs themselves were buried either separately under their respective brick pyramids or in groups in a temple, as was the case with the first three Thutmosis and Hatshopsitu at Deir el-Bahari. Amenothes II. and Thutmosis IV. could doubtless have found room in this crowded necropolis,* although the space was becoming limited, but the pride of the Pharaohs began to rebel against this promiscuous burial side by side with their subjects. Amenothes III. sought for a site, therefore, where he would have ample room to display his magnificence, far from the vulgar crowd, and found what he desired at the farther end of the valley which opens out behind the village of Qurnah. Here, an hour's journey from the bank of the Nile, he cut for himself a magnificent rock-tomb with galleries, halls, and deep pits, the walls being decorated with representations of the Voyage of the Sun through the regions which he traverses during the twelve hours of his nocturnal course. * The generally received opinion is that these sovereigns of the XVIIIth dynasty were buried in the Biban el-Moluk, but I have made several examinations of this valley, and cannot think that this was the case. On the contrary, the scattered notices in the fragments of papyrus preserved at Turin seem to me to indicate that Amenothes II. and Thutmosis IV. must have been buried in the neighbourhood of the Assassif or of Deir el-Bahari.