This system of sealing large jars with high clay cones apparently lasted on till the beginning of the sixteenth century B.C.; then another kind of sealing is met with. In the place of the high clay cone, a clay cap with flat top was used, the flat top and sometimes the sides being impressed with a wooden stamp. Later still, at the time of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty, the early inverted cap or plate gave way to a pottery cap or bung, which was secured in place by string or linen bands, and covered with a rounded cap of plaster. There is an interesting specimen of a complete jar neck bearing the stamp of Amasis, with clay and plaster sealing still fixed to it, found at Tell Defenneh (see figs. 3 and 4); it is important as showing the very elaborate system of sealing jars at that time in vogue. Firstly, a large bung of pottery (fig. 3), made hollow, was put into the mouth of the jar. This was then fastened down by linen bands, the ends of which were tied up in the middle, and a lump of sealing clay fixed upon it and impressed with six different seals of inspectors. Although this clay had crumbled and been washed out by rains in the course of ages, it still left a cast in the plaster showing the seals as they appear in fig. 4. After the six inspectors had each put his seal on it, the jar was sent out to the plasterer, who capped the whole top with a head of plaster, and sealed it with the royal name in its oval-cartouche. Even these elaborate precautions, it would seem, did not suffice to secure the contents of this particular amphora from the thief, for the jar neck, as Professor Petrie remarks, is an instance of a successful attack upon the royal stores. The cap of plaster has been bored through just at the edge of the jar, and the large bung inside smashed through, so as to enable the thief to reach freely the wine. The piece of plaster broken out here is shown missing in fig. 4, though it was found in the jar; the hole just shows the edge of the neck, and was filled up with a scrap of the old plaster and a smear of new of a different quality; no attempt was made to imitate the missing part of the cartouche, and this probably raised the cellarer’s suspicion, and made him break off and preserve the whole jar neck as evidence. (Petrie, _Defenneh_, p. 72.) This method of securing the contents of large jars and amphorae lasted on far into Roman times. Horace mentions as a test of a good tempered house master, that he did not go wild with passion even if he found that a seal of a wine jar had been broken. And even at the present day the traveller on the Nile may still see boats, at certain seasons of the year, floating down stream from Erment, Kûs, and other centres of the sugar industry, laden with molasses in peculiar jars (_ballalîs_), secured, in place of the early bung and the earlier inverted plates, by a plug of sugar cane leaves thrust into the mouth of the vessel, and plastered over with a thick cap of white clay.