Not only were there these granite inscriptions to be copied, but also a great number of _graffiti_ and travellers’ names on the sandstone rocks, principally at Gebel Silsileh. Among these was a Phoenician inscription, one of the very few known in Egypt; and some curious quarry records of Roman age. The main inscription of this region is, however, one very seldom seen, even by antiquaries as it is in a valley [Illustration: 55. AN INSCRIBED ROCK AT SILSILEH.] [Illustration: 56. TABLET OF ANTEF AND MENTUHOTEP III.] where no one stops. It portrays Antef V and his vizier Khati worshipping Mentuhotep IV and his wife. Near it is another, smaller, tablet with the worship of the same king; and up the valley we discovered a tablet with the worship of Sankh-ka-ra, all of the eleventh dynasty. All over this district are many rude figures of animals, marked on the rocks by hammering: they are of various ages, some perhaps modern, but the earlier ones certainly before the eighteenth dynasty; and, to judge by the weathering of the rock, it seems probable that they were begun here long before any of the monuments of Egypt that we know. The usual figures are of men, horses, and boats, but there are also camels, ostriches and elephants to be seen. [Illustration: 57. ANIMAL FIGURES AT SILSILEH.] On the desert hills behind Esneh I found what is--so far--the oldest thing known from Egypt. In prehistoric days the Nile used to fill the whole breadth of the valley, to a depth of a couple of hundred feet, fed with the heavy rainfall that carved back the valleys all along the river by great waterfalls, the precipices of which now stand stark and arid in the bleaching sun. Many parts of the valley are above the present river, and are now desert, so that at Esneh the hills are several miles from the Nile, and on a spur of one--where probably no man sets foot for [Illustration: 58. OLDEST TOOL IN EGYPT. 1:2.] [Illustration: 59. PEOPLE OF PUN, S. ARABIA.] centuries at a time--I found lying a palaeolithic wrought flint. It was about a couple of hundred feet above the Nile, and being clearly a river-worn object, it had been left there in the old time of the Great Nile. The flints found by General Pitt-Rivers at Thebes belong to a later age, when the Nile had fallen to almost its present level. But those are far older than any monuments known to us. We see then two stages before the beginning of what we can call history. [Illustration: 60. HANEBU, EARLY GREEK.] At Thebes my main work was in obtaining casts and photographs of all the types of foreign races on the monuments. For making ethnographical comparisons we were, until then, dependent on drawings, which were often incorrect. Now we have nearly two hundred photographs, all with the same size of head, giving several examples of each race that was represented by the Egyptians. [Illustration: 61. ENTRANCE OF SOUTH PYRAMID. CASING DESTROYED BELOW IT.]