traces here. Foremost is the coffin of a high official who was of the Tursha race, the Turseni, probably, of the northern Aegean. The ushabti figure of a Hittite, Sadi-amia, was found in an adjoining grave. A wooden figure of a Hittite harper, wearing the great pigtail of his race, was picked up in the town. A bronze mirror, with a Phoenician Venus holding a dove as the handle of it, was found in a tomb. While constantly Aegean vases, such as those of the first period of Mykenae, are found in both the town and in tombs. The Greek custom of a funereal pyre remained here in a modified form; although the body appears to have been buried in Egyptian fashion (as I found light hair on some of the mummies here), yet the personal articles were all burnt. Apparently on the death of the owner a hole was dug in the floor of the room; into this were placed the chair, the clothing, the mirror, combs, necklaces and toilet articles, the glass bottles, the blue-glazed bowls and vases, the alabaster dishes, the knife and other implements, and the best pottery of the deceased. [Illustration: 103. AEGEAN VASES. 1: 2.] [Illustration: 104. BLUE AND YELLOW GLASS BOTTLE.] All these were burnt; the fire was smothered with potsherds laid over it; earth was then filled in, and the brick floor of the room was relaid. No such custom is ever known among Egyptians, and this shows again the foreign occupation of the place. We know from inscriptions how the Mediterranean races, Libyans, Akhaians, Turseni, and others had pushed into Egypt from the west, and that they had settled in the Nile valley to even somewhat south of the Fayum. This place was evidently then one of their settlements, and its sudden fall under Merenptah just agrees to his expulsion of all these foreigners in the fifth year of his reign. We have here then before our eyes the remains of that great invasion which has always hitherto been a literary shadow without material substance. [Illustration: 105. BLUE-GLAZED VASES. 1: 6.] As before mentioned, the marks on pottery so often found in the town of the twelfth dynasty at Illahun, are also found at Gurob. The list of signs used is somewhat different, but the greater part may be identified; and it is impossible to deny that they are the same as a whole, though naturally modified by alteration, addition, and omission, in the course of a thousand years. Having now, therefore, this body of signs in use in 1200 B.C. in a town occupied by people of the Aegean and Asia Minor, Turseni, Akhaians, Hittites, and others, it will require a very certain proof of the supposed Arabian source of the Phoenician alphabet, before we can venture to deny that we have here the origin of the Mediterranean alphabets. [Illustration: 106. BLUE-GLAZED BOWLS.]