One of the most interesting passages in the inscription of Una is that in which he gives details of the transportation of the pyramid Kha-nefer of Mer-en-Ra, making for it “a boat of burthen in the little dock 60 cubits in length and thirty in its breadth, put together in 17 days in the month of Epiphi.” There was not water enough in the river to tow the pyramid safely, but the inscription continues: “It was done by me forthwith before the god (King). His Majesty the Divine Lord ordered and sent me to excavate four docks in the South for three boats of burthen, four transports in the small basin of the land of Uauat. Then the rulers of the countries of Araret, Aam, and Ma, supplied the wood for them. It was made in about a year at the time of the inundation loaded with very much granite for the Kha-nefer pyramid of Mer-en-Ra.” (Birch’s[g] translation.) Aside from its intrinsic interest, this inscription of Una has a peculiar historical importance as illustrating a phase of life in Egypt that we shall not see duplicated among the Semitic nations of Asia; the fact, namely, that a mere subject of the king could leave a permanent record of his deeds. In Babylonia and Assyria it is the monarch always who speaks from the inscriptions; the name of a subject is never mentioned. It is not so very often, even in Egypt, that the name of a subject is heard, but the fact that this sometimes occurs marks a distinct difference between the character of the Egyptian and Asiatic civilisations. [Illustration: AN EGYPTIAN HIGH PRIEST (Based on the monuments)] [Sidenote: [_ca._ 3066-3033 B.C.]] One other monarch of the VIth Dynasty has gained traditional fame; this time through the pages of Herodotus. This is the Queen Nitocris. Herodotus, to be sure, gives us no clew as to the age when this female monarch ruled, but the name appears in the lists of Manetho. Herodotus was attracted by the picturesque story told him in reference to Nitocris by the Egyptian priests. He asserts that of the names of three hundred and thirty sovereigns, successors of Menes, recited to him from a book by the Egyptian priests, only one was a female native of the country. He continues: “The female was called Nitocris, which was also the name of the Babylonian princess. They affirm that the Egyptians having slain her brother, who was their sovereign, she was appointed his successor; and that afterwards, to avenge his death, she destroyed by artifice a great number of Egyptians. By her orders a large subterraneous apartment was constructed professedly for festivals, but in reality for a different purpose. She invited to this place a great number of those Egyptians whom she knew to be the principal instruments of her brother’s death, and then by a private canal introduced the river amongst them. They added, that to avoid the indignation of the people, she suffocated herself in an apartment filled with ashes.” (Herodotus, II, 99.)