In No. 203 there were only two pots and a marble vase. Traces of the roofing arch were found. The skeleton as it lay measured 1·80 m. long.
No. 205 contained pottery of shapes [XIII], 2, 12, 27, 24, 20.
No. 216 contained four examples of [XIII], 5, one each of 2, 19, 4, and about fifty of the small saucer, 12a.
No. 242 contained 26, 2, 3.
No. 255 contained a great mass of pottery of nearly all the shapes (2, 5, 4, 12, 9, 17), much of which lay at a higher level than the two bodies; of these, one lay upon its back, the other in the regular position. Before the face of the northern body was an alabaster vase ([X], 4), a small shell and a fragment of bronze rod. Another alabaster jar ([X], 3) stood by the hips of the southern skeleton.
No. 264 was in better condition than most, and contained a great number of pots, including more than fifty of the shape [XIII], 22, and many of [XIII], 20. Nearly all were, however, broken, for, as in all these tombs, the arch had fallen in. This tomb contained also a string of beads, barrel beads of lapis lazuli, carnelian and gold foil, and small discs of gold.
In No. 265 were found more than two hundred pots scattered in all directions; a few were nested in a recess halfway down the side of the tomb. All the shapes [XIII], 1-28, except 16 and 22, were found in this tomb. There was no skeleton. A hole had been pierced in the base of every pot after baking.
One group of tombs of this period (v. [Pl. XXIV]) had apparently been made at one time. In three of them the skeletons remained with two or three coarse pots laid before the face. Outside the enclosure wall of another of these groups of tombs was a heap of saucers (like [XIII], 12), painted inside with a rough cross of white paint. These are, by the fabric, probably of the same period as the tombs.
21. In the great XIIth dynasty cemetery outside the town the graves were of different construction, consisting of a long and narrow shaft from which, at both the north and the south ends, opened a chamber. But two, or perhaps three, tombs of this form were found inside the walls. This cemetery was well known to the Arabs, and a few years ago a party of the Qurneh dealers, armed with a bogus Museum permit, dug there for several weeks. The tombs they had rifled could be distinguished from tombs that were intact or had been plundered in early times by the sharper edges of the depressions left. Time has rounded over the traces of the earlier robberies, so that anciently robbed tombs look much like those which are intact, but in which the roof has fallen in causing a dip in the ground not unlike the top of a tomb-shaft. The cemetery lies in a shoal in the dry stream-bed, at whose mouth El Kab was placed. This shoal is a great bank of gravel and a fine clay-like detritus, the beds of which lie alternately, the thickness of each varying in different parts. The practice in the XIIth dynasty was to sink the tomb-shaft until a layer of gravel was reached sufficiently strong for a chamber to be safely cut out of it. The chambers were about 2 m. square and probably rather less than 1·50 m. high, but they were made flat-roofed, and in most cases the roof had fallen in, crushing the bones and often also the pottery below. Even if the roof was complete when we opened the tomb, it would usually fall before we could examine and clear out the interment. With only the warning of the fall of a single pebble, or just a little gutter of sand, a mass of perhaps two tons would suddenly drop with a thud. On two occasions a man was caught by some part of the fall, and once, just as the helpless man was being dug out, a clumsy helper dislodged a few more hundredweight and buried him again. These are anxious moments, for when this shifting ground has once begun to slip, the whole side of a tomb may fall at once. Happily we had no serious accident, though there were many narrow escapes. It is necessary in such work to watch the men very carefully, and to insist on their taking reasonable care, for they will, if left alone, burrow beneath dangerously overhanging masses of soil rather than take the trouble of removing them. The method in which the door of the burial-chamber was closed was not at first clear; but four or five of the large jars ([Pl. XIV]) were so often found just inside the entrance that it seemed probable they had been used as a building material, just as the peasants near Keneh now use the spoilt water-jars from the potteries there. Later on two of the doorways were found actually blocked up in this way—three jars in the lower tier, two more above them, and the interstices filled with mud. Probably, then, these large pots were the common water-jars of the Middle Kingdom. Other tomb-doors were blocked with bricks, very roughly laid. Coffins were very rare; there was one of unbaked clay, long and narrow; and a trace of wood (No. 121) in another grave may have been part of a coffin. But the soil of El Kab is so damp and full of salt that unpainted wooden coffins may have disappeared without leaving any trace. The same causes have doubtless removed the clothes in which the dead were buried, for of these I saw no trace. The most remarkable fact was the entire absence of mummification, at least, of any effective kind. In the ground near the good XVIIIth dynasty tombs, mummies were found, perhaps the servants of the great men of the inscribed tombs. There seemed no great difference in the conditions to which these mummies and the bodies of the XIIth dynasty people had been exposed. Yet no trace of mummy-cloth, dried skin, hair, or bitumen was ever met with in the earlier cemetery. Nor in the early burials that I opened at Ballas were any mummies found, and certainly most of the mummies known belong to the XVIIIth dynasty or later. Is it possible that mummification was confined to the upper classes until the great increase of wealth in the XVIIIth dynasty led to the wider adoption of the custom?