(19) At the top, and to the right of the upper series of scales, are very faint traces of script. They seem to have been placed against each scale, but very few can now be seen. I have tried to photograph them with special panchromatic plates, but without success; the most I have been able to do is to examine them in various lights, when dry and when wetted, and to make hand copies. These are shewn in figures [2] to [4], and are from divisions VIII, IX and XII respectively. Figure [5] is an extra group of signs to the left of the scale in division VIII. The inscriptions are all in red paint and are too fragmentary to translate.
| Fig. 2. | Fig. 3. | Fig. 4. | Fig. 5. |
It is within the bounds of possibility that the inscriptions originally gave some information as to the party who were working that particular double-foot division of the trench.
At the extreme left of the quarry-face, in the position indicated on plate [VI], there is an inscription of two lines in the hieratic character. It is very faint indeed and I have not succeeded in deciphering it. The fact that it is in black paint on very dark red weathered granite has made it very difficult to photograph. It appears to begin with a date, and to have a number in the middle, but there is no name of a king.
(20) At the top of the upper quarry-face there is what seems to be the bed from which a monument, very probably a small obelisk, of 7 metres long has been extracted. The bottom of the trench can still be traced where the work has been divided up into grooves of similar width to those in the obelisk trench. Here the feet have become irregular, but the double-foot is of great regularity and measures 59.8 centimetres. Plate [V], no. 2, shews the bed at the top of the rock face and no. 3 the same seen from above. It will be noticed that, in this case, the undercutting has been done by pounding, but with less regularity than in the obelisk trench, shewing that it was done by hand. The obelisk seems to have been snapped off, or more likely it broke off of itself. It is hardly justifiable to deduce how the large obelisks were extracted from such a small example. In all probability the principle was the same, but the details very different. This is discussed in sections 21–23. {21}
At the west end of the ridge from which the monument has been removed, there is a short inscription in red paint. A photograph of this is given in plate [V], no. 4. It seems to begin with the words
. . . . . “the work (of) . . . . . ”. The remainder is illegible to me, though the signs are quite clear. They resemble some of the quarry-signs I have seen at Maʿallah and elsewhere.