Page:Mount Seir, Sinai and Western Palestine.djvu/247

Rh "It is not unlikely that amidst the antiquities in the Louvre, the remaining portion of the 'Khadim' from Sarabit may yet be found. "The hieroglyphic inscriptions from Magharah range from Senefru of the third Egyptian dynasty to Thothmes III, of the eighteenth line; those of Sarabit el Khadim end with Rameses IV, of the twentieth, after which period the mines and temples were abandoned. No inscriptions have been discovered at Sarabit of kings who reigned between Thothmes III and the twelfth dynasty, nor any after the twentieth. They occur rarely and after long intervals after Rameses II. "One of the principal tablets at Sarabit el Klàlim refers to a certain Har-ur-ra, superintendent of the mines, who arrived there in the month Phamenoth, in the reign of some monarch not mentioned, probably of the twelfth dynasty. The author of the inscription declares that he never once left the mine; he exhorts the chiefs to go there also, and 'if your faces fail,' says he, 'the goddess Athor will give you her arms to aid you in the work. Behold me, how I tarried there after I had left Egypt,—my face sweated, my blood grew hot, I ordered the workmen daily, and said unto them, there is still turquoise in the mine and the vein will be found in time. And it was so; the vein was found at last, and the mine yielded well. When I came to this land, aided by the king's genii, I began to labour strenuously. The troops came and entirely occupied it, so that none escaped therefrom. My face grew not frightened at the work, I toiled cheerfully; I brought abundance—yea, abundance of turquoise, and obtained yet more by search. I did not miss a single vein.' "Another inscription runs:—'I came to the mines of my lord, I commenced working the Mafka, or turquoise, at the rate of fifteen men daily. Never was like done in the reign of Senefru the justified.' These and the frequent recurrence of tablets representing the various kings triumphing over and slaying their foreign captives, will enable the reader to judge of the nature of the mines and the manner in which they were worked by their Egyptian discoverers." over the district to the north-east through which we were to pass, also into Jebel el Watiyeh, on the edge of the Ordnance map, which was formed into a trigonometrical station by observing with the theodolite from it, subsequently observing from Jebel Musa. I was thus able to fix many points in the country we were about to survey from a very extended base of Ordnance survey work.

On the 22nd November we left the surveyed country at El Watiyeh, and I made a detour by 'Ain el Akhdar, which I was able to fix; the spring is of good water, and is perennial, with a few palms and other trees hidden in the corner of the valley. I then made my way across low-lying hills at the foot of outlying scarp, to the Wady Zelegah, where camp was pitched.