THE PYRAMIDS. 429 and laid it on one eye, while lie knelt with his old head turned up, that I might take it off. I tied it securely in a corner of my 6hawl and we slid to the bottom, where we found Achmet and the young shekhs in the shade of a huge projecting cliff, with breakfast spread out on the sand.

It was now noon, and only the pyramids remained to be seen on that side of the river. The main group is about a third of a mile from the mountain, on the ridge of a sand-hill.

There are six pyramids, nearly' entire, and the foundations of others. They are almost precisely similar to those of the real Meroe, each having a small exterior chamber on the eastern side. Like the latter, they are built of sandstone blocks, only filled at the corners, which are covered with a hem or moulding ; the sides of two of them are convex. On all of them the last eight or ten courses next the top have been smoothed to follow the slope of the side. It was no doubt intended to finish them all in this manner. One of them has also the corner moulding rounded, so as to form a scroll, like that on the cornice of many of the Egyptian temples. They are not more than fifty feet in height, with very narrow bases. One of them, indeed, seems to be the connecting link between the pyramid and the obelisk. Nearer the river is an older pyramid, though no regular courses of stone are to be seen any longer. These sepulchral remains, however, are much inferior to those of Meroe.

The oldest names found at Napata are those of Amenoph III. and Kemeses II. (1630 B. C. and 1400 B. C.) both of whom subjected Nubia to their rule. The remains of Ethiopian art, however, go no further than King Tirkaka, 730 B.

C. — the Ethiopian monarch, who, in the time of Hezekiah,