THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN tain if all the pyramids of Nuri had smooth, sloping sides like those of Egypt, but on one or two of them are found angle stones which seem to have been placed there to form a flat side. Another peculiarity of these pyramids is that but few appear to have been provided with chapels in which services in commemoration of the dead were recited and offerings made. The pyramids at Gebel Barkal, just across the river, had chapels, which, judging from the views published by Cailliaud and Hoskins, were of considerable size, and it is difficult to believe that the builders of such large monuments as the pyramids of Niiri would have omitted to provide suitable accommodation for the priests who ministered to the souls of dead kings and queens buried beneath them. Major M. G. Talbot, R.E., and I spent some time in examining the south-east sides of the best preserved of the pyramids, but only in one case did we find traces which might have been left by the bonding in of the stones ot the side walls of a chapel. Four times subsequently I spent whole afternoons in exploring this pyramid field, and the result was always the same.

At the present time it is impossible to assign a date to the P5'ramids of Niiri, for none of their stones have inscriptions upon them, and there is nothing exactly like them in Egypt with which to compare them. Systematic excavations might result in the discovery of inscriptions containing the names of the kings who built them, but unless such inscriptions are on objects buried with the dead beneath the pyramids, the hope of finding such is not very good. Every one with any knowledge of the subject who has seen them has believed them to be older than the pyramids of Gebel Barkal and of the Island of Meroe, and it seems impossible to come to any other conclusion. Their position, i.e., their being on the west bank of the Nile, according to true ancient Egyptian custom, their size, their solidity of construction, and the general air of good workmanship about them, all tend to suggest that they are the oldest pyramids in the Siidan, and that they were built before the rise of the kingdom of Piankhi in the eighth century before Christ.

Under the Vth and Vlth Dynasties the Egyptians at Memphis knew a great deal about the Sudani folk, and it is a very significant fact, in respect of the intercourse which went on 1 20 i