PYRAMIDS OF NURI between the people of Ta-kenset (Nubia) and the Egyptians, that the name of the great god of Ta-kenset, i.e., Tetun, appears in the funeral texts compiled for Pepi I. This king claimed, and certainly possessed, a certain amount of authority over Nubia, and he expected its chief god to render him service in the other world. It is assuming nothing to say that the fame of the pyramids of Egypt would penetrate far into Nubia under the Vth and Vlth Dynasties, and that the Nubians would have a general idea of their size and height. After the complete conquest of Ta-kenset by Usertsen III., of the Xllth Dynasty, still more would be known of Egyptian funeral customs by the native officials from the Egyptian officers who were sent there to rule the country in the interest of Egypt. It is not here suggested that all the pyramids of Nuri date from the Vlth, or even from the Xllth Dynasty, but the Egyptians built few pyramids under the Xllth Dynasty, and very many under the Vth and Vlth D}nasties, and it is the pyramids of the earlier period which are copied at Nuri. The size of the largest pyramids at Nvlri suggests that their builders were independent kings, who had the command of labour in abundance. We know that Egypt possessed little power in Nubia after the downfall of the XXth Dynasty, and that the palmy days of her sovereignty over that country were under the Xllth, XVIIIth, and XlXth Dynasties. While Egypt's rule was most effective in Nubia, it seems to me unlikely that any native ruler would have been able to build even the smallest of the larger of the pyramids of Nuri. If this were so we have the choice of three periods in which to think they were built, i.e., between the Vlth and Xllth, the Xllth and XVIIIth, and the XXth and XXIVth Dynasties. The difficulty cannot, of course, be settled until the pyramids have been opened, and inscriptions found inside them, but at present there is no evidence which proves that they are not contemporaneous with the oldest introduction, on a large scale, of Egyptian influence into Nubia.

Quite close to the pyramids of Nuri are the remains of a temple of considerable size, but much sand would have to be cleared ' The words are, " Behold Tetun the Great, at the head of Ta-kenset 121