TEMPLE OF SESEBI enclosed its grounds are still visible. When Cailliaud visited it, four of its pillars were still standing, and the bases of the remainder existed ; everything else had been carried away, probably by the orders of some governor of the province of Dar Mahass, to build some fortified castle. Nothing was to be seen of the temple's stones except some fragments of sandstone which were strewn about the surface of the ground. This temple, like all the rest of its kind, was oriented to the east, and it stood in one corner of a large enclosure which, judging by the ruins of the walls to the north of it, was strongly fortified. The pillars are ornamented with palm -leaf capitals, but on their bases the decoration consists of figures in relief of the bodies of captives, with the names of the tribes to which they belonged cut on them. The faces of the captives are nearly all the same, but their headdresses are different, and these, no doubt, indicated to the visitor to the temple in Seti's days the various Sudani tribes which had been conquered by the Egyptian soldiers. As Cailliaud said, some of the figures resemble those of women, but it is possible that an effeminate appearance was given to them by the architect's orders, with the view of insulting the tribes they represented.

A little distance from the ruins is the site of a large, ancient town, which, as Lepsius noted, stood on an artificially raised piece of ground, of which the regular encircling walls may still be recognized. I was very much surprised to find the temple site so bare, for when I first visited it, there were several fine drums of pillars there, and inscribed portions of the doorway, though half buried, were still in existence. A great deal of building has been going on in the neighbourhood during the last few years, and there is no doubt that the ruins on ancient sites have, whenever possible, been made to serve as quarries, which have supplied large quantities of good stone. And when we consider how well the ancient Egyptians built their temples in the Sudan, no matter how far from Egypt were the sites chosen for them, and what excellent stone was used in their construction, we need not be surprised that the modern inhabitants of the country treat them as quarries. Whenever it could be found, the Egyptians selected their stone for building from the hardest layers of stone in the mountains, taking care in cutting their blocks to make allowance for waste in 441