AMARA greatly interested in agriculture, and he was then engaged in making experiments to find out whether cotton could be grown in sufficiently large quantities to make the undertaking commercially profitable. He had made several wells in his fields, and the crops we saw were in as thriving a condition as any one could, desire, it seemed to me. The village is large, and straggles along the river bank for a considerable distance, and everywhere are the palm trees which yield in large quantities the fine dates for which the district is so famous. About a mile and a half from the village are the ruins of the temple of Amara, which have been so often mentioned by travellers. The temple was a rectangular building about 55 feet long and 31 feet wide, and contained eight pillars ; six of these are still standing, but their capitals are wanting. The temple is entered by a gateway about 20 feet wide, and on each side of it are the remains of a pillar, about 3 feet g inches in diameter. The foundations of the temple are made of crude brick ; the building is oriented due east. On the pillars inside are sculptured reliefs in which a queen and her consort are seen making offerings to the gods of the South and North Niles, to Khnemu and to other deities, and a column of hieroglyphics on each pillar sets forth the name and titles of the builder. Two names are enclosed within cartouches, one being that of a woman, and the other that of a man ; they appear to be native Meroitic names.

Lepsius "recognized directly on the columns the fat Queen of Naga and Meroe, with her husband," and there is no doubt that the temple of Amara belongs to the period of the dynasty of the great queens of Meroe. The name of the queen which is found on the pillars of Amara certainly appears at Nagaa, but there the name of the prince or king is different from that at Amara. The style and workmanship of the reliefs on the pillars suggest that the building is pre-Christian, and the fact that the little space over each group of figures has been left unfilled with hieroglyphics confirms the view that the temple was built at a time when masons no longer knew how to cut Egyptian inscriptions, or, if they did, that there was no man attached to the works who was sufficiently acquainted with hieroglyphics to write out the drafts of the inscriptions for them to copy. The fact that a temple was built on the plain of Amara proves that a city of con-467