THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN symbols of sovereignty and dominion. This stele, a photographic illustration of which is annexed, is dated in the sixteenth year of the king's reign, and the text sets forth the fact that he conquered the country and extended the boundary of Egypt on the south more than any of his fathers, in language which must have cut to the quick any native who understood its contents. As a rendering of the inscription will be given in the section of this book dealing with the invasion and conquest of the SMn by Usertsen III., nothing further need be said about it here. The stele had, it seems, once stood in or near the temple, and the position in which we found it suggests that it had been dragged from its place by the people who wrecked the temple, and who wished to cast it down the precipitous east face of the hill into the river which runs at its foot. They seem to have found the task too difficult, and to have abandoned it.

Great force must have been employed in removing the stele, for the left hand bottom corner was broken away ; we searched carefully for the missing piece, but could not find it. Whilst I was copying the inscription the Inspector examined the east face of the hill to see if there were any other monuments lying on it, and when he came to the mass of rocks and GRANITE STATUE OF PRINCE boulders ucar the river he found a black TCHA-AB FOUND ON THE granitc headless statue of Usertsen III., ISLAND OF GAZIRAT AL-, , ir.i-i j i. C r\ • y. about 2>h feet high, and a statue of Osins,.

of about the same height. It seems clear that these had been dragged from their places in the temple, and thrown into the river by those who overthrew the stele and wished to treat it in the same manner. Having carefully gone over the site of the old fortress, and linding no other remains similar to those described above, we 492 1