THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN the pygmies lived, and that he brought one of these interesting people back with him, and sent it to the king much in the same way that a soldier or high official in modern times sends a giraffe or some other rare beast to a European sovereign. Ba-ur-tet was probably not the first Egyptian official to present a pygmy to his sovereign, for dwarfs of the kind were well known in Egypt in the 1st Dynasty ; in the small chambers close to the tomb of Semempses the skeletons of two dwarfs were found, and dwarfs are sometimes depicted on stelae of the Archaic Period. All such facts go to prove that the relations which existed between Egypt and the Sudan under the first five dynasties were close, and that a considerable amount of trading was done between the two countries.

Under the Vlth Dynasty we find Egypt drawing levies of soldiers from the Sudan to fight in her wars, and on this point we obtain some valuable information from the biographical inscription of Una. This officer was born in the reign of Teta, the first king of the Vlth Dynasty, and when quite young he was attached to the service of the court. We hear nothing of him under Teta's successor, but when Meri-Ra Pepi I. came to the throne, he gave Una the rank of svier, and made him an inspector of the priests of the pyramids of his family. Pepi I. next made him a judge, and Unji acted with such discretion and skill in certain legal matters which were then being tried, that he gave the king great satisfaction, and he was allowed to fetch from the quarries at Tura the stone necessary for a sarcophagus, &c. Una was next promoted to the rank of smer uat, and was made governor of the Red Sea littoral, and given great power over the southern parts of the kingdom. He was so much trusted by his master that he was commissioned by him to investigate some dispute which the king had with his queen Amtes, and he performed his work in a highly satisfactory manner. If we may believe his own statement, no servant had ever before been so greatly trusted by his lord as he, " but," he says naively, " I was good, and I was well pleasing " unto His Majesty, and I filled (or satisfied) the heart of His " Majesty." As the result of some disturbance among the tribes of the Eastern desert, i.e., the inhabitants of the country between the Nile and the Red Sea, Pepi I. determined to wage war against 516