I HER-KHUF IN THE SUDAN Arerthet, Amam, and Uauat cannot be given accurately in the present state of our knowledge, but it is pretty certain that none of them was situated to the north of Khartum.' According to some, Amam was the name given to the desert which lay east and south of Aswan, and extended so far as the shore of the Red Sea ; according to others, Amam was the country on the right or east bank of the Nile, the most southerly borders of which included the northern parts of the region round about the Blue Nile. The first mission of Her-khuf occupied seven months, and the second eight months, and from these facts it is certain that he must have gone so far as the modern province of Dtir Fur on the White Nile, or the region of Sennaar on the Blue Nile, for the deserts on the left bank of the Nile between Aswan and Khartum cannot have produced many of the Sudan products which he and his father brought to Egypt. These deserts could not have supported the herds of elephants from which he obtained his ivory, and there is no proof that either incense or ebony trees grew there. Under the word " incense " we are probably to include the kind of gum which the Arabs call libdn, and which is even now gathered in the sam.e way as gum arable by the natives who live in the deserts between Kordofan and the Shilluk country. It was, and still is, in great demand over all north-east Africa, and in Burckhardt's day it was " considered as the frankincense, and called Incenso " [Travels, p. 294). In his narrative of his third mission Her-khuf tells us that he went to Amam by way of Uliat," from which statement it may be inferred that he passed through some Oasis. Now on leaving Aswan he would probably travel by the road which leads directly to the Oasis of Kurkur, and thence to the Oasis of Selima ; the latter Oasis has been the halting-place of caravans journeying from Egypt to Kordofan and Dar Fur, or from Egypt to the regions on the Blue Nile, from time immemorial, and it is this to which Her-khuf probably refers. There is also another point in his narrative to be noticed. He tells us that the king of Amam sent a company of soldiers with ' F. W. von Bissing, Geschichte Aegyptens itn Umriss, Berlin, 1904 ; and see my History of Egypt, \o\. ii., p. loi.

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