THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN his men had finished their labours on it, the canal was 250 feet 4 inches long, 34 feet 7 inches wide, and 25 feet 10 inches deep ; from inscriptions on a rock on the Island of Sahal we learn that this canal was used for the transport of war-boats in the reign of Thothmes I., and that Thothmes III., in the fiftieth year of his reign, had it cleared out, and passed a law to the effect that the boatmen of the Cataract were, in future, to clear it out every year.

Usertsen III., having made a way for his boats and passed them through the Cataract, proceeded to sail up the Nile to the Second Cataract. This took place in the eighth year of his reign. He traversed the difficult country between Haifa and Sarras, and then occupied the Island of Gazlrat al-Malik, a few miles to the north of Semna. On the highest point of the hill on this Island, probably near the site of the remains of the temple of the XVII Ith Dynasty whfch now stands there, he built a huge fort, and erected presumably a small temple at its north-east corner. In the sanctuary was a seated statue of the god Osiris, and near it another of himself. When this temple was wrecked during the period which followed that of the Xllth Dynasty, the heads were knocked off both statues, and the statues were thrown down the steep face of the hill, at the foot of which they were found by Mr.

J. W. Crowfoot when we were working on the Island in January, 1905. Close by, we may be sure in some prominent place, Usertsen set up a stele on which were set forth in large well-cut hieroglyphics an account of his conquest of the country, and a very unfavourable opinion of the mental and physical characteristics of the natives. We found this stele lying near the top of the precipitous side of the hill, whither it had been dragged with the view of throwing it down into the river. It is dated in the sixteenth year of his reign, and the text on it is a duplicate of that found on the stele which he set up in the same year at Kumma, the companion fort to Semna.

Passing up to Semna, a few miles further to the south, Usertsen III. came to the most important of all the "gates" of the Second Cataract. On each side of this " gate " are masses of rock which stand at a considerable height above the river, and on the highest points of these he built forts. Strategically the whole site is of the first importance, for it commands a good view of the 540