THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN On the Island of Elephantine he built a temple in honour of Khnemu, the great god of the First Cataract. This was in a good state of preservation when the members of the French Expedition visited the island in the early years of the nineteenth century, but it was pulled down by the local ma'amur, or governor, of Aswan about the year 1821, who used the blocks of stone to build a palace for Muhammad All. In the year 1886 the natives of Aswan were found breaking up granite slabs bearing the cartouches of Thothmes III., but some of them were saved from destruction, and two or three lay for years near the station buildings of the Aswan-Shellal Railway. In the First Cataract itself Thothmes III. ordered the old canal, which appears to have existed in the Vlth Dynasty, to be cleared out, and his boat passed through it on the twenty-second day of the ninth month of the fiftieth year of his reign. The inscription which records this fact says that His Majesty " sailed on it, his heart being glad, he slaughtered his enemies," ' but there is no statement that he went into the Sudan, and it seems tolerably certain that the king only opened the canal by sailing down it when it was ready for use. It may be noted that the word used for " sailed " is khet, which means " to sail down " the river, as opposed to /;i?«/, which means to sail up the river. On the Island of Bigga slabs inscribed with the cartouches of Thothmes III. were found by Wilkinson, and at Kalabsha the Emperor Augustus drew some of the stones for his temple from an old temple-fortress built by Thothmes III. At Dakka and Kubban Thothmes III. founded forts and temples in connection with the gold mines in the Wadi 'Ulaki, and he appears to have chosen for these the sites which the kings of the Xllth Dynasty had selected for their temples. Another small temple stood a few miles to the south of Dakka, near Kurta, and its foundation dates clearly from his reign.

At 'Amada, to the south of Korosko, he built a temple to Rii-Herukhuti, probably on the site of a temple of the Xllth Dynasty. On a relief is sculptured a figure of the god, who is cs JiL <=> I " " Jl 1 > s= lU III ' Recucil, torn, xiii., p. 203.

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