i82 THE PROGRESS THROUGH EGYPT ii. 2. xxxix.

XXXIX One point in this treaty is of particular interest : the district

lying immediately south of Aswan was recognized as a perquisite of

the Sultan of Egypt. This was no new idea. King Zoser of the third

dynasty conveyed it to the God Khnum^, and about seventeen hun-

dred years later Rameses HI confirmed the gift for all time and made

the inhabitants and the land itself and its produce free from taxation by the crown : its wealth was to be entirely for the service of the god^. The extent of this reserved area was from Aswan to Takompso, which latter was at least as far south as Muharraka, the classical Hierasycominos ; and in the Ptolemaic and Roman periods it was known as the Dodekaschoinos ("the field of twelve Schoinoi"), and

considered a dependency of Egypt ^. There is no trace there of

typically Meroitic or Ethiopian settlements*.

Its people were largely Egyptianized and it is evident that it was

traditionally regarded as an annex of Egypt rather than an integral

portion of the dominions of the king of Dongola. It is noticeable,

too, that it formed, roughly speaking, " the boundary of the population

that wrote in Meroitic" and corresponded approximately to the Dar Kanuz of the present^.

When 'Abdulla ibn Sa'ad invaded the Sudan in 651-2 and formu-

lated terms of peace nothing was said about this region to differentiate

it from the rest of Nubia, but as the Arabs were new-comers and

still unaware of the traditional history of the countries they were

subduing, this is only natural.

In the course of years they evidently learnt more, and we see the

fruits of their knowledge in the attitude adopted in 831 after the Bega war : the only territory in Egypt or Nubia which was absolutely

prohibited to the Bega was that lying between el Kasr (near Aswan) and el Kubban (near Muharraka), i.e. the old Dodekaschoinos.

Now, in 1276 A.D., we have Baybars practically usurping that which had once been the right of the great god Khnum. It is not of

course suggested that he was aware of the full import of his action from a historical point of view ; but merely that he knew a particular

region to be traditionally regarded as a special reserve attached by

certain ties to Egypt and seized the opportunity to monopolize it for

his own benefit.

^ Breasted, A. R. i, 24.

^ Ibid. IV, 146-150.

* Ibid. loc. cit., and Milne, p. 23, and Abu Salih, p. 260.

* Other than the X-group (Nobadae?). Arch. Surv. Nubia Bull. 7, 191 1.

* See Griffith, Nubian Texts..., p. 58. See also Cailliaud, i, 394, where Kubban (which is close to Muharraka) is mentioned in 1821 as the southern boundary of the Mahass.