accessible by means of steps scarcely large enough for one man at a time.  The walls of these cuttings are covered with parallel striae, sometimes horizontal, sometimes slanting to the left, and sometimes to the right, so forming lines of serried chevrons framed, as it were, between grooves an inch, or an inch and a half, in width, by nine or ten feet in length.  These are the scars left upon the surface by the tools of the ancient workmen, and they show the method employed in detaching the blocks.  The size was outlined in red ink, and this outline sometimes indicated the form which the stone was to take in the projected building.  The members of the French Commission, when they visited the quarries of Gebel Abufeydeh, copied the diagrams and squared designs of several capitals, one being of the campaniform pattern, and others prepared for the Hathor-head pattern (fig. 50).[10] The outline made, the vertical faces of the block were divided by means of a long iron chisel, which was driven in perpendicularly or obliquely by heavy blows of the mallet.  In order to detach the horizontal faces, they made use of wooden or bronze wedges, inserted the way of the natural strata of the stone.  Very frequently the stone was roughly blocked out before being actually extracted from the bed.  Thus at Syene (Asuan) we see a couchant obelisk of granite, the under side of which is one with the rock itself; and at Tehneh there are drums of columns but half disengaged.  The transport of quarried stone was effected in various ways.  At Syene, at Silsilis, at Gebel Sheikh Herideh, and at Gebel Abufeydeh, the quarries are literally washed by the waters of the Nile, so that the stone was lowered at once into the barges.  At Kasr es Said,[11] at Turah, and other localities situate at some distance from the river, canals dug expressly for the purpose conveyed the transport boats to the foot of the cliffs.  When water transit was out of the question, the stone was placed on sledges drawn by oxen (fig. 51), or dragged to its destination by gangs of labourers, and by the help of rollers.

[Illustration:  Fig. 51.—­Bas-relief from one of the stelae of Ahmes, at Turrah, Eighteenth Dynasty.]

[4] The bas-relief sculpture from which the illustration, fig. 42, is taken
    (outer wall of Hypostyle Hall, Karnak, north end) represents Seti I.
    returning in triumph from one of his Syrian campaigns.  He is met at
    Zaru by the great officers of his court, who bring bouquets of lotus-
    blossoms in their hands.  Pithom and other frontier forts are depicted
    in this tableau, and Pithom is apparently not very far from Zaru. 
    Zaru, Zalu, is the Selle of the Roman Itineraries.—­A.B.E.

[5] See The Store City of Pithom and the Route of the Exodus, by Ed.
    Naville, with 13 Plates and 2 Maps; published by the Egypt Exploration
    Fund.  First edition 1885, second edition 1885.  Truebner & Co., London. 
    —­A.B.E.