And, as a matter of fact, fortune did change.  When he began to despair, “the desert burned like summer, the mountain was on fire, and the vein exhausted; one morning the overseer who was there questioned the miners, the skilled workers who were used to the mine, and they said:  ’There is turquoise for eternity in the mountain.’  At that very moment the vein appeared.”  And, indeed, the wealth of the deposit which he found so completely indemnified Haroeris for his first disappointments, that in the month Pachons, three months after the opening of these workings, he had finished his task and prepared to leave the country, carrying his spoils with him.  From time to time Pharaoh sent convoys of cattle and provisions—­corn, sixteen oxen, thirty geese, fresh vegetables, live poultry—­to his vassals at the mines.

[Illustration:  335.jpg THE RUINS OF THE TEMPLE OF HATHOR]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph in the Ordnance Survey,
     Photo-graphs, vol. iii. pl. 8.

The mining population increased so fast that two chapels were built, dedicated to Hathor, and served by volunteer priests.  One of these chapels, presumably the oldest, consists of a single rock-cut chamber, upheld by one large square pillar, walls and pillar having been covered with finely sculptured scenes and inscriptions which are now almost effaced.  The second chapel included a beautifully proportioned rectangular court, once entered by a portico supported on pillars with Hathor-head capitals, and beyond the court a narrow building divided into many small irregular chambers.  The edifice was altered and rebuilt, and half destroyed; it is now nothing by a confused heap of ruins, of which the original plan cannot be traced.  Votive stehe of all shapes and sizes, in granite, sandstone, or limestone, were erected here and there at random in the two chambers and in the courts between the columns, and flush with the walls.  Some are still in situ, others lie scattered in the midst of the ruins.  Towards the middle of the reign of Amenemhait III., the industrial demand for turquoise and for copper ore became so great that the mines of Sarbut-el-Khadim could no longer meet it, and those in the Wady Maghara were re-opened.  The workings of both sets of mines were carried on with unabated vigour under Amenemhaifc IV., and were still in full activity when the XIIIth dynasty succeeded the XIIth on the Egyptian throne.  Tranquillity prevailed in the recesses of the mountains of Sinai as well as in the valley of the Nile, and a small garrison sufficed to keep watch over the Bedouin of the neighbourhood.  Sometimes the latter ventured to attack the miners, and then fled in haste, carrying off their meagre booty; but they were vigorously pursued under the command of one of the officers on the spot, and generally caught and compelled to disgorge their plunder before they had reached the shelter of their “douars.”  The old Memphite kings prided themselves on these armed pursuits as though they were real victories, and had them recorded in triumphal bas-reliefs; but under the XIIth dynasty they were treated as unimportant frontier incidents, almost beneath the notice of the Pharaoh, and the glory of them—­such as it was—­he left to his captains then in command of those districts.