the two cataracts, and in the districts extending from Derr to Dakkeh.  Elephantine already possessed an entrenched camp which commanded the rapids and the land route from Syene to Philo.  Usirtasen III. restored its great wall; he also cleared and widened the passage to Seriel, as did Papi I. to such good effect that easy and rapid communication between Thebes and the new towns was at all times practicable.  Some little distance from Phihe he established a station for boats, and an emporium which he called Hiru Khakeri—­“the Ways of Khakeri”—­after his own throne name—­Khakeri.*

* The widening of the passage was effected in the VIIIth year of his reign, the same year in which he established the Egyptian frontier at Semneh.  The other constructions are mentioned, but not very clearly, in a stele of the same year which came from Elephantine, and is now in the British Museum.  The votive tablet, engraved in honour of Anukit at Sehel, in which the king boasts of having made for the goddess “the excellent channel [called] ’the Ways of Khakeuri,’” probably refers to this widening and deepening of the passage in the VIIIth year.

Its exact site is unknown, but it appears to have completed on the south side the system of walls and redoubts which protected the cataract provinces against either surprise or regular attacks of the barbarians.  Although of no appreciable use for the purposes of general security, the fortifications of Middle Nubia were of great importance in the eyes of the Pharaohs.  They commanded the desert roads leading to the Eed Sea, and to Berber and Gebel Barkel on the Upper Nile.  The most important fort occupied the site of the present village of Kuban, opposite Dakkeh, and commanded the entrance to the Wady Olaki, which leads to the richest gold deposits known to Ancient Egypt.  The valleys which furrow the mountains of Etbai, the Wady Shauanib, the Waddy Umm Teyur, Gebel Iswud, Gebel Umm Kabriteh, all have gold deposits of their own.  The gold is found in nuggets and in pockets in white quartz, mixed with iron oxides and titanium, for which the ancients had no use.  The method of mining practised from immemorial antiquity by the Uauaiu of the neighbourhood was of the simplest, and traces of the workings may be seen all over the sides of the ravines.  Tunnels followed the direction of the lodes to a depth of fifty-five to sixty-five yards; the masses of quartz procured from them were broken up in granite mortars, pounded small and afterwards reduced to a powder in querns, similar to those used for crushing grain; the residue was sifted on stone tables, and the finely ground parts afterwards washed in bowls of sycamore wood, until the gold dust had settled to the bottom.*