The temples were crowded together in a small square enclosure, concentric with the walls of the enceinte, and the principal sanctuary was dedicated to Nekhabit, the vulture goddess, who gave her name to the city.* This enclosure formed a kind of citadel, where the garrison could hold out when the outer part had fallen into the enemy’s hands.  The times were troublous; the open country was repeatedly wasted by war, and the peasantry had more than once to seek shelter behind the protecting ramparts of the town, leaving their lands to lie fallow.

* A part of the latter temple, that which had been rebuilt in the Saite epoch, was still standing at the beginning of the XIXth century, with columns bearing the cartouches of Hakori; it was destroyed about the year 1825, and Champollion found only the foundations of the walls.

[Illustration:  119.jpg THE RUINS OF THE PYRAMID OF QULAH, NEAR MOHAMMERIEH]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-
     Bey.

Famine constantly resulted from these disturbances, and it taxed all the powers of the ruling prince to provide at such times for his people.  A chief of the Commissariat, Bebi by name, who lived about this period, gives us a lengthy account of the number of loaves, oxen, goats, and pigs, which he allowed to all the inhabitants both great and little, down even to the quantity of oil and incense, which he had taken care to store up for them:  his prudence was always justified by the issue, for “during the many years in which the famine recurred, he distributed grain in the city to all those who hungered.”

Babai, the first of the lords of El-Kab whose name has come down to us, was a captain in the service of Saqnunri Tiuaqni.* His son Ahmosi, having approached the end of his career, cut a tomb for himself in the hill which overlooks the northern side of the town.  He relates on the walls of his sepulchre, for the benefit of posterity, the most praiseworthy actions of his long life.  He had scarcely emerged from childhood when he was called upon to act for his father, and before his marriage he was appointed to the command of the barque The Calf. From thence he was promoted to the ship The North, and on account of his activity he was chosen to escort his namesake the king on foot, whenever he drove in his chariot.  He repaired to his post at the moment when the decisive war against the Hyksos broke out.

* There are still some doubts as to the descent of this Ahmosi.  Some authorities hold that Babai was the name of his father and Abina that of his grandfather; others think that Babai was his father and Abina his mother; others, again, make out Babai and Abina to be variants of the same name, probably a Semitic one, borne by the father of Ahmosi; the majority of modern Egyptologists (including myself) regard this last hypothesis as being the most probable one.

The tradition current in the time of the Ptolemies