monuments. There is a plaster cast of this stone in the British Museum.
Mr Griffith finds that the early monuments of Tanis are suggestive of having been brought by Rameses II. to adorn his new capital. The truth about the age of Tanis can only be ascertained when deep excavations are made in the mound itself, or a sufficient examination of the extensive cemeteries has been carried out. But while the explorer is waiting, the cemeteries are in danger of being worked out by the Arabs, and the tombs are being destroyed for the sake of amulets to sell to dealers and travellers.
Tell Nebesheh—About eight miles S.E. of Tanis (modern San) is the low mound of Tell Nebesheh, originally known as Tell Farun—i.e., the mound of Pharaoh, because of the great monolith shrine called Ras Farun, or Pharaoh's Head. Here Mr Petrie found, among other things, the remains of a temple, the altar of which contained important inscriptions. They were engraved by a certain "chief of the chancellors and royal seal bearer," whose name and further titles are effaced. This person was one of a series of officials whose titles were singularly parallel to the English Lord High Chancellor and Lord Privy Seal. The altar appears to belong to the Hyksos period, and it is suggested by Mr Petrie that these officials—who were so powerful that one of them actually appropriated for his inscriptions the royal monuments in a public temple—were native Egyptians, the Hyksos conquerors being only a military horde, without much civil organization, or organizing capacity, and taking over as they found it the native bureaucracy, who managed all the details of the needful administration of the country. So there appears to have been a series of viziers, men who acted for the king over the treasury and taxes, and over the royal decrees and public documents, bearing the king's seal.
After some further discussion of the position and im-
