definite orientation, though in each chamber there was a tendency for all
the heads to lie in the same direction. The vast majority of mummies, of
which there must be many thousands, seem to be those of dogs, but among
some twenty which we removed for biological examination, two were those
of birds of some kind. This necropolis of dogs will help to solve an
interesting question which is still discussed. This is the burial place of the
animal which is the emblem of the god \Jf Upuatu or Apuatu, one
of the divinities of Abydos, the god of the early kings, who because he has
the same emblem as Anubis is often taken to be identical with him. But as
Benotjf has already pointed out, he must be considered as one of the forms
of Osiris. "Which is the animal of Apuatu and Anubis ? Is it a dog, a jackal,
a wolf, or a fox ? Probably one as well as the other. The Egyptians were
not particular in their distinctions of species.
A shoot of clean sand which we found at the S.W. end of the central
corridor made it evident that there was a second entrance at that point,
and, in fact, on digging down from above we found a long narrow pit through
the sand and the rock below it just large enough to hold the brick-lined
staircase seen in PL III. fig. 7.
A number of Roman lamps and two pieces of Roman pottery found
inside the corridor near its north-east entrance prove that the place was
in use during the Eoman period.* The walls of all the chambers were
provided witli frequent niches whose tops are still black with the smoke
from such lamps.
T. Eric Peet.
B.—THE GRAECO-ROMAN BRANCH.
Excavations at Atfieh.
I arrived in Egypt to undertake my work for the Fund at the beginning
of the New Year. Visits to the dealers in Cairo and Giza sufficed to prove
that good and early papyri are still issuing from the inexhaustible sites of
the Eayum ('Umin el Baraqat, Batn el Harit, and Kafr el Girza); but
prices ruled sufficiently high to deter me from making any immediate
* Mr. Walters of the British Museum has kindly dated the lamps for us. One
type is first century b.c. and another fourth century a.d.