[Illustration:  407.jpg accounts on pottery, B.C. 4600]

A small fragment of pottery originally forming the base of a brown earthenware dish had inscribed upon it some accounts, and is the oldest of such business records yet found in Egypt.  The exact import of the figures is not yet entirely intelligible, but they seem to refer to quantities of things rather than to individuals, as the numbers, although mostly twenty, are sometimes one hundred and two hundred.  This interesting fragment was found at the tomb of Zet, and thus establishes the use of arithmetic before 4600 B.C.

The expedition supported by Mrs. Hearst, in the name of the University of California, has done some useful work at El-Ahaiwah, opposite Menshiyeh.  The main cemetery at this place is an archaic one, containing about a thousand graves or more, of which about seven hundred had already been plundered.  Between these plundered graves, about 250 were found untouched in modern times.  The graves yielded a good collection of archaic pottery, pearl and ivory bracelets, hairpins, carnelian, garnet, gold, blue glaze and other beads, etc.

About this cemetery was a cemetery of the late New Empire, containing a number of vaulted tombs built of unburned brick.  These yielded a large number of necklaces, and several fine pieces of faience and ivory, and other objects.  A second cemetery, farther north, contained a few late archaic graves and about fifteen large tombs, usually with one main chamber and two small chambers at each end.  These tombs were of two types (1) roofed over with wood, without a stairway, (2) roofed over with a corbelled vault and entered from the west by a stairway.  The burials in these tombs are in the archaic position, head to south.  Dissected, or secondary, burials occur in these cemeteries, but only rarely.  Only one indisputable case was found, as shown in the illustration.

[Illustration:  408.jpg UNIQUE INSTANCE OF A DISSECTED BURIAL]

It would require several volumes adequately to deal with the results of the excavations of the present century.  Further discoveries, all throwing new light upon the life of ancient Egypt, are being made each season, and the number of enthusiastic workers gathered from every nation constantly increases.  Notwithstanding the heroic and splendid work of past investigators, for many years to come the valley of the Nile promises to yield important results, not only in actual field work, but also in the close study and better classification of the thousands of objects that are continually being brought to light.

Six thousand years of history have been unrolled; tomb and tablet, shard and papyrus have told their story, and the vista stretches back to the dawn of human history in that inexhaustible valley watered by the perennial overflow of the grandest river in the world.  But there is much still to be accomplished by the enthusiastic spirit, the keen and selective mind, in the study of this ancient land, the cradle and the grave of nations.