The orientation of these graves was invariable.
They lay with the long axis parallel to the
direction of the Nile at this point of its course.
For purposes of description this may be referred
to as local north and south, though the actual
compass direction is as nearly as possible
N.N.W.-S.S.E. The bodies almost all lay on the
left side, and the head was usually towards the
south, as at El 'Amrah and Naqada, though in a
few cases it lay towards the north. Each body
was tightly contracted, the hands being, except
in rare cases, in front of the face, and the legs
being doubled at the knees and bent upwards
as far as they would go. Pl. I., fig. 4 shows
the typical position, while Pl. I., fig. 3 shows
the loosest contraction observed in these tombs.
Here the legs are doubled up, but are not drawn
up much beyond a position at right-angles with
the body. In all other cases the contraction
was much tighter, and contrasted strongly with
that used in the tombs of Type II., where the
thighs were never drawn up so as to make an
angle of less than a right angle with the spine,
and the hands were rarely up to the face (Pl. I.,
fig. 6 ).

There was one possible case of the cutting up
of the body before burial. This was E 120,
where the skeleton lay in two separate halves,
each of which was complete and intact in itself.
The upper part, including the head, arms, and
the greater part of the spine, lay in the usual
position with head to the south in the west part
of the grave. The lower part, including the last
six vertebrae, the pelvis and the legs, lay in the
east half of the grave in the position in which
they would be in a man squatting on his heels
and at the same time bending the upper part of
his body forward. This will be made clear by a
reference to. Pl. I., fig. 7.

The body was in many cases, especially in the
simpler and smaller graves, wrapped up in a
skin before burial. This was generally covered
by a mat. The mats were of two types. One
kind was made by weaving together small fine
rushes (compare MacIver's illustrations from El
'Amrah ¹ ), and the other consisted of the mid-
ribs of the palm-leaf beaten to a fibrous pulp,
laid side by side and fastened with cross-pieces
of coarse string. The mat occasionally covered
the body alone, and was folded round it: in
other cases it was merely spread over the whole
deposit, body and vases alike. When the mat
was too large for the grave its ends were rolled
up. In the more elaborate graves mats were
unusual.

None of the graves yielded any signs of
roofing or of superstructure.

The objects found in the graves are all of well-
established types, and cannot be said to add
much to our knowledge of this class of tomb.
The pottery was rather monotonous, a few forms
recurring time after time. It was of five types,
red-polished, black-topped, unpolished buff-ware
with designs in red paint, wavy-handled, and
unpolished unornamented ware. These types
are all well known to us from the cemeteries of

-13-