of wheat by means of a cord; a third notes down the result
of their work.

*** The great inscription of Beni-Hasan tells us of the
stelae which bounded the principality of the Gazelle on the
North and South, and of those in the plain which marked the
northern boundary of the nome of the Jackal; we also possess
three other stelo which were used by Amenothes IV. to
indicate the extreme limits of his new city of Khutniaton.
In addition to the above stele, we also know of two others
belonging to the XIIth dynasty which marked the boundaries
of a private estate, and which are reproduced, one on plate
106, the other in the text of _Monuments divers_, p. 30;
also the stele of Buhani under Thutmosis IV.

[Illustration: 125.jpg a boundary stele]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph given by Mariette,
Monuments divers, pl. 47 a. The stele marked the boundary of
the estate given to a priest of the Theban Amon by Pharaoh
Thutmosis IV. of the XVIIIth dynasty. The original is now in
the Museum at Gizeh.

Once set up, the stele received a name which gave it, as it were, a
living and independent personality. It sometimes recorded the nature
of the soil, its situation, or some characteristic which made it
remarkable--the "Lake of the South," the "Eastern Meadow," the "Green
Island," the "Fisher's Pool," the "Willow Plot," the "Vineyard," the
"Vine Arbour," the "Sycamore;" sometimes also it bore the name of
the first master or the Pharaoh under whom it had been erected--the
"Nurse-Phtahhotpu," the "Verdure-Kheops," the "Meadow-Didifri," the
"Abundance-Sahuri," "Khafri-Great-among-the Doubles." Once given, the
name clung to it for centuries, and neither sales, nor redistributions,
nor revolutions, nor changes of dynasty, could cause it to be forgotten.
The officers of the survey inscribed it in their books, together with
the name of the proprietor, those of the owners of adjoining lands,
and the area and nature of the ground. They noted down, to within a
few cubits, the extent of the sand, marshland, pools, canals, groups
of palms, gardens or orchards, vineyards and cornfields,* which it
contained.

* See in the great inscription of Beni-Hasan the passage in
which are enumerated at full length, in a legal document,
the constituent parts of the principality of the Gazelle,
"its watercourses, its fields, its trees, its sand