Egyptians first attacked, was
separated from the coast by a narrow plain and a single range of hills:
the produce of the mines could be thence transported to the sea in a
few hours without difficulty. Pharaoh's labourers called this region the
district of Baifc, the mine _par excellence_, or of Bebit, the country
of grottoes, from the numerous tunnels which their predecessors had made
there: the name Wady Maghara, Valley of the Cavern, by which the site
is now designated, is simply an Arabic translation of the old Egyptian
word.

The Monitu did not accept this usurpation of their rights without a
struggle, and the Egyptians who came to work among them had either to
purchase their forbearance by a tribute, or to hold themselves always in
readiness to repulse the assaults of the Monitu by force of arms. Zosiri
had already taken steps to ensure the safety of the turquoise-seekers
at their work; Snofrui was not, therefore, the first Pharaoh who passed
that way, but none of his predecessors had left so many traces of his
presence as he did in this out-of-the-way corner of the empire. There
may still be seen, on the north-west slope of the Wady Maghara, the
bas-relief which one of his lieutenants engraved there in memory of a
victory gained over the Monitu. A Bedouin sheikh fallen on his knees
prays for mercy with suppliant gesture, but Pharaoh has already seized
him by his long hair, and brandishes above his head a white stone mace
to fell him with a single blow.

[Illustration: 163.jpg THE MINING WORKS OF WADY MAGHARA]

Plan made by Thuillier, from the sketch by Brugscii,
_Wanderung nach den Tiirhis Minen_, p. 70.

The workmen, partly recruited from the country itself, partly despatched
from the banks of the Nile, dwelt in an entrenched camp upon an isolated
peak at the confluence of Wady Genneh and Wady Maghara. A zigzag pathway
on its smoothest slope ends, about seventeen feet below the summit, at
the extremity of a small and slightly inclined tableland, upon which are
found the ruins of a large village; this is the High Castle--Hait-Qait
of the ancient inscriptions. Two hundred habitations can still be made
out here, some round, some rectangular, constructed of sandstone blocks
without mortar, and not larger than the huts of the fellahin: in former
times a flat roof of wicker-work and puddled clay extended over each.
The entrance was not so much a door as a narrow opening, through which
a fat man would fin