51�Թ�

“He ended up collecting a bunch of Egyptian relics instead,” Craig says, adding that a third cat mummy in the museum collections was certainly obtained by Fletcher around 1890 at Speos Artemidos, a temple site along the Nile River and one of the prime locations for ancient cat mummies.

The mummies of the sacred cats are to be met with in the cliffs of Gebel Abu Foda, at Thebes, and above all at Beni Hassan, where a little to the south of the Speos Artemidos such quantities of them were recently discovered as to suggest that a commercial profit might be made out of their bones.

Speos, spē′os, n. a grotto-temple or tomb.

The rock-cut shrine at Speos Artemidos, and the temple of Serabīt in Sinai are the only other large monuments of this queen yet remaining.

South of the Fayūm on the western border of the desert are the tombs of Deshāsha, Meir and Assiūt, and on the east bank those of Beni Hasan, the rock-cut temple of Speos Artemidos, the tombs of El Bersha and Sheikh Said, the tombs and stelae of El Amarna with the alabaster quarries of Hanub in the desert behind them, and the tombs of Deir el Gebrāwi.