The stealing of fragments broken out of the walls of "show" monuments is almost the only form of robbery which will receive general condemnation. That this vandalism is also distasteful to the natives themselves is shown by the fact that several better-class Egyptians living in the neighbourhood of Thebes subscribed, at my invitation, the sum of L50 for the protection of certain beautiful tombs. When they were shown the works undertaken with their money, they expressed themselves as being "pleased with the delicate inscriptions in the tombs, but very awfully angry at the damage which the devils of ignorant people had made." A native of moderate intelligence can quite appreciate the argument that whereas the continuous warfare between the agents of the Department of Antiquities and the illegal excavators of small graves is what might be called an honourable game, the smashing of public monuments cannot be called fair-play from whatever point of view the matter is approached. Often revenge or spite is the cause of this damage. It is sometimes necessary to act with severity to the peasants who infringe the rules of the Department, but a serious danger lies in such action, for it is the nature of the Thebans to revenge themselves not on the official directly but on the monuments which he is known to love. Two years ago a native illegally built himself a house on Government ground, and I was obliged to go through the formality of pulling it down, which I did by obliging him to remove a few layers of brickwork around the walls. A short time afterwards a famous tomb was broken into and a part of the paintings destroyed; and there was enough evidence to show that the owner of this house was the culprit, though unfortunately he could not be convicted. One man actually had the audacity to warn me that any severity on my part would be met by destruction of monuments. Under these circumstances an official finds himself in a dilemma. If he maintains the dignity and prestige of his Department by punishing any offences against it, he endangers the very objects for the care of which he is responsible; and it is hard to say whether under a lax or a severe administration the more damage would be done.



[Photo by E. Bird.

The produce of these various forms of robbery is easily disposed of. When once the antiquities have passed into the hands of the dealers there is little chance of further trouble. The dealer can always say that he came into possession of an object years ago, before the antiquity laws were made, and it is almost impossible to prove that he did not. You may have the body of a statue and he the head: he can always damage the line of the breakage, and say that the head does not belong to that statue, or, if the connection is too obvious, he can say that he found the head while excavating twenty years ago on the site where now you have found the body. Nor is it desirable to bring an action against the man in a case of this kind, for it might go against the official. Dealing in antiquities is regarded as a perfectly honourable business. The official, crawling about the desert on his stomach in the bitter cold of a winter's night in order to hold up a convoy of stolen antiquities, may use hard language in regard to the trade, but he cannot say that it is pernicious as long as it is confined to minor objects. How many objects of value to science would be destroyed by their finders if there was no market to take them to! One of the Theban dealers leads so holy a life that he will assuredly be regarded as a saint by future generations.

The sale of small antiquities to tourists on the public roads is prohibited, except at certain places, but of course it can be done with impunity by the exercise of a little care. Men and boys and even little girls as they pass will stare at you with studying eyes, and if you seem to be a likely purchaser, they will draw from the folds of their garments some little object which they will offer for sale. Along the road in the glory of the setting sun there will come as fine a young man as you will see on a day's march. Surely he is bent on some noble mission: what lofty thoughts are occupying his mind, you wonder. But as you pass, out comes the scarab from his pocket, and he shouts, "Wanty scarab, mister?—two shillin'," while you ride on your way a greater cynic than before.

Some years ago a large inscribed stone was stolen from a certain temple, and was promptly sold to a man who sometimes traded in such objects. This man carried the stone, hidden in a sack of grain, to the house of a friend, and having deposited it in a place of hiding, he tramped home, with his stick across his shoulders, in an attitude of deep unconcern. An enemy of his, however, had watched him, and promptly gave information. Acting on this the police set out to search the house. When we reached the entrance we were met by the owner, and a warrant was shown to him. A heated argument followed, at the end of which the infuriated man waved us in with a magnificent and most dramatic gesture. There were some twenty rooms in the house, and the stifling heat of a July noon made the task none too enjoyable. The police inspector was extremely thorough in his work, and an hour had passed before three rooms had been searched. He looked into the cupboards, went down on his knees to peer into the ovens, stood on tiptoe to search the fragile wooden shelves (it was a heavy stone which we were looking for), hunted under the mats, and even peeped into a little tobacco-tin. In one of the rooms there were three or four beds arranged along the middle of the floor. The inspector pulled off the mattresses, and out from under each there leapt a dozen rats, which, if I may be believed, made for the walls and ran straight up them, disappearing in the rafter-holes at the top. The sight of countless rats hurrying up perpendicular walls may be familiar to some people, but I venture to call it an amazing spectacle, worthy of record. Then came the opening of one or two travelling-trunks. The inspector ran his hand through the clothes which lay therein, and out jumped a few more rats, which likewise went up the walls. The searching of the remaining rooms carried us well through the afternoon; and at last, hot and weary, we decided to abandon the hunt. Two nights later a man was seen walking away from the house with a heavy sack on his back; and the stone is now, no doubt, in the Western hemisphere.

The attempt to regain a lost antiquity is seldom crowned with success. It is so extremely difficult to obtain reliable information; and as soon as a man is suspected his enemies will rush in with accusations. Thirty-eight separate accusations were sent in against a certain head-watchman during the first days after the fact had leaked out that he was under suspicion. Not one of them could be shown to be true. Sometimes one man will bring a charge against another for the betterment of his own interests. Here is a letter from a watchman who had resigned, but wished to rejoin, "To his Exec. Chief Dircoter of the tembels. I have honner to inform that I am your servant X, watchman on the tembels before this time. Sir from one year ago I work in the Santruple (?) as a watchman about four years ago. And I not make anything wrong and your Exec. know me. Now I want to work in my place in the tembel, because the man which in it he not attintive to His, but alway he in the coffee.... He also steal the scribed stones. Please give your order to point me again. Your servant, X." "The coffee" is, of course, the cafe which adjoins the temple.

A short time ago a young man came to me with an accusation against his own father, who, he said, had stolen a statuette. The tale which he told was circumstantial, but it was hotly denied by his infuriated parent. He looked, however, a trifle more honest than his father, and when a younger brother was brought in as witness, one felt that the guilt of the old man would be the probable finding. The boy stared steadfastly at the ground for some moments, however, and then launched out into an elaborate explanation of the whole affair. He said that he asked his father to lend him four pounds, but the father had refused. The son insisted that that sum was due to him as his share in some transaction, and pointed out that though he only asked for it as a loan, he had in reality a claim to it. The old man refused to hand it over, and the son, therefore, waited his opportunity and stole it from his house, carrying it off triumphantly to his own establishment. Here he gave it into the charge of his young wife, and went about his business. The father, however, guessed where the money had gone; and while his son was out, invaded his house, beat his daughter-in-law on the soles of her feet until she confessed where the money was hidden, and then, having obtained it, returned to his home. When the son came back to his house he learnt what had happened, and, out of spite, at once invented the accusation which he had brought to me. This story appeared to be true in so far as the quarrel over the money was concerned, but that the accusation was invented proved to be untrue.

Sometimes the peasants have such honest faces that it is difficult to believe that they are guilty of deceit. A lady came to the camp of a certain party of excavators at Thebes, holding in her hand a scarab. "Do tell me," she said to one of the archaeologists, "whether this scarab is genuine. I am sure it must be, for I bought it from a boy who assured me that he had stolen it from your excavations, and he looked such an honest and truthful little fellow."

In order to check pilfering in a certain excavation in which I was assisting we made a rule that the selected workmen should not be allowed to put unselected substitutes in their place. One day I came upon a man whose appearance did not seem familiar, although his back was turned to me. I asked him who he was, whereupon he turned upon me a countenance which might have served for the model of a painting of St John, and in a low, sweet-voice he told me of the illness of the real workman, and of how he had taken over the work in order to obtain money for the purchase of medicine for him, they being friends from their youth up. I sent him away and told him to call for any medicine he might want that evening. I did not see him again until about a week later, when I happened to meet him in the village with a policeman on either side of him, from one of whom I learned that he was a well-known thief. Thus is one deceived even in the case of real criminals: how then can one expect to get at the truth when the crime committed is so light an affair as the stealing of an antiquity?

The following is a letter received from one of the greatest thieves in Thebes, who is now serving a term of imprisonment in the provincial gaol:—

"SIR GENERAL INSPECTOR,—I offer this application stating that I am from the natives of Gurneh, saying the following:—

'On Saturday last I came to your office and have been told that my family using the sate to strengthen against the Department. The result of this talking that all these things which somebody pretends are not the fact. In fact I am taking great care of the antiquities for the purpose of my living matter. Accordingly, I wish to be appointed in the vacant of watching to the antiquities in my village and promise myself that if anything happens I do hold myself resposible.'"

I have no idea what "using the sate to strengthen" means.

It is sometimes said that European excavators are committing an offence against the sensibilities of the peasants by digging up the bodies of their ancestors. Nobody will repeat this remark who has walked over a cemetery plundered by the natives themselves. Here bodies may be seen lying in all directions, torn limb from limb by the gold-seekers; here beautiful vases may be seen smashed to atoms in order to make more rare the specimens preserved. The peasant has no regard whatsoever for the sanctity of the ancient dead, nor does any superstition in this regard deter him in his work of destruction. Fortunately superstition sometimes checks other forms of robbery. Djins are believed to guard the hoards of ancient wealth which some of the tombs are thought to contain, as, for example, in the case of the tomb in which the family was asphyxiated, where a fiend of this kind was thought to have throttled the unfortunate explorers. Twin brothers are thought to have the power of changing themselves into cats at will; and a certain Huseyn Osman, a harmless individual enough, and a most expert digger, would turn himself into a cat at night-time, not only for the purpose of stealing his brother Muhammed Osman's dinner, but also in order to protect the tombs which his patron was occupied in excavating. One of the overseers in some recent excavations was said to have power of detecting all robberies on his works. The archaeologist, however, is unfortunately unable to rely upon this form of protection, and many are the schemes for the prevention of pilfering which are tried.

In some excavations a sum of money is given to the workman for every antiquity found by him, and these sums are sufficiently high to prevent any outbidding by the dealers. Work thus becomes very expensive for the archaeologist, who is sometimes called upon to pay L10 or L20 in a day. The system has also another disadvantage, namely, that the workmen are apt to bring antiquities from far and near to "discover" in their diggings in order to obtain a good price for them. Nevertheless, it would seem to be the most successful of the systems. In the Government excavations it is usual to employ a number of overseers to watch for the small finds, while for only the really valuable discoveries is a reward given.

For finding the famous gold hawk's head at Hieraconpolis a workman received L14, and with this princely sum in his pocket he went to a certain Englishman to ask advice as to the spending of it. He was troubled, he said, to decide whether to buy a wife or a cow. He admitted that he had already one wife, and that two of them would be sure to introduce some friction into what was now a peaceful household; and he quite realised that a cow would be less apt to quarrel with his first wife. The Englishman, very properly, voted for the cow, and the peasant returned home deep in thought. While pondering over the matter during the next few weeks, he entertained his friends with some freedom, and soon he found to his dismay that he had not enough money left to buy either a wife or a cow. Thereupon he set to with a will, and soon spent the remaining guineas in riotous living. When he was next seen by the Englishman he was a beggar, and, what was worse, his taste for evil living had had several weeks of cultivation.

The case of the fortunate finder of a certain great cache of mummies was different. He received a reward of L400, and this he buried in a very secret place. When he died his possessions descended to his sons. After the funeral they sat round the grave of the old man, and very rightly discussed his virtues until the sun set. Then they returned to the house and began to dig for the hidden money. For some days they turned the sand of the floor over; but failing to find what they sought, they commenced operations on a patch of desert under the shade of some tamarisks where their father was wont to sit of an afternoon. It is said that for twelve hours they worked like persons possessed, the men hacking at the ground, and the boys carrying away the sand in baskets to a convenient distance. But the money was never found.

It is not often that the finders of antiquities inform the authorities of their good fortune, but when they do so an attempt is made to give them a good reward. A letter from the finder of an inscribed statue, who wished to claim his reward, read as follows: "With all delight I please inform you that on 8th Jan. was found a headless temple of granite sitting on a chair and printed on it."

I will end this chapter as I began it, in the defence of the Theban thieves. In a place where every yard of ground contains antiquities, and where these antiquities may be so readily converted into golden guineas, can one wonder that every man, woman, and child makes use of his opportunities in this respect to better his fortune? The peasant does not take any interest in the history of mankind, and he cannot be expected to know that in digging out a grave and scattering its contents, through the agency of dealers, over the face of the globe, he loses for ever the facts which the archaeologist is striving so hard to obtain. The scientific excavator does not think the antiquities themselves so valuable as the record of the exact arrangement in which they were found. From such data alone can he obtain his knowledge of the manners and customs of this wonderful people. When two objects are found together, the date of one being known and that of the other unknown, the archaeological value of the find lies in the fact that the former will place the latter in its correct chronological position. But if these two objects are sold separately, the find may perhaps lose its entire significance. The trained archaeologist records every atom of information with which he meets; the native records nothing. And hence, if there is any value at all in the study of the history of mankind, illegal excavation must be stopped.



CHAPTER XI.

THE FLOODING OF LOWER NUBIA.

The country of Lower Nubia lies between the First and Second Cataracts of the Nile. The town of Aswan, once famous as the frontier outpost of Egypt and now renowned as a winter resort for Europeans and Americans, stands some two or three miles below the First Cataract; and two hundred miles southwards, at the foot of the Second Cataract, stands Wady Halfa. About half-way between these two points the little town of Derr nestles amidst its palms; and here the single police-station of the province is situated. Agriculturally the land is extremely barren, for the merest strip of cultivation borders the river, and in many reaches the desert comes down to the water's edge. The scenery is rugged and often magnificent. As one sails up the Nile the rocky hills on either side group themselves into bold compositions, rising darkly above the palms and acacias reflected in the water. The villages, clustered on the hillsides as though grown like mushrooms in the night, are not different in colour to the ground upon which they are built; but here and there neatly whitewashed houses of considerable size are to be observed. Now we come upon a tract of desert sand which rolls down to the river in a golden slope; now the hills recede, leaving an open bay wherein there are patches of cultivated ground reclaimed from the wilderness; and now a dense but narrow palm-grove follows the line of the bank for a mile or more, backed by the villages at the foot of the hills.

The inhabitants are few in number. Most of the males have taken service as cooks, butlers, waiters, and bottle-washers in European houses or hotels throughout Egypt; and consequently one sees more women than men pottering about the villages or working in the fields. They are a fine race, clean in their habits and cheery in character. They can be distinguished with ease from the Egyptian fellahin; for their skin has more the appearance of bronze, and their features are often more aquiline. The women do not wear the veil, and their dresses are draped over one shoulder in a manner unknown to Egypt. The method of dressing the hair, moreover, is quite distinctive: the women plait it in innumerable little strands, those along the forehead terminating in bead-like lumps of bee's-wax. The little children go nude for the first six or eight years of their life, though the girls sometimes wear around their waists a fringe made of thin strips of hide. The men still carry spears in some parts of the country, and a light battle-axe is not an uncommon weapon.

There is no railway between Aswan and Halfa, all traffic being conducted on the river. Almost continuously a stream of native troops and English officers passes up and down the Nile bound for Khartoum or Cairo; and in the winter the tourists on steamers and dahabiyehs travel through the country in considerable numbers to visit the many temples which were here erected in the days when the land was richer than it is now. The three most famous ruins of Lower Nubia are those of Philae, just above Aswan; Kalabsheh, some forty miles to the south; and Abu Simbel, about thirty miles below Halfa: but besides these there are many buildings of importance and interest. The ancient remains date from all periods of Egyptian history; for Lower Nubia played an important part in Pharaonic affairs, both by reason of its position as the buffer state between Egypt and the Sudan, and also because of its gold-mining industries. In old days it was divided into several tribal states, these being governed by the Egyptian Viceroy of Ethiopia; but the country seldom revolted or gave trouble, and to the present day it retains its reputation for peacefulness and orderly behaviour.

Owing to the building, and now the heightening, of the great Nile dam at Aswan, erected for the purpose of regulating the flow of water by holding back in the plenteous autumn and winter the amount necessary to keep up the level in the dry summer months, the whole of the valley from the First Cataract to the neighbourhood of Derr will be turned into a vast reservoir, and a large number of temples and other ruins will be flooded. Before the dam was finished the temples on the island of Philae were strengthened and repaired so as to be safe from damage by the water; and now every other ruin whose foundations are below the future high-water level has been repaired and safeguarded.

In 1906 and 1907 the present writer was dispatched to the threatened territory to make a full report on the condition of the monuments there;[1] and a very large sum of money was then voted for the work. Sir Gaston Maspero took the matter up in the spirit which is associated with his name; Monsieur Barsanti was sent to repair and underpin the temples; French, German, and English scholars were engaged to make copies of the endangered inscriptions and reliefs; and Dr Reisner, Mr C. Firth, and others, under the direction of Captain Lyons, were entrusted with the complete and exhaustive excavation of all the cemeteries and remains between the dam and the southern extremity of the reservoir. As a result of this work, not one scrap of information of any kind will be lost by the flooding of the country.

[Footnote 1: Weigall: 'A Report on the Antiquities of Lower Nubia.' (Department of Antiquities, Cairo, 1907.)]

As was to be expected, the building and raising of the dam caused consternation amongst the archaeologically interested visitors to Egypt, and very considerably troubled the Egyptologists. Philae, one of the most picturesque ruins on the Nile, was to be destroyed, said the more hysterical, and numerous other buildings were to meet with the same fate. A very great deal of nonsense was written as to the vandalism of the English; and the minds of certain people were so much inflamed by the controversy that many regrettable words were spoken. The Department of Antiquities was much criticised for having approved the scheme, though it was more generally declared that the wishes of that Department had not been consulted, which was wholly untrue. These strictures are pronounced on all sides at the present day, in spite of the very significant silence and imperturbation (not to say supination) of Egyptologists, and it may therefore be as well to put the matter plainly before the reader, since the opinion of the person who is in charge of the ruins in question, has, whether right or wrong, a sort of interest attached to it.

In dealing with a question of this kind one has to clear from the brain the fumes of unbalanced thought and to behold all things with a level head. Strong wine is one of the lesser causes of insobriety, and there is often more damage done by intemperance of thought in matters of criticism than there is by actions committed under the influence of other forms of immoderation. We are agreed that it is a sad spectacle which is to be observed in the Old Kent Road on a Saturday night, when the legs of half the pedestrians appear to have lost their cunning. We say in disgust that these people are intoxicated. What, then, have we to say regarding those persons whose brains are unbalanced by immoderate habits of thought, who are suffering from that primary kind of intoxication which the dictionary tells us is simply a condition of the mind wherein clear judgment is obscured? There is sometimes a debauchery in the reasoning faculties of the polite which sends their opinions rollicking on their way just as drink will send a man staggering up the highroad. Temperance and sobriety are virtues which in their relation to thought have a greater value than they possess in any other regard; and we stand in more urgent need of missionaries to preach to us sobriety of opinion, a sort of critical teetotalism, than ever a drunkard stood in want of a pledge.

This case of Philae and the Lower Nubian temples illustrates my meaning. On the one hand there are those who tell us that the island temple, far from being damaged by its flooding, is benefited thereby; and on the other hand there are persons who urge that the engineers concerned in the making of the reservoir should be tarred and feathered to a man. Both these views are distorted and intemperate. Let us endeavour to straighten up our opinions, to walk them soberly and decorously before us in an atmosphere of propriety.

It will be agreed by all those who know Egypt that a great dam was necessary, and it will be admitted that no reach of the Nile below Wady Halfa could be converted into a reservoir with so little detriment to modern interests as that of Lower Nubia. Here there were very few cultivated fields to be inundated and a very small number of people to be dislodged. There were, however, these important ruins which would be flooded by such a reservoir, and the engineers therefore made a most serious attempt to find some other site for the building. A careful study of the Nile valley showed that the present site of the dam was the only spot at which a building of this kind could be set up without immensely increasing the cost of erection and greatly adding to the general difficulties and the possible dangers of the undertaking. The engineers had, therefore, to ask themselves whether the damage to the temples weighed against these considerations, whether it was right or not to expend the extra sum from the taxes. The answer was plain enough. They were of opinion that the temples would not be appreciably damaged by their flooding. They argued, very justly, that the buildings would be under water for only five months in each year, and for seven months the ruins would appear to be precisely as they always had been. It was not necessary, then, to state the loss of money and the added inconveniences on the one hand against the total loss of the temples on the other. It was simply needful to ask whether the temporary and apparently harmless inundation of the ruins each year was worth avoiding at the cost of several millions of precious Government money; and, looking at it purely from an administrative point of view, remembering that public money had to be economised and inextravagantly dealt with, I do not see that the answer given was in any way outrageous. Philae and the other temples were not to be harmed: they were but to be closed to the public, so to speak, for the winter months.



[Photo by R. Glendinning.

This view of the question is not based upon any error. In regard to the possible destruction of Philae by the force of the water, Mr Somers Clarke, F.S.A., whose name is known all over the world in connection with his work at St Paul's Cathedral and elsewhere, states definitely[1] that he is convinced that the temples will not be overthrown by the flood, and his opinion is shared by all those who have studied the matter carefully. Of course it is possible that, in spite of all the works of consolidation which have been effected, some cracks may appear; but during the months when the temple is out of water each year, these may be repaired. I cannot see that there is the least danger of an extensive collapse of the buildings; but should this occur, the entire temple will have to be removed and set up elsewhere. Each summer and autumn when the water goes down and the buildings once more stand as they did in the days of the Ptolemies and Romans, we shall have ample time and opportunity to discuss the situation and to take all proper steps for the safeguarding of the temples against further damage; and even were we to be confronted by a mass of fallen ruins, scattered pell-mell over the island by the power of the water, I am convinced that every block could be replaced before the flood rose again. The temple of Maharraka was entirely rebuilt in three or four weeks.

[Footnote 1: Proc. Soc. Antiq., April 20, 1898.]

Now, as to the effect of the water upon the reliefs and inscriptions with which the walls of the temples at Philae are covered. In June 1905 I reported[1] that a slight disintegration of the surface of the stone was noticeable, and that the sharp lines of the hieroglyphs had become somewhat blurred. This is due to the action of the salts in the sandstone; but these salts have now disappeared, and the disintegration will not continue. The Report on the Temples of Philae, issued by the Ministry of Public Works in 1908, makes this quite clear; and I may add that the proof of the statement is to be found at the many points on the Nile where there are the remains of quay walls dating from Pharaonic times. Many of these quays are constructed of inscribed blocks of a stone precisely similar in quality to that used at Philae; and although they have been submerged for many hundreds of years, the lines of the hieroglyphs are almost as sharp now as they ever were. The action of the water appears to have little effect upon sandstone, and it may thus be safely predicted that the reliefs and inscriptions at Philae will not suffer.

[Footnote 1: Les Annales du Service des Antiquites d'Egypte, vii. 1, p. 74.]

There still remain some traces of colour upon certain reliefs, and these will disappear. But archaeologically the loss will be insignificant, and artistically it will not be much felt. With regard to the colour upon the capitals of the columns in the Hall of Isis, however, one must admit that its destruction would be a grave loss to us, and it is to be hoped that the capitals will be removed and replaced by dummies, or else most carefully copied in facsimile.

Such is the case of Philae when looked at from a practical point of view. Artistically and sentimentally, of course, one deeply regrets the flooding of the temple. Philae with its palms was a very charming sight, and although the island still looks very picturesque each year when the flood has receded and the ground is covered with grasses and vegetation, it will not again possess quite the magic that once caused it to be known as the "pearl of Egypt." But these are considerations which are to be taken into account with very great caution as standing against the interest of modern Egypt. If Philae were to be destroyed, one might, very properly, desire that modern interests should not receive sole consideration; but it is not to be destroyed, or even much damaged, and consequently the lover of Philae has but two objections to offer to the operations now proceeding: firstly, that the temples will be hidden from sight during a part of each year; and secondly, that water is an incongruous and unharmonious element to introduce into the sanctuaries of the gods.

Let us consider these two objections. As to the hiding of the temple under the water, we have to consider to what class of people the examination of the ruins is necessary. Archaeologists, officials, residents, students, and all natives, are able to visit the place in the autumn, when the island stands high and dry, and the weather is not uncomfortably hot. Every person who desires to see Philae in its original condition can arrange to make his journey to Lower Nubia in the autumn or early winter. It is only the ordinary winter tourist who will find the ruins lost to view beneath the brown waters; and while his wishes are certainly to be consulted to some extent, there can be no question that the fortunes of the Egyptian farmers must receive the prior attention. And as to the incongruity of the introduction of the water into these sacred precincts, one may first remark that water stands each year in the temples of Karnak, Luxor, the Ramesseum, Shenhur, Esneh, and many another, introduced by the natural rise of the Nile, thus giving us a quieting familiarity with such a condition; and one may further point out that the presence of water in the buildings is not (speaking archaeologically) more discordant than that of the palms and acacias which clustered around the ruins previous to the building of the dam, and gave Philae its peculiar charm. Both water and trees are out of place in a temple once swept and garnished, and it is only a habit of thought that makes the trees which grow in such ruins more congruous to the eye than water lapping around the pillars and taking the fair reflections of the stonework.

What remains, then, of the objections? Nothing, except an undefined sense of dismay that persists in spite of all arguments. There are few persons who will not feel this sorrow at the flooding of Philae, who will not groan inwardly as the water rises; and yet I cannot too emphatically repeat that there is no real cause for this apprehension and distress.

A great deal of damage has been done to the prestige of the archaeologist by the ill-considered outbursts of those persons who have allowed this natural perturbation to have full sway in their minds. The man or woman who has protested the loudest has seldom been in a position even to offer an opinion. Thus every temperate thinker has come to feel a greater distaste for the propaganda of those persons who would have hindered the erection of the dam than for the actual effects of its erection. Vegetarians, Anti-Vivisectionists, Militant Suffragists, Little Englanders, and the like, have taught us to beware of the signs and tokens of the unbalanced mind; and it becomes the duty of every healthy person to fly from the contamination of their hysteria, even though the principles which lie at the base of their doctrines may not be entirely without reason. We must avoid hasty and violent judgment as we would the plague. No honest man will deny that the closing of Philae for half the year is anything but a very regrettable necessity; but it has come to this pass, that a self-respecting person will be very chary in admitting that he is not mightily well satisfied with the issue of the whole business.

Recently a poetic effusion has been published bewailing the "death" of Philae, and because the author is famous the world over for the charm of his writing, it has been read, and its lament has been echoed by a large number of persons. It is necessary to remind the reader, however, that because a man is a great artist it does not follow that he has a sober judgment. The outward appearance, and a disordered opinion on matters of everyday life, are often sufficient indication of this intemperance of mind which is so grave a human failing. A man and his art, of course, are not to be confused; and perhaps it is unfair to assess the art by the artist, but there are many persons who will understand my meaning when I suggest that it is extremely difficult to give serious attention to writers or speakers of a certain class. Philae is not dead. It may safely be said that the temples will last as long as the dam itself. Let us never forget that Past and Present walk hand in hand, and, as between friends, there must always be much "give and take." How many millions of pounds, I wonder, has been spent by the Government, from the revenues derived from the living Egyptians, for the excavation and preservation of the records of the past? Will the dead not make, in return, this sacrifice for the benefit of the striving farmers whose money has been used for the resuscitation of their history?

A great deal has been said regarding the destruction of the ancient inscriptions which are cut in such numbers upon the granite rocks in the region of the First Cataract, many of which are of great historical importance. Vast quantities of granite have been quarried for the building of the dam, and fears have been expressed that in the course of this work these graffiti may have been blasted into powder. It is necessary to say, therefore, that with the exception of one inscription which was damaged when the first quarrymen set to work upon the preliminary tests for suitable stone, not a single hieroglyph has been harmed. The present writer numbered all the inscriptions in white paint and marked out quarrying concessions, while several watchmen were set to guard these important relics. In this work, as in all else, the Department of Antiquities received the most generous assistance from the Department concerned with the building of the dam; and I should like to take this opportunity of saying that archaeologists owe a far greater debt to the officials in charge of the various works at Aswan than they do to the bulk of their own fellow-workers. The desire to save every scrap of archaeological information has been dominant in the minds of all concerned in the work throughout the whole undertaking.

Besides the temples of Philae there are several other ruins which will be flooded in part by the water when the heightening of the reservoir is completed. On the island of Bigeh, over against Philae, there is a little temple of no great historical value which will pass under water. The cemeteries on this island, and also on the mainland in this neighbourhood, have been completely excavated, and have yielded most important information. Farther up stream there stands the little temple of Dabod. This has been repaired and strengthened, and will not come to any harm; while all the cemeteries in the vicinity, of course, have been cleared out. We next come to the fortress and quarries of Kertassi, which will be partly flooded. These have been put into good order, and there need be no fear of their being damaged. The temple of Tafeh, a few miles farther to the south, has also been safeguarded, and all the ancient graves have been excavated.

Next comes the great temple of Kalabsheh which, in 1907, when my report was made, was in a sorry state. The great hall was filled with the ruins of the fallen colonnade and its roof; the hypostyle hall was a mass of tumbled blocks over which the visitor was obliged to climb; and all the courts and chambers were heaped up with debris. Now, however, all this has been set to rights, and the temple stands once more in its glory. The water will flood the lower levels of the building each year for a few months, but there is no chance of a collapse taking place, and the only damage which is to be anticipated is the loss of the colour upon the reliefs in the inner chambers, and the washing away of some later Coptic paintings, already hardly distinguishable, in the first hall.

The temple is not very frequently visited, and it cannot be said that its closing for each winter will be keenly felt; and since it will certainly come to no harm under the gentle Nile, I do not see that its fate need cause any consternation. Let those who are able visit this fine ruin in the early months of winter, and they will be rewarded for their trouble by a view of a magnificent temple in what can only be described as apple-pie order. I venture to think that a building of this kind washed by the water is a more inspiring sight than a tumbled mass of ruins rising from amidst an encroaching jumble of native hovels.

Farther up the river stands the temple of Dendur. This will be partly inundated, though the main portion of the building stands above the highest level of the reservoir. Extensive repairs have been carried out here, and every grave in the vicinity has been examined. The fortress of Koshtamneh, which is made of mud-bricks, will be for the most part destroyed; but now that a complete record of this construction has been made, the loss is insignificant. Somewhat farther to the south stands the imposing temple of Dakkeh, the lower levels of which will be flooded. This temple has been most extensively patched up and strengthened, and no damage of any kind will be caused by its inundation. The vast cemeteries in the neighbourhood have all been excavated, and the remains of the town have been thoroughly examined. Still farther to the south stands the mud-brick fortress of Kubban, which, like Koshtamneh, will be partly destroyed; but the detailed excavations and records which have here been made will prevent any loss being felt by archaeologists. Finally, the temple of Maharraka requires to be mentioned. This building in 1907 was a complete ruin, but it was carefully rebuilt, and now it is quite capable of withstanding the pressure of the water. From this point to the southern end of the new reservoir there are no temples below the new flood-level; and by the time that the water is raised every grave and other relic along the entire banks of the river will have been examined.

To complete these works it is proposed to erect a museum at Aswan wherein the antiquities discovered in Lower Nubia should be exhibited; and a permanent collection of objects illustrating the arts, crafts, and industries of Lower Nubia at all periods of its history, should be displayed. It is a question whether money will be found for the executing of this scheme; but there can be no doubt that a museum of this kind, situated at the virtual capital of Lower Nubia, would be a most valuable institution.

In 1907 the condition of the monuments of Lower Nubia was very bad. The temples already mentioned were in a most deplorable state; the cemeteries were being robbed, and there was no proper organisation for the protection of the ancient sites. There are, moreover, several temples above the level of high water, and these were also in a sad condition. Gerf Husen was both dirty and dilapidated; Wady Sabua was deeply buried in sand; Amada was falling to pieces; Derr was the receptacle for the refuse of the town; and even Abu Simbel itself was in a dangerous state. In my report I gave a gloomy picture indeed of the plight of the monuments. But now all this is changed. Sir Gaston Maspero made several personal visits to the country; every temple was set in order; many new watchmen were appointed; and to-day this territory may be said to be the "show" portion of this inspectorate. Now, it must be admitted that the happy change is due solely to the attention to which the country was subjected by reason of its flooding; and it is not the less true because it is paradoxical that the proposed submersion of certain temples has saved all the Lower Nubian monuments from rapid destruction at the hands of robbers, ignorant natives, and barbarous European visitors. What has been lost in Philae has been gained a thousand-fold in the repairing and safeguarding of the temples, and in the scientific excavation of the cemeteries farther to the south.

Here, then, is the sober fact of the matter. Are the English and Egyptian officials such vandals who have voted over a hundred thousand pounds for the safeguarding of the monuments of Lower Nubia? What country in the whole world has spent such vast sums of money upon the preservation of the relics of the Past as has Egypt during the last five-and-twenty years? The Government has treated the question throughout in a fair and generous manner; and those who rail at the officials will do well to consider seriously the remarks which I have dared to make upon the subject of temperate criticism.



CHAPTER XII.

ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE OPEN.

In this chapter I propose to state the case in favour of the archaeologist who works abroad in the field, in contrast to him who studies at home in the museum, in the hope that others will follow the example of that scholar to whom this volume is dedicated, who does both.

I have said in a previous chapter that the archaeologist is generally considered to be a kind of rag-and-bone man: one who, sitting all his life in a dusty room, shuns the touch of the wind and takes no pleasure in the vanities under the sun. Actually, this is not so very often a true description of him. The ease with which long journeys are now undertaken, the immunity from insult or peril which the traveller now enjoys, have made it possible for the archaeologist to seek his information at its source in almost all the countries of the world; and he is not obliged, as was his grandfather, to take it at second-hand from the volumes of mediaeval scholars. Moreover, the necessary collections of books of reference are now to be found in very diverse places; and thus it comes about that there are plenty of archaeologists who are able to leave their own museums and studies for limited periods.

And as regards his supposed untidy habits, the phase of cleanliness which, like a purifying wind, descended suddenly upon the world in the second half of the nineteenth century, has penetrated even to libraries and museums, removing every speck of dust therefrom. The archaeologist, when engaged in the sedentary side of his profession, lives nowadays in an atmosphere charged with the odours of furniture-polish and monkey-brand. A place less dusty than the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, or than the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, could not easily be imagined. The disgusting antiquarian of a past generation, with his matted locks and stained clothing, could but be ill at ease in such surroundings, and could claim no brotherhood with the majority of the present-day archaeologists. Cobwebs are now taboo; and the misguided old man who dwelt amongst them is seldom to be found outside of caricature, save in the more remote corners of the land.



[Photo by H. Carter.

The archaeologist in these days, then, is not often confined permanently to his museum, though in many cases he remains there as much as possible; and still less often is he a person of objectionable appearance. The science is generally represented by two classes of scholar: the man who sits in the museum or library for the greater part of his life, and lives as though he would be worthy of the furniture-polish, and the man who works in the field for a part of the year and then lives as though he regarded the clean airs of heaven in even higher estimation. Thus, in arguing the case for the field-worker, as I propose here to do, there is no longer the easy target of the dusty antiquarian at which to hurl the javelin. One cannot merely urge a musty individual to come out into the open air: that would make an easy argument. One has to take aim at the less vulnerable person of the scholar who chooses to spend the greater part of his time in a smart gallery of exhibits or in a well-ordered and spotless library, and whose only fault is that he is too fond of those places. One may no longer tease him about his dusty surroundings; but I think it is possible to accuse him of setting a very bad example by his affection for "home comforts," and of causing indirectly no end of mischief. It is a fact that there are many Greek scholars who are so accustomed to read their texts in printed books that they could not make head nor tail of an original document written in a cursive Greek hand; and there are not a few students of Egyptian archaeology who do not know the conditions and phenomena of the country sufficiently to prevent the occurrence of occasional "howlers" in the exposition of their theories.

There are three main arguments which may be set forward to induce Egyptologists to come as often as possible to Egypt, and to urge their students to do so, instead of educating the mind to the habit of working at home.

Firstly, the study of archaeology in the open helps to train the young men in the path of health in which they should go. Work in the Egyptian desert, for example, is one of the most healthy and inspiring pursuits that could be imagined; and study in the shrines overlooking the Nile, where, as at Gebel Silsileh, one has to dive into the cool river and swim to the sun-scorched scene of one's work, is surely more invigorating than study in the atmosphere of the British Museum. A gallop up to the Tombs of the Kings puts a man in a readier mood for a morning's work than does a drive in an omnibus along Tottenham Court Road; and he will feel a keenness as he pulls out his note-book that he can never have experienced in his western city. There is, moreover, a certain amount of what is called "roughing it" to be endured by the archaeologist in Egypt; and thus the body becomes toughened and prepared for any necessary spurt of work. To rough it in the open is the best medicine for tired heads, as it is the finest tonic for brains in a normal condition.

In parenthesis an explanation must be given of what is meant here by that much misunderstood condition of life which is generally known as "roughing it." A man who is accustomed to the services of two valets will believe that he is roughing it when he is left to put the diamond studs in his evening shirts with his own fingers; and a man who has tramped the roads all his life will hardly consider that he is roughing it when he is outlawed upon the unsheltered moors in late autumn. The degree of hardship to which I refer lies between these two extremes. The science of Egyptology does not demand from its devotees a performance of many extreme acts of discomfort; but, during the progress of active work, it does not afford many opportunities for luxurious self-indulgence, or for any slackness in the taking of exercise.

As a protest against the dilettante antiquarian (who is often as objectionable a character as the unwashed scholar) there are certain archaeologists who wear the modern equivalent of a hair shirt, who walk abroad with pebbles in their shoes, and who speak of the sitting upon an easy-chair as a moral set-back. The strained and posed life which such savants lead is not to be regarded as a rough one; for there is constant luxury in the thought of their own toughness, and infinite comfort in the sense of superiority which they permit themselves to feel. It is not roughing it to feed from a bare board when a tablecloth adds insignificantly to the impedimenta of the camp: it is pretending to rough it. It is not roughing it to eat tinned food out of the tin when a plate costs a penny or two: it is either hypocrisy or slovenliness.

To rough it is to lead an exposed life under conditions which preclude the possibility of indulging in certain comforts which, in their place and at the right time, are enjoyed and appreciated. A man may well be said to rough it when he camps in the open, and dispenses with the luxuries of civilisation; when he pours a jug of water over himself instead of lying in ecstasy in an enamelled bath; eats a meal of two undefined courses instead of one of five or six; twangs a banjo to the moon instead of ravishing his ear with a sonata upon the grand piano; rolls himself in a blanket instead of sitting over the library fire; turns in at 9 P.M. and rises ere the sun has topped the hills instead of keeping late hours and lying abed; sleeps on the ground or upon a narrow camp-bed (which occasionally collapses) instead of sprawling at his ease in a four-poster.

A life of this kind cannot fail to be of benefit to the health; and, after all, the work of a healthy man is likely to be of greater value than that of one who is anaemic or out of condition. It is the first duty of a scholar to give attention to his muscles, for he, more than other men, has the opportunity to become enfeebled by indoor work. Few students can give sufficient time to physical exercise; but in Egypt the exercise is taken during the course of the work, and not an hour is wasted. The muscles harden and the health is ensured without the expending of a moment's thought upon the subject.

Archaeology is too often considered to be the pursuit of weak-chested youths and eccentric old men: it is seldom regarded as a possible vocation for normal persons of sound health and balanced mind. An athletic and robust young man, clothed in the ordinary costume of a gentleman, will tell a new acquaintance that he is an Egyptologist, whereupon the latter will exclaim in surprise: "Not really?—you don't look like one." A kind of mystery surrounds the science. The layman supposes the antiquarian to be a very profound and erudite person, who has pored over his books since a baby, and has shunned those games and sports which generally make for a healthy constitution. The study of Egyptology is thought to require a depth of knowledge that places its students outside the limits of normal learning, and presupposes in them an unhealthy amount of schooling. This, of course, is absurd.

Nobody would expect an engineer who built bridges and dams, or a great military commander, to be a seedy individual with longish hair, pale face, and weak eyesight; and yet probably he has twice the brain capacity of the average archaeologist. It is because the life of the antiquarian is, or is generally thought to be, unhealthy and sluggish that he is so universally regarded as a worm.

Some attempt should be made to rid the science of this forbidding aspect; and for this end students ought to do their best to make it possible for them to be regarded as ordinary, normal, healthy men. Let them discourage the popular belief that they are prodigies, freaks of mental expansion. Let their first desire be to show themselves good, useful, hardy, serviceable citizens or subjects, and they will do much to remove the stigma from their profession. Let them be acquainted with the feeling of a bat or racket in the hands, or a saddle between the knees; let them know the rough path over the mountains, or the diving-pool amongst the rocks, and their mentality will not be found to suffer. A winter's "roughing it" in the Theban necropolis or elsewhere would do much to banish the desire for perpetual residence at home in the west; and a season in Egypt would alter the point of view of the student more considerably than he could imagine. Moreover, the appearance of the scholar prancing about upon his fiery steed (even though it be but an Egyptian donkey) will help to dispel the current belief that he is incapable of physical exertion; and his reddened face rising, like the morning sun, above the rocks on some steep pathway over the Theban hills will give the passer-by cause to alter his opinion of those who profess and call themselves Egyptologists.

As a second argument a subject must be introduced which will be distasteful to a large number of archaeologists. I refer to the narrow-minded policy of the curators of certain European and American museums, whose desire it is at all costs to place Egyptian and other eastern antiquities actually before the eyes of western students, in order that they and the public may have the entertainment of examining at home the wonders of lands which they make no effort to visit. I have no hesitation in saying that the craze for recklessly bringing away unique antiquities from Egypt to be exhibited in western museums for the satisfaction of the untravelled man, is the most pernicious bit of folly to be found in the whole broad realm of archaeological misbehaviour.

A museum has three main justifications for its existence. In the first place, like a home for lost dogs, it is a repository for stray objects. No curator should endeavour to procure for his museum any antiquity which could be safely exhibited on its original site* and in its original position. He should receive only those stray objects which otherwise would be lost to sight, or those which would be in danger of destruction. The curator of a picture gallery is perfectly justified in purchasing any old master which is legitimately on sale; but he is not justified in obtaining a painting direct from the walls of a church where it has hung for centuries, and where it should still hang. In the same way a curator of a museum of antiquities should make it his first endeavour not so much to obtain objects direct from Egypt as to gather in those antiquities which are in the possession of private persons who cannot be expected to look after them with due care.

*Transcriber's note: Original text read "sight".

In the second place, a museum is a store-house for historical documents such as papyri and ostraca, and in this respect it is simply to be regarded as a kind of public library, capable of unlimited and perfectly legitimate expansion. Such objects are not often found by robbers in the tombs which they have violated, nor are they snatched from temples to which they belong. They are almost always found accidentally, and in a manner which precludes any possibility of their actual position having much significance. The immediate purchase, for example, by museum agents of the Tell el Amarna tablets—the correspondence of a great Pharaoh—which had been discovered by accident, and would perhaps have been destroyed, was most wise.

In the third place, a museum is a permanent exhibition for the instruction of the public, and for the enlightenment of students desirous of obtaining comparative knowledge in any one branch of their work, and for this purpose it should be well supplied not so much with original antiquities as with casts, facsimiles, models, and reproductions of all sorts.

To be a serviceable exhibition both for the student and the public a museum does not need to possess only original antiquities. On the contrary, as a repository for stray objects, a museum is not to be expected to have a complete series of original antiquities in any class, nor is it the business of the curator to attempt to fill up the gaps by purchase, except in special cases. To do so is to encourage the straying of other objects. The curator so often labours under the delusion that it is his first business to collect together as large a number as possible of valuable masterpieces. In reality that is a very secondary matter. His first business, if he is an Egyptologist, is to see that Egyptian masterpieces remain in Egypt so far as is practicable; and his next is to save what has irrevocably strayed from straying further. If the result of this policy is a poor collection, then he must devote so much the more time and money to obtaining facsimiles and reproductions. The keeper of a home for lost dogs does not search the city for a collie with red spots to complete his series of collies, or for a peculiarly elongated dachshund to head his procession of those animals. The fewer dogs he has got the better he is pleased, since this is an indication that a larger number are in safe keeping in their homes. The home of Egyptian antiquities is Egypt, a fact which will become more and more realised as travelling is facilitated.

But the curator generally has the insatiable appetite of the collector. The authorities of one museum bid vigorously against those of another at the auction which constantly goes on in the shops of the dealers in antiquities. They pay huge prices for original statues, vases, or sarcophagi: prices which would procure for them the finest series of casts or facsimiles, or would give them valuable additions to their legitimate collection of papyri. And what is it all for? It is not for the benefit of the general public, who could not tell the difference between a genuine antiquity and a forgery or reproduction, and who would be perfectly satisfied with the ordinary, miscellaneous collection of minor antiquities. It is not for that class of Egyptologist which endeavours to study Egyptian antiquities in Egypt. It is almost solely for the benefit of the student and scholar who cannot, or will not, go to Egypt. Soon it comes to be the curator's pride to observe that savants are hastening to his museum to make their studies. His civic conceit is tickled by the spectacle of Egyptologists travelling long distances to take notes in his metropolitan museum. He delights to be able to say that the student can study Egyptology in his well-ordered galleries as easily as he can in Egypt itself.

All this is as wrong-headed as it can be. While he is filling his museum he does not seem to understand that he is denuding every necropolis in Egypt. I will give one or two instances of the destruction wrought by western museums. I them at random from my memory.

In the year 1900 the then Inspector-General of Antiquities in Upper Egypt discovered a tomb at Thebes in which there was a beautiful relief sculptured on one of the walls, representing Queen Tiy. This he photographed (Plate XXVI.), and the tomb was once more buried. In 1908 I chanced upon this monument, and proposed to open it up as a "show place" for visitors; but alas!—the relief of the queen had disappeared, and only a gaping hole in the wall remained. It appears that robbers had entered the tomb at about the time of the change of inspectors; and, realising that this relief would make a valuable exhibit for some western museum, they had cut out of the wall as much as they could conveniently carry away—namely, the head and upper part of the figure of Tiy. The hieroglyphic inscription which was sculptured near the head was carefully erased, in case it should contain some reference to the name of the tomb from which they were taking the fragment; and over the face some false inscriptions were scribbled in Greek characters, so as to give the stone an unrecognisable appearance. In this condition it was conveyed to a dealer's shop, and it now forms one of the exhibits in the Royal Museum at Brussels. The photograph on Plate XXVII. shows the fragment as it appears after being cleaned.



[Photo by T. Capart.

In the same museum, and in others also, there are fragments of beautiful sculpture hacked out of the walls of the famous tomb of Khaemhat at Thebes. In the British Museum there are large pieces of wall-paintings broken out of Theban tombs. The famous inscription in the tomb of Anena at Thebes, which was one of the most important texts of the early XVIIIth Dynasty, was smashed to pieces several years ago to be sold in small sections to museums; and the scholar to whom this volume is dedicated was instrumental in purchasing back for us eleven of the fragments, which have now been replaced in the tomb, and, with certain fragments in Europe, form the sole remnant of the once imposing stela. One of the most important scenes out of the famous reliefs of the Expedition to Pount, at Der el Bahri, found its way into the hands of the dealers, and was ultimately purchased by our museum in Cairo. The beautiful and important reliefs which decorated the tomb of Horemheb at Sakkara, hacked out of the walls by robbers, are now exhibited in six different museums: London, Leyden, Vienna, Bologna, Alexandria, and Cairo. Of the two hundred tombs of the nobles now to be seen at Thebes, I cannot, at the moment, recall a single one which has not suffered in this manner at some time previous to the organisation of the present strict supervision.

The curators of western museums will argue that had they not purchased these fragments they would have fallen into the hands of less desirable owners. This is quite true, and, indeed, it forms the nearest approach to justification that can be discovered. Nevertheless, it has to be remembered that this purchasing of antiquities is the best stimulus to the robber, who is well aware that a market is always to be found for his stolen goods. It may seem difficult to censure the purchaser, for certainly the fragments were "stray" when the bargain was struck, and it is the business of the curator to collect stray antiquities. But why were they stray? Why were they ever cut from the walls of the Egyptian monuments? Assuredly because the robbers knew that museums would purchase them. If there had been no demand there would have been no supply.

To ask the curators to change their policy, and to purchase only those objects which are legitimately on sale, would, of course, be as futile as to ask the nations to disarm. The rivalry between museum and museum would alone prevent a cessation of this indiscriminate traffic. I can see only one way in which a more sane and moral attitude can be introduced, and that is by the development of the habit of visiting Egypt and of working upon archaeological subjects in the shadow of the actual monuments. Only the person who is familiar with Egypt can know the cost of supplying the stay-at-home scholar with exhibits for his museums. Only one who has resided in Egypt can understand the fact that Egypt itself is the true museum for Egyptian antiquities. He alone can appreciate the work of the Egyptian Government in preserving the remains of ancient days.

The resident in Egypt, interested in archaeology, comes to look with a kind of horror upon museums, and to feel extraordinary hostility to what may be called the museum spirit. He sees with his own eyes the half-destroyed tombs, which to the museum curator are things far off and not visualised. While the curator is blandly saying to his visitor: "See, I will now show you a beautiful fragment of sculpture from a distant and little-known Theban tomb," the white resident in Egypt, with black murder in his heart, is saying: "See, I will show you a beautiful tomb of which the best part of one wall is utterly destroyed that a fragment might be hacked out for a distant and little-known European museum."

To a resident in Europe, Egypt seems to be a strange and barbaric land, far, far away beyond the hills and seas; and her monuments are thought to be at the mercy of wild Bedwin Arabs. In the less recent travel books there is not a published drawing of a temple in the Nile valley but has its complement of Arab figures grouped in picturesque attitudes. Here a fire is being lit at the base of a column, and the black smoke curls upwards to destroy the paintings thereon; here a group of children sport upon the lap of a colossal statue; and here an Arab tethers his camel at the steps of the high altar. It is felt, thus, that the objects exhibited in European museums have been rescued from Egypt and recovered from a distant land. This is not so. They have been snatched from Egypt and lost to the country of their origin.

He who is well acquainted with Egypt knows that hundreds of watchmen, and a small army of inspectors, engineers, draughtsmen, surveyors, and other officials now guard these monuments, that strong iron gates bar the doorways against unauthorised visitors, that hourly patrols pass from monument to monument, and that any damage done is punished by long terms of imprisonment; he knows that the Egyptian Government spends hundreds of thousands of pounds upon safeguarding the ancient remains; he is aware that the organisation of the Department of Antiquities is an extremely important branch of the Ministry of Public Works. He has seen the temples swept and garnished, the tombs lit with electric light, and the sanctuaries carefully rebuilt. He has spun out to the Pyramids in the electric tram or in a taxi-cab; has strolled in evening dress and opera hat through the halls of Karnak, after dinner at the hotel; and has rung up the Theban Necropolis on the telephone.

A few seasons' residence in Egypt shifts the point of view in a startling manner. No longer is the country either distant or insecure; and, realising this, the student becomes more balanced, and he sees both sides of the question with equal clearness. The archaeologist may complain that it is too expensive a matter to come to Egypt. But why, then, are not the expenses of such a journey met by the various museums? A hundred pounds will pay for a student's winter in Egypt and his journey to and from that country. Such a sum is given readily enough for the purchase of an antiquity; but surely rightly-minded students are a better investment than wrongly-acquired antiquities.

It must now be pointed out, as a third argument, that an Egyptologist cannot study his subject properly unless he be thoroughly familiar with Egypt and the modern Egyptians.

A student who is accustomed to sit at home, working in his library or museum, and who has never resided in Egypt, or has but travelled for a short time in that country, may do extremely useful work in one way and another, but that work will not be faultless. It will be, as it were, lop-sided; it will be coloured with hues of the west, unknown to the land of the Pharaohs and antithetical thereto. A London architect may design an apparently charming villa for a client in Jerusalem, but unless he knows by actual and prolonged experience the exigencies of the climate of Palestine, he will be liable to make a sad mess of his job. By bitter experience the military commanders learnt in South Africa that a plan of campaign prepared in England was of little use to them. The cricketer may play a very good game upon the home ground, but upon a foreign pitch the first straight ball will send his bails flying into the clear blue sky.

An archaeologist who attempts to record the material relating to the manners and customs of the ancient Egyptians cannot complete his task, or even assure himself of the accuracy of his statements, unless he has studied the modern customs and has made himself acquainted with the permanent conditions of the country. The modern Egyptians, as has been pointed out in chapter ii. (page 28), are the same people as those who bowed the knee to Pharaoh, and many of their customs still survive. A student can no more hope to understand the story of Pharaonic times without an acquaintance with Egypt as she now is than a modern statesman can hope to understand his own times solely from a study of the past.

Nothing is more paralysing to a student of archaeology than continuous book-work. A collection of hard facts is an extremely beneficial mental exercise, but the deductions drawn from such a collection should be regarded as an integral part of the work. The road-maker must also walk upon his road to the land whither it leads him; the shipbuilder must ride the seas in his vessel, though they be uncharted and unfathomed. Too often the professor will set his students to a compilation which leads them no farther than the final fair copy. They will be asked to make for him, with infinite labour, a list of the High Priests of Amon; but unless he has encouraged them to put such life into those figures that each one seems to step from the page to confront his recorder, unless the name of each calls to mind the very scenes amidst which he worshipped, then is the work uninspired and as deadening to the student as it is useful to the professor. A catalogue of ancient scarabs is required, let us suppose, and students are set to work upon it. They examine hundreds of specimens, they record the variations in design, they note the differences in the glaze or material. But can they picture the man who wore the scarab?—can they reconstruct in their minds the scene in the workshop wherein the scarab was made?—can they hear the song of the workmen or their laughter when the overseer was not nigh? In a word, does the scarab mean history to them, the history of a period, of a dynasty, of a craft? Assuredly not, unless the students know Egypt and the Egyptians, have heard their songs and their laughter, have watched their modern arts and crafts. Only then are they in a position to reconstruct the picture.

Theodore Roosevelt, in his Romanes lecture at Oxford, gave it as his opinion that the industrious collector of facts occupied an honourable but not an exalted position; and he added that the merely scientific historian must rest content with the honour, substantial, but not of the highest type, that belongs to him who gathers material which some time some master shall arise to use. Now every student should aim to be a master, to use the material which he has so laboriously collected; and though at the beginning of his career, and indeed throughout his life, the gathering of material is a most important part of his work, he should never compile solely for the sake of compilation, unless he be content to serve simply as a clerk of archaeology.

An archaeologist must be an historian. He must conjure up the past; he must play the Witch of Endor. His lists and indices, his catalogues and note-books, must be but the spells which he uses to invoke the dead. The spells have no potency until they are pronounced: the lists of the kings of Egypt have no more than an accidental value until they call before the curtain of the mind those monarchs themselves. It is the business of the archaeologist to awake the dreaming dead: not to send the living to sleep. It is his business to make the stones tell their tale: not to petrify the listener. It is his business to put motion and commotion into the past that the present may see and hear: not to pin it down, spatchcocked, like a dead thing. In a word, the archaeologist must be in command of that faculty which is known as the historic imagination, without which Dean Stanley was of opinion that the story of the past could not be told.

But how can that imagination be at once exerted and controlled, as it must needs be, unless the archaeologist is so well acquainted with the conditions of the country about which he writes that his pictures of it can be said to be accurate? The student must allow himself to be saturated by the very waters of the Nile before he can permit himself to write of Egypt. He must know the modern Egyptians before he can construct his model of Pharaoh and his court.

In a recent London play dealing with ancient Egypt, the actor-manager exerted his historic imagination, in one scene, in so far as to introduce a shadoof or water-hoist, which was worked as a naturalistic side-action to the main incident. But, unfortunately, it was displayed upon a hillside where no water could ever have reached it; and thus the audience, all unconsciously, was confronted with the remarkable spectacle of a husbandman applying himself diligently to the task of ladelling thin air on to crops that grew upon barren sand. If only his imagination had been controlled by a knowledge of Egypt, the picture might have been both true and effective.

When the mummy of Akhnaton was discovered and was proved to be that of a man of twenty-eight years of age, many persons doubted the identification on the grounds that the king was known to have been married at the time when he came to the throne, seventeen years before his death,[1] and it was freely stated that a marriage at the age of ten or eleven was impossible and out of the question. Thus it actually remained for the writer to point out that the fact of the king's death occurring seventeen years after his marriage practically fixed his age at his decease at not much above twenty-eight years, so unlikely was it that his marriage would have been delayed beyond his eleventh year. Those who doubted the identification on such grounds were showing all too clearly that the manners and customs of the Egyptians of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, so many of which have come down intact from olden times, were unknown to them.

[Footnote 1: Weigall: Life of Akhnaton, p. 56.]

Here we come to the root of the trouble. The Egyptologist who has not resided for some time in Egypt is inclined to allow his ideas regarding the ancient customs of the land to be influenced by his unconsciously-acquired knowledge of the habits of the west. Men do not marry before the age of eighteen or twenty in Europe: therefore they did not do so in Egypt. There are streams of water upon the mountains in Europe: therefore water may be hoisted upon the hillsides in Egypt. But is he blind that he sees not the great gulf fixed between the ways of the east and those of his accustomed west? It is of no value to science to record the life of Thutmosis III. with Napoleon as our model for it, nor to describe the daily life of the Pharaoh with the person of an English king before our mind's eye. Our European experience will not give us material for the imagination to work upon in dealing with Egypt. The setting for our Pharaonic pictures must be derived from Egypt alone; and no Egyptologist's work that is more than a simple compilation is of value unless the sunlight and the sandy glare of Egypt have burnt into his eyes, and have been reflected on to the pages under his pen.

The archaeologist must possess the historic imagination, but it must be confined to its proper channels. It is impossible to exert this imagination without, as a consequence, a figure rising up before the mind partially furnished with the details of a personality and fully endowed with the broad character of an individual. The first lesson, thus, which we must learn is that of allowing no incongruity to appear in our figures. A king whose name has survived to us upon some monument becomes at once such a reality that the legends concerning him are apt to be accepted as so much fact. Like John Donne once* says—

"Thou art so true, that thoughts of thee suffice To make dreams truth, and fables histories."

*Transcriber's note: Original text read "one".

But only he who has resided in Egypt can judge how far the fables are to be regarded as having a nucleus of truth. In ancient history there can seldom be sufficient data at the Egyptologist's disposal with which to build up a complete figure; and his puppets must come upon the stage sadly deficient, as it were, in arms, legs, and apparel suitable to them, unless he knows from an experience of modern Egyptians how to restore them and to clothe them in good taste. The substance upon which the imagination works must be no less than a collective knowledge of the people of the nation in question. Rameses must be constructed from an acquaintance with many a Pasha of modern Egypt, and his Chief Butler must reflect the known characteristics of a hundred Beys and Effendis. Without such "padding" the figures will remain but names, and with names Egyptology is already overstocked.

It is remarkable to notice how little is known regarding the great personalities in history. Taking three characters at random: we know extremely little that is authentic regarding King Arthur; our knowledge of the actual history of Robin Hood is extremely meagre; and the precise historian would have to dismiss Cleopatra in a few paragraphs. But let the archaeologist know so well the manners and customs of the period with which he is dealing that he will not, like the author of the stories of the Holy Grail, dress Arthur in the armour of the thirteenth century, nor fill the mind of Cleopatra with the thoughts of the Elizabethan poet; let him be so well trained in scientific cautiousness that he will not give unquestioned credence to the legends of the past; let him have sufficient knowledge of the nation to which his hero or heroine belonged to be able to fill up the lacunae with a kind of collective appreciation and estimate of the national characteristics,—and I do not doubt that his interpretations will hold good till the end of all history.

The student to whom Egypt is not a living reality is handicapped in his labours more unfairly than is realised by him. Avoid Egypt, and though your brains be of vast capacity, though your eyes be never raised from your books, you will yet remain in many ways an ignoramus, liable to be corrected by the merest tourist in the Nile valley. But come with me to a Theban garden that I know, where, on some still evening, the dark palms are reflected in the placid Nile, and the acacias are mellowed by the last light of the sunset; where, in leafy bowers, the grapes cluster overhead, and the fig-tree is burdened with fruit. Beyond the broad sheet of the river rise those unchangeable hills which encompass the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings; and at their foot, dimly seen in the evening haze, sit the twin colossi, as they have sat since the days of Amenhotep the Magnificent. The stars begin to be seen through the leaves now that the daylight dies, and presently the Milky Way becomes apparent, stretching across the vault of the night, as when it was believed to be the Nile of the Heavens.

The owls hoot to one another through the garden; and at the edge of the alabaster tank wherein the dusk is mirrored, a frog croaks unseen amidst the lilies. Even so croaked he on this very ground in those days when, typifying eternity, he seemed to utter the endless refrain, "I am the resurrection, I am the resurrection," into the ears of men and maidens beneath these self-same stars.

And now a boat floats past, on its way to Karnak, silhouetted against the last-left light of the sky. There is music and song on board. The sound of the pipes is carried over the water and pulses to the ears, inflaming the imagination with the sorcery of its cadences and stirring the blood by its bold rhythm. The gentle breeze brings the scent of many flowers to the nostrils, and with these come drifting thoughts and undefined fancies, so that presently the busy considerations of the day are lulled and forgotten. The twilight seems to cloak the extent of the years, and in the gathering darkness the procession of the centuries is hidden. Yesterday and to-day are mingled together, and there is nothing to distinguish to the eye the one age from the other. An immortal, brought suddenly to the garden at this hour, could not say from direct observation whether he had descended from the clouds into the twentieth century before or the twentieth century after Christ; and the sound of the festal pipes in the passing boat would but serve to confuse him the more.

In such a garden as this the student will learn more Egyptology than he could assimilate in many an hour's study at home; for here his five senses play the student and Egypt herself is his teacher. While he may read in his books how this Pharaoh or that feasted o' nights in his palace beside the river, here, not in fallible imagination but in actual fact, he may see Nilus and the Libyan desert to which the royal eyes were turned, may smell the very perfume of the palace garden, and may hearken to the self-same sounds that lulled a king to sleep in Hundred-gated Thebes.

Not in the west, but only by the waters of the Nile will he learn how best to be an historian of ancient Egypt, and in what manner to make his studies of interest, as well as of technical value, to his readers, for he will here discover the great secret of his profession. Suddenly the veil will be lifted from his understanding, and he will become aware that Past and Present are so indissoluble as to be incapable of separate interpretation or single study. He will learn that there is no such thing as a distinct Past or a defined Present. "Yesterday this day's madness did prepare," and the affairs of bygone times must be interpreted in the light of recent events. The Past is alive to-day, and all the deeds of man in all the ages are living at this hour in offspring. There is no real death. The earthly grave will not hide, nor the mountain tomb imprison, the actions of the men of old Egypt, so consequent and fruitful are all human affairs. This is the knowledge which will make his work of lasting value; and nowhere save in Egypt can he acquire it. This, indeed, is the secret of the Sphinx; and only at the lips of the Sphinx itself can he learn it.



PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.

THE END