It is interesting, by the way, to note that in his eighth year the King

restored the tomb of Thutmosis IV., which had been robbed during the

revolution; and the inscription which the inspectors left behind them

was found on the wall when Mr Theodore Davis discovered the tomb a few

years ago. The plundering of the royal tombs is a typical instance of

the lawlessness of the times. The corruption, too, which followed on the

disorder was appalling; and wherever the King went he was confronted by

deceit, embezzlement, bribery, extortion, and official tyranny. Every

Government officer was attempting to obtain money from his subordinates

by illegal means; and _bakshish_--that bogie of the Nile Valley--cast

its shadow upon all men.

Horemheb stood this as long as he could; but at last, regarding justice

as more necessary than tact, we are told that "his Majesty seized a

writing-palette and scroll, and put into writing all that his Majesty

the King had said to himself." It is not possible to record here more

than a few of the good laws which he then made, but the following

examples will serve to show how near to his heart were the interests of

his people.

It was the custom for the tax-collectors to place that portion of a

farmer's harvest, which they had taken, upon the farmer's own boat, in

order to convey it to the public granary. These boats often failed to be

returned to their owners when finished with, and were ultimately sold by

the officials for their own profit. Horemheb, therefore, made the

following law:--

"If the poor man has made for himself a boat with its

sail, and, in order to serve the State, has loaded it

with the Government dues, and has been robbed of the

boat, the poor man stands bereft of his property and

stripped of his many labours. This is wrong, and the

Pharaoh will suppress it by his excellent measures. If

there be a poor man who pays the taxes to the two

deputies, and he be robbed of his property and his boat,

my majesty commands: that every officer who collects the

taxes and takes the boat of any citizen, this law shall

be executed against him, and his nose shall be cut off,

and he shall be sent in exile to Tharu. Furthermore,

concerning the tax of timber, my majesty commands that

if any officer find a poor man without a boat, then he

shall bring him a craft belonging to another man in which

to carry the timber; and in return for this let the

former man do the loading of the timber for the latter."

The tax-collectors were wont to commandeer the services of all the

slaves in the town, and to detain them for six or seven days, "so that

it was an excessive detention indeed." Often, too, they used to

appropriate a portion of the tax for themselves. The new law, therefore,

was as follows:--

"If there be any place where the officials are

tax-collecting, and any one shall hear the report saying

that they are tax-collecting to take the produce for

themselves, and another shall come to report saying, 'My

man slave or my female slave has been taken away and

detained many days at work by the officials,' the

offender's nose shall be cut off, and he shall be sent to

Tharu."

One more law may here be quoted. The police used often to steal the

hides which the peasants had collected to hand over to the Government as

their tax. Horemheb, having satisfied himself that a tale of this kind

was not merely an excuse for not paying the tax, made this law:--

"As for any policeman concerning whom one shall hear it

said that he goes about stealing hides, beginning with

this day the law shall be executed against him, by

beating him a hundred blows, opening five wounds, and

taking from him by force the hides which he took."

To carry out these laws he appointed two chief judges of very high

standing, who are said to have been "perfect in speech, excellent in

good qualities, knowing how to judge the heart." Of these men the King

writes: "I have directed them to the way of life, I have led them to the

truth, I have taught them, saying, 'Do not receive the reward of

another. How, then, shall those like you judge others, while there is

one among you committing a crime against justice?'" Under these two

officials Horemheb appointed many judges, who went on circuit around the

country; and the King took the wise step of arranging, on the one hand,

that their pay should be so good that they would not be tempted to take

bribes, and, on the other hand, that the penalty for this crime should

be most severe.

So many were the King's reforms that one is inclined to forget that he

was primarily a soldier. He appears to have made some successful

expeditions against the Syrians, but the fighting was probably near his

own frontiers, for the empire lost by Akhnaton was not recovered for

many years, and Horemheb seems to have felt that Egypt needed to learn

to rule herself before she attempted to rule other nations. An

expedition against some tribes in the Sudan was successfully carried

through, and it is said that "his name was mighty in the land of Kush,

his battle-cry was in their dwelling-places." Except for a semi-military

expedition which was dispatched to the land of Punt, these are the only

recorded foreign activities of the King; but that he had spent much

time in the organisation and improvement of the army is shown by the

fact that three years after his death the Egyptian soldiers were

swarming over the Lebanon and hammering at the doors of the cities of

Jezreel.

Had he lived for another few years he might have been famous as a

conqueror as well as an administrator, though old age might retard and

tired bones refuse their office. As it is, however, his name is written

sufficiently large in the book of the world's great men; and when he

died, about B.C. 1315, after a reign of some thirty-five years, he had

done more for Egypt than had almost any other Pharaoh. He found the

country in the wildest disorder, and he left it the master of itself,

and ready to become once more the master of the empire which Akhnaton's

doctrine of Peace and Goodwill had lost. Under his direction the purged

worship of the old gods, which for him meant but the maintenance of some

time-proved customs, had gained the mastery over the chimerical worship

of Aton; without force or violence he had substituted the practical for

the visionary; and to Amon and Order his grateful subjects were able to

cry, "The sun of him who knew thee not has set, but he who knows thee

shines; the sanctuary of him who assailed thee is overwhelmed in

darkness, but the whole earth is now in light."

The tomb of this great Pharaoh was cut in the rocks on the west side of

the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings, not far from the resting-place of

Amenhotep II. In the days of the later Ramesside kings the

tomb-plunderers entered the sepulchre, pulled the embalmed body of the

king to pieces in the search for hidden jewels, scattered the bones of

the three members of his family who were buried with him, and stole

almost everything of value which they found. There must have been other

robberies after this, and finally the Government inspectors of about

B.C. 1100 entered the tomb, and, seeing its condition, closed its mouth

with a compact mass of stones. The torrents of rain which sometimes fall

in winter in Egypt percolated through this filling, and left it

congealed and difficult to cut through; and on the top of this hard mass

tons of rubbish were tossed from other excavations, thus completely

hiding the entrance.

In this condition the tomb was found by Mr Davis in February 1908. Mr

Davis had been working on the side of the valley opposite to the tomb of

Rameses III., where the accumulations of _débris_ had entirely hidden

the face of the rocks, and, as this was a central and likely spot for a

"find," it was hoped that when the skin of rubbish had been cleared away

the entrance of at least one royal tomb would be exposed. Of all the

XVIIIth-Dynasty kings, the burial-places of only Thutmosis II.,

Tutankhamon, and Horemheb remained undiscovered, and the hopes of the

excavators concentrated on these three Pharaohs.

After a few weeks of digging, the mouth of a large shaft cut into the

limestone was cleared. This proved to lead into a small chamber

half-filled with rubbish, amongst which some fine jewellery, evidently

hidden here, was found. This is now well published by Mr Davis in

facsimile, and further mention of it here is unnecessary. Continuing the

work, it was not long before traces of another tomb became apparent, and

in a few days' time we were able to look down from the surrounding

mounds of rubbish upon the commencement of a rectangular cutting in the

rock. The size and style of the entrance left no doubt that the work was

to be dated to the end of the XVIIIth Dynasty, and the excavators were

confident that the tomb of either Tutankhamon or Horemheb lay before

them. Steps leading down to the entrance were presently uncovered, and

finally the doorway itself was freed from _débris_.

On one of the door-posts an inscription was now seen, written in black

ink by one of the Government inspectors of B.C. 1100. This stated, that

in the fourth year of an unknown king the tomb had been inspected, and

had been found to be that of Horemheb.

[Illustration: PL. XXII. The mouth of the tomb of Horemheb at the time

of its discovery. The author is seen emerging

from the tomb after the first entrance had

been effected. On the hillside the workmen

are grouped.]

[_Photo by Lady Glyn._

We had hoped now to pass into the tomb without further difficulty, but

in this we were disappointed, for the first corridor was quite choked

with the rubbish placed there by the inspectors. This corridor led down

at a steep angle through the limestone hillside, and, like all other

parts of the tomb, it was carefully worked. It was not until two days

later that enough clearing had been done to allow us to crawl in over

the rubbish, which was still piled up so nearly to the roof that there

was only just room to wriggle downwards over it with our backs pressing

against the stone above. At the lower end of the corridor there was a

flight of steps towards which the rubbish shelved, and, sliding down the

slope, we were here able to stand once more. It was obvious that the

tomb did not stop here, and work, therefore, had to be begun on the

rubbish which choked the stairway in order to expose the entrance to

further passages. A doorway soon became visible, and at last this was

sufficiently cleared to permit of our crawling into the next corridor,

though now we were even more closely squeezed between the roof and the

_débris_ than before.

The party which made the entrance consisted of Mr Davis; his assistant,

Mr Ayrton; Mr Harold Jones; Mr Max Dalison, formerly of the Egypt

Exploration Fund; and myself. Wriggling and crawling, we pushed and

pulled ourselves down the sloping rubbish, until, with a rattling

avalanche of small stones, we arrived at the bottom of the passage,

where we scrambled to our feet at the brink of a large rectangular well,

or shaft. Holding the lamps aloft, the surrounding walls were seen to be

covered with wonderfully preserved paintings executed on slightly

raised plaster. Here Horemheb was seen standing before Isis, Osiris,

Horus, and other gods; and his cartouches stood out boldly from amidst

the elaborate inscriptions. The colours were extremely rich, and, though

there was so much to be seen ahead, we stood there for some minutes,

looking at them with a feeling much akin to awe.

The shaft was partly filled with rubbish, and not being very deep, we

were able to climb down it by means of a ladder, and up the other side

to an entrance which formed a kind of window in the sheer wall. In

entering a large tomb for the first time, there are one or two scenes

which fix themselves upon the memory more forcefully than others, and

one feels as though one might carry these impressions intact to the

grave. In this tomb there was nothing so impressive as this view across

the well and through the entrance in the opposite wall. At one's feet

lay the dark pit; around one the gaudy paintings gleamed; and through

the window-like aperture before one, a dim suggestion could be obtained

of a white-pillared hall. The intense eagerness to know what was beyond,

and, at the same time, the feeling that it was almost desecration to

climb into those halls which had stood silent for thousands of years,

cast a spell over the scene and made it unforgetable.

This aperture had once been blocked up with stones, and the paintings

had passed across it, thus hiding it from view, so that a robber

entering the tomb might think that it ended here. But the trick was an

old one, and the plunderers had easily detected the entrance, had pulled

away the blocks, and had climbed through. Following in their footsteps,

we went up the ladder and passed through the entrance into the pillared

hall. Parts of the roof had fallen in, and other parts appeared to be

likely to do so at any moment. Clambering over the _débris_ we descended

another sloping corridor, which was entered through a cutting in the

floor of the hall, originally blocked up and hidden. This brought us

into a chamber covered with paintings, like those around the well; and

again we were brought to a standstill by the amazingly fresh colours

which arrested and held the attention.

We then passed on into the large burial-hall, the roof of which was

supported by crumbling pillars. Slabs of limestone had broken off here

and there and had crashed down on to the floor, bringing with them

portions of the ceiling painted with a design of yellow stars on a black

ground. On the walls were unfinished paintings, and it was interesting

to notice that the north, south, east, and west were clearly marked upon

the four walls for ceremonial purposes.

The main feature towards which our eyes were turned was the great

pink-granite sarcophagus which stood in the middle of the hall. Its

sides were covered with well-cut inscriptions of a religious nature; and

at the four corners there were figures of Isis and Nephthys, in relief,

with their wings spread out as though in protection around the body.

Looking into the sarcophagus, the lid having been thrown off by the

plunderers, we found it empty except for a skull and a few bones of more

than one person. The sarcophagus stood upon the limestone floor, and

under it small holes had been cut, in each of which a little wooden

statue of a god had been placed. Thus the king's body was, so to speak,

carried on the heads of the gods, and held aloft by their arms. This is

a unique arrangement, and has never before been found in any burial.

In all directions broken figures of the gods were lying, and two defaced

wooden statues of the king were overthrown beside the sarcophagus.

Beautiful pieces of furniture, such as were found by Mr Davis in the

tomb of Yuaa and Thuau, were not to be expected in the sepulchre of a

Pharaoh; for whereas those two persons were only mortals and required

mortal comforts in the Underworld, the king was a god and needed only

the comfort of the presence of other gods. Dead flowers were found here

and there amidst the _débris_, these being the remnant of the masses of

garlands which were always heaped around and over the coffin.

Peering into a little chamber on the right, we saw two skulls and some

broken bones lying in the corner. These appeared to be female, and one

of the skulls may have been that of Mutnezem, the queen. In another

small chamber on the left there was a fine painting of Osiris on the

back wall; and, crouching at the foot of this, a statuette of a god with

upraised hands had been placed. As we turned the corner and came upon it

in the full glare of the lamps, one felt that the arms were raised in

horror at sight of us, and that the god was gasping with surprise and

indignation at our arrival. In the floor of another ante-chamber a

square hole was cut, leading down to a small room. A block of stone had

neatly fitted over the opening, thus hiding it from view; but the

robbers had detected the crack, and had found the hiding-place. Here

there were a skull and a few bones, again of more than one person.

Altogether there must have been four bodies buried in the tomb; and it

seems that the inspectors, finding them strewn in all directions, had

replaced one skull in the sarcophagus, two in the side room, and one in

this hiding-place, dividing up the bones between these three places as

they thought fit. It may be that the king himself was buried in the

underground chamber, and that the sarcophagus was a sort of blind; for

he had seen the destruction caused by robbers in the tomb of Thutmosis

IV., which he had restored, and he may have made this attempt to secure

the safety of his own body. Whether this be so or not, however, Fate has

not permitted the body of the great king to escape the hands of the

destroyer, and it will now never be known with certainty whether one of

these four heads wore the crown of the Pharaohs.

The temperature was very great in the tomb, and the perspiration

streamed down our faces as we stood contemplating the devastation. Now

the electric lamps would flash upon the gods supporting the ransacked

sarcophagus, lighting for a moment their grotesque forms; now the

attention would concentrate upon some wooden figure of a

hippopotamus-god or cow-headed deity; and now the light would bring into

prominence the great overthrown statue of the king. There is something

peculiarly sensational in the examining of a tomb which has not been

entered for such thousands of years, but it must be left to the

imaginative reader to infuse a touch of that feeling of the dramatic

into these words. It would be hopeless to attempt to put into writing

those impressions which go to make the entering of a great Egyptian

sepulchre so thrilling an experience: one cannot describe the silence,

the echoing steps, the dark shadows, the hot, breathless air; nor tell

of the sense of vast Time the penetrating of it which stirs one so

deeply.

The air was too bad to permit of our remaining long so deep in the

bowels of the earth; and we presently made our way through halls and

corridors back to the upper world, scrambling and crashing over the

_débris_, and squeezing ourselves through the rabbit-hole by which we

had entered. As we passed out of this hot, dark tomb into the brilliant

sunlight and the bracing north wind, the gloomy wreck of the place was

brought before the imagination with renewed force. The scattered bones,

the broken statues, the dead flowers, grouped themselves in the mind

into a picture of utter decay. In some of the tombs which have been

opened the freshness of the objects has caused one to exclaim at the

inaction of the years; but here, where vivid and well-preserved

wall-paintings looked down on a jumbled collection of smashed fragments

of wood and bones, one felt how hardly the Powers deal with the dead.

How far away seemed the great fight between Amon and Aton; how futile

the task which Horemheb accomplished so gloriously! It was all over and

forgotten, and one asked oneself what it mattered whether the way was

difficult or the battle slow to win. In the fourth year of the reign of

Horemheb a certain harper named Neferhotep partly composed a song which

was peculiarly appropriate to the tune which ran in one's head at the

opening of the tomb of this Pharaoh whom the harper served--

"(1.) Behold the dwellings of the dead. Their walls fall

down; their place is no more: they are as though they had

never existed. (2.) That which hath come into being must

pass away again. The young men and maidens go to their

places; the sun riseth at dawn, and setteth again in the

hills of the west. Men beget and women conceive. The

children, too, go to the places which are appointed for

them. O, then, be happy! Come, scents and perfumes are

set before thee: _mahu_-flowers and lilies for the arms

and neck of thy beloved. Come, songs and music are before

thee. Set behind thee all cares; think only upon

gladness, until that day cometh whereon thou shalt go

down to the land which loveth silence."

Horemheb must often have heard this song sung in his palace at Thebes by

its composer; but did he think, one wonders, that it would be the walls

of his own tomb which would fall down, and his own bones which would be

almost as though they had never existed?

PART IV.

THE PRESERVATION OF THE TREASURY.

"Laugh and mock if you will at the worship of stone

idols, but mark ye this, ye breakers of images, that in

one regard the stone idol bears awful semblance of

Deity--the unchangefulness in the midst of change--the

same seeming will, and intent for ever and ever

inexorable!... And we, we shall die, and Islam will

wither away, and the Englishman straining far over to

hold his loved India, will plant a firm foot on the banks

of the Nile and sit in the seats of the Faithful, and

still that sleepless rock will lie watching and watching

the works of the new busy race, with those same sad

earnest eyes, and the same tranquil mien everlastingly."

--KINGLAKE: _Eothen_ (1844).

CHAPTER X.

THEBAN THIEVES.

Thebes was the ancient capital of Egypt, and its ruins are the most

extensive in the Nile Valley. On the east bank of the river, at the

modern towns of Luxor and Karnak, there are the remains of mighty

temples; and on the west bank, in the neighbourhood of the village of

Gurneh, tombs, mortuary chapels, and temples, literally cover the

ground. The inhabitants of these three places have for generations

augmented their incomes by a traffic in antiquities, and the peasants of

Gurneh have, more especially, become famous as the most hardy pilferers

of the tombs of their ancestors in all Egypt. In conducting this

lucrative business they have lately had the misfortune to be recognised

as thieves and robbers by the Government, and it is one of my duties to

point this out to them. As a matter of fact they are no more thieves

than you or I. It is as natural for them to scratch in the sand for

antiquities as it is for us to pick flowers by the roadside:

antiquities, like flowers, are the product of the soil, and it is

largely because the one is more rare than the other that its

promiscuous appropriation has been constituted an offence. The native

who is sometimes child enough to put his eyes out rather than serve in

the army, who will often suffer all manner of wrongs rather than carry

his case to the local courts, and who will hide his money under his bed

rather than trust it to the safest bank, is not likely to be intelligent

enough to realise that, on scientific grounds, he is committing a crime

in digging for scarabs. He is beginning to understand that in the eyes

of the law he is a criminal, but he has not yet learnt so to regard

himself. I here name him thief, for officially that is his designation;

but there is no sting in the word, nor is any insult intended. By all

cultured persons the robbery of antiquities must be regarded as a grave

offence, and one which has to be checked. But the point is ethical; and

what has the Theban to do with ethics? The robbery of antiquities is

carried out in many different ways and from many different motives.

Sometimes it is romantic treasure hunting that the official has to deal

with; sometimes it is adventurous robbery with violence; sometimes it is

the taking advantage of chance discoveries; sometimes it is the

pilfering of objects found in authorised excavations; and sometimes it

is the stealing of fragments smashed from the walls of the ancient

monuments. All these forms of robbery, except the last, may call for the

sympathy of every reader of these lines who happens not to have

cultivated that vaguely defined "archæological sense" which is,

practically, the product of this present generation alone; and in the

instances which are here to be given the point of view of the "Theban

thief" will be readily appreciated.

[Illustration: PL. XXIII. A modern Theban Fellah-woman and her child.]

[_Photo by E. Bird._

Treasure hunting is a relic of childhood that remains, like all other

forms of romance and adventure, a permanently youthful feature in our

worn old hearts. It has been drilled into us by the tales of our

boyhood, and, in later life, it has become part of that universal desire

to get something for nothing which lies behind our most honest efforts

to obtain the goods of this world. Who has not desired the hidden wealth

of the late Captain Kidd, or coveted the lost treasure of the Incas? I

recently wrote an article which was entitled "Excavations in Egypt," but

the editor of the magazine in which it appeared hastily altered these

words to "Treasure Hunting in Egypt," and thereby commanded the

attention of twice the number of readers. Can we wonder, then, that this

form of adventure is so often met with in Egypt, the land of hidden

treasure? The Department of Antiquities has lately published a

collection of mediæval traditions with regard to this subject, which is

known as the Book of the Pearl. In it one is told the exact places where

excavations should be made to lay bare the wealth of the ancients. "Go

to such and such a spot," says this curious book, "and dig to the depth

of so many cubits, and you will find a trap-door; descend through this

and you will find a chamber wherein are forty jars filled with gold.

Take what you want, and give thanks to God." Many of the sites referred

to have been literally hacked out of all recognition by the picks and

spades of thousands of gold-seekers; and it may be that sometimes their

efforts have been rewarded, since a certain amount of genuine

information is embodied in the traditions. Sir Gaston Maspero, the

Director-General of the Department of Antiquities, tells a story of how

a native came to him asking permission to excavate at a certain spot

where he believed treasure to be hidden. Sir Gaston accompanied him to

the place, and a tunnel was bored into what appeared to be virgin sand

and rock. At the end of the first day's work the futility of his labours

was pointed out to the man, but he was not to be daunted. For two more

days he stood watching the work from morn to nightfall with hope burning

in his eyes, and on the following morning his reward came. Suddenly the

ground gave way before the picks of the workmen, and a hole was seen

leading into a forgotten cave. In this cave the implements of mediæval

coiners were discovered, and an amount of metal, false and true, was

found which had been used by them in the process of their business.

A short time ago a man applied for permission to perform a similar kind

of excavation at a place called Nag Hamadi, and in my absence

permission was given him. On my return the following report was

submitted: "... Having reached the spot indicated the man started to

blow the stones by means of the Denamits. Also he slaught a lamb,

thinking that there is a treasure, and that when the lamb being slaught

he will discover it at once." In plainer English, the man had blown up

the rocks with dynamite, and had attempted to further his efforts by

sacrificing a lamb to the _djin_ who guarded the treasure. The _djin_,

however, was not thus to be propitiated, and the gold of the Pharaohs

was never found. More recently the watchmen of the famous temple of Dêr

el Bahri found themselves in trouble owing to the discovery that part of

the ancient pavement showed signs of having been raised, stone by stone,

in order that the ground below might be searched for the treasure which

a tradition, such as those in the Book of the Pearl, had reported as

lying hid there.

Almost as romantic as treasure hunting is robbery with violence. We all

remember our boyhood's fascination for piracy, smuggling, and the

profession of Dick Turpin; and to the Theban peasant, who is essentially

youthful in his ideas, this form of fortune hunting has irresistible

attractions. When a new tomb is discovered by authorised archæologists,

especially when it is situated in some remote spot such as the Valley of

the Kings, there is always some fear of an armed raid; and police guard

the spot night and day until the antiquities have been removed to Cairo.

The workmen who have been employed in the excavation return to their

homes with wonderful tales of the wealth which the tomb contains, and in

the evening the discovery is discussed by the women at the well where

the water is drawn for the village, with the result that it very soon

assumes prodigious proportions, inflaming the minds of all men with the

greed of gold. Visitors often ask why it is that the mummies of the

Pharaohs are not left to lie each in its own tomb; and it is argued that

they look neither congruous nor dignified in the glass cases of the

museum. The answer is obvious to all who know the country: put them back

in their tombs, and, without continuous police protection, they will be

broken into fragments by robbers, bolts and bars notwithstanding. The

experiment of leaving the mummy and some of the antiquities _in situ_

has only once been tried, and it has not been a complete success. It was

done in the case of the tomb of Amenhotep II. at Thebes, the mummy being

laid in its original sarcophagus; and a model boat, used in one of the

funeral ceremonies, was left in the tomb. One night the six watchmen who

were in charge of the royal tombs stated that they had been attacked by

an armed force; the tomb in question was seen to have been entered, the

iron doors having been forced. The mummy of the Pharaoh was found lying

upon the floor of the burial-hall, its chest smashed in; and the boat

had disappeared, nor has it since been recovered. The watchmen showed

signs of having put up something of a fight, their clothes being riddled

with bullet-holes; but here and there the cloth looked much as though it

had been singed, which suggested, as did other evidence, that they

themselves had fired the guns and had acted the struggle. The truth of

the matter will never be known, but its lesson is obvious. The mummy was

put back into its sarcophagus, and there it has remained secure ever

since; but one never knows how soon it will be dragged forth once more

to be searched for the gold with which every native thinks it is

stuffed.

Some years ago an armed gang walked off with a complete series of

mortuary reliefs belonging to a tomb at Sakkârah. They came by night,

overpowered the watchmen, loaded the blocks of stone on to camels, and

disappeared into the darkness. Sometimes it is an entire cemetery that

is attacked; and, if it happens to be situated some miles from the

nearest police-station, a good deal of work can be done before the

authorities get wind of the affair. Last winter six hundred men set to

work upon a patch of desert ground where a tomb had been accidently

found, and, ere I received the news, they had robbed a score of little

graves, many of which must have contained objects purchasable by the

dealers in antiquities for quite large sums of money. At Abydos a tomb

which we had just discovered was raided by the villagers, and we only

regained possession of it after a rapid exchange of shots, one of which

came near ending a career whose continuance had been, since birth, a

matter of great importance to myself. But how amusing the adventure must

have been for the raiders!

The appropriation of treasure-trove come upon by chance, or the digging

out of graves accidentally discovered, is a very natural form of robbery

for the natives to indulge in, and one which commends itself to the

sympathies of all those not actively concerned in its suppression. There

are very few persons even in western countries who would be willing to

hand over to the Government a hoard of gold discovered in their own back

garden. In Egypt the law is that the treasure-trove thus discovered

belongs to the owner of the property; and thus there is always a certain

amount of excavation going on behind the walls of the houses. It is also

the law that the peasants may carry away the accumulated rubbish on the

upper layers of ancient town sites, in order to use it as a fertiliser

for their crops, since it contains valuable phosphates. This work is

supervised by watchmen, but this does not prevent the stealing of almost

all the antiquities which are found. As illegal excavators these

_sebakhîn_, or manure-diggers, are the worst offenders, for they search

for the phosphates in all manner of places, and are constantly coming

upon tombs or ruins which they promptly clear of their contents. One

sees them driving their donkeys along the roads, each laden with a sack

of manure, and it is certain that some of these sacks contain

antiquities. In Thebes many of the natives live inside the tombs of the

ancient nobles, these generally consisting of two or three rock-hewn

halls from which a tunnel leads down to the burial-chamber. Generally

this tunnel is choked with _débris_, and the owner of the house will

perhaps come upon it by chance, and will dig it out, in the vain hope

that earlier plunderers have left some of the antiquities undisturbed.

It recently happened that an entire family was asphyxiated while

attempting to penetrate into a newly discovered tunnel, each member

entering to ascertain the fate of the previous explorer, and each being

overcome by the gases. On one occasion I was asked by a native to

accompany him down a tunnel, the entrance of which was in his stable, in

order to view a sarcophagus which lay at the bottom. We each took a

candle, and, crouching down to avoid the low roof, we descended the

narrow, winding passage, the loose stones sliding beneath our feet. The

air was very foul; and below us there was the thunderous roar of

thousands of wings beating through the echoing passage--the wings of

evil-smelling bats. Presently we reached this uncomfortable zone. So

thickly did the bats hang from the ceiling that the rock itself seemed

to be black; but as we advanced, and the creatures took to their wings,

this black covering appeared to peel off the rock. During the entire

descent this curious spectacle of regularly receding blackness and

advancing grey was to be seen a yard or so in front of us. The roar of

wings was now deafening, for the space into which we were driving the

bats was very confined. My guide shouted to me that we must let them

pass out of the tomb over our heads. We therefore crouched down, and a

few stones were flung into the darkness ahead. Then, with a roar and a

rush of air, they came, bumping into us, entangling themselves in our

clothes, slapping our faces and hands with their unwholesome wings, and

clinging to our fingers. At last the thunder died away in the passage

behind us, and we were able to advance more easily, though the ground

was alive with the bats maimed in the frantic flight which had taken

place, floundering out of our way and squeaking shrilly. The sarcophagus

proved to be of no interest, so the encounter with the bats was to no

purpose.

The pilfering of antiquities found during the course of authorised

excavations is one of the most common forms of robbery. The overseer

cannot always watch the workmen sufficiently closely to prevent them

pocketing the small objects which they find, and it is an easy matter to

carry off the stolen goods, even though the men are searched at the end

of the day. A little girl minding her father's sheep and goats in the

neighbourhood of the excavations, and apparently occupying her hands

with the spinning of flax, is perhaps the receiver of the objects. Thus

it is more profitable to dig for antiquities even in authorised

excavations than to work the water-hoist, which is one of the usual

occupations of the peasant. Pulling the hoisting-pole down, and swinging

it up again with its load of water many thousands of times in the day,

is monotonous work; whereas digging in the ground, with the eyes keenly

watching for the appearance of antiquities, is always interesting and

exciting. And why should the digger refrain from appropriating the

objects which his pick reveals? If he does not make use of his

opportunities and carry off the antiquities, the western director of the

works will take them to his own country and sell them for his own

profit. All natives believe that the archæologists work for the purpose

of making money. Speaking of Professor Flinders Petrie, a peasant said

to me the other day: "He has worked five-and-twenty years now; he must

be _very_ rich." He would never believe that the antiquities were given

to museums without any payment being made to the finder.

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 £50 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.

[Illustration: PL. XXIV. A modern Gournawi beggar.]

[_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 _café_ 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 archæologists, "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 archæologist, 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

archæologist, who is sometimes called upon to pay £10 or £20 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 £14, 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 £400, 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 archæologist 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

archæological 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 archæologist 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 _fellahîn_; 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 archæologically 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.

[Illustration: PL. XXV. The island and temples of Philæ when the

reservoir is empty.]

[_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 archæologically 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. Archæologists, 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 archæologically) 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 archæologist

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 archæologists 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 archæological 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 Dabôd. 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 _débris_. 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 archæologists. 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.

ARCHÆOLOGY IN THE OPEN.

In this chapter I propose to state the case in favour of the

archæologist 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 archæologist 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 archæologist 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 mediæval 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 archæologists

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 archæologist,

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 archæologists. 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.

[Illustration: PL. XXVI. A relief representing Queen Tiy, from the tomb

of Userhat at Thebes. This relief was stolen

from the tomb, and found its way to the

Brussels Museum, where it is shown in the

damaged condition seen in Plate xxvii.]

[_Photo by H. Carter._

The archæologist 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 archæology 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 archæology 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

archæologist 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

archæologists 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 anæmic 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.

Archæology 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 archæologist. 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 archæologists. 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 archæological 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.

[Illustration: PL. XXVII. A Relief representing Queen Tiy, from the tomb

of Userhat, Thebes.

--BRUSSELS MUSEUM.

(See PL. xxvi.)]

[_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 Dêr 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

Sakkâra, 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 archæological 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 archæology, 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 archæologist 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 archæologist 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 archæology 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 archæology.

An archæologist 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 archæologist 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 archæologist 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 archæologist 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 archæologist 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 archæologist 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 lacunæ 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.