The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924088412584 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 3 1924 088 412 584 DATE DUE Jain yjorary GSVLORD PRINTED IN U.S.A. BY NILE AND TIGRIS VOLUME I. Frontispiece, vol. i. Head of a black basalt portrait statue of Ptolemy XIII {?). Brit. Mus., No. 1641. BY NILE AND TIGRIS A NARRATIVE OF JOURNEYS IN EGYPT AND MESOPOTAMIA ON BEHALF OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM BETWEEN THE YEARS 1886 AND 191 3. By sir E. a. WALLIS BUDGE, Kt., M.A. AND LiTT.D. Cambridge, M.A. and D.Litt. Oxford, D.LiT. Durham, F.S.A. SOMETIME SCHOLAR OF CHRIST'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, AND TVRWHITT HEBREW SCHOLAR. KEEPER OF THE EGYPTIAN AND ASSYRIAN ANTIQUITIES, BRITISH MUSEUM. VOLUME I. With numerous Illustrations. LONDON : JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 1920. -^^G.-.^^"-^ PREFACE. In 1907 I published a work entitled " The Egyptian Sudan," in which I gave some account of the history of that country in ancient and modern times, and a descrip- tion of the excavations which I had made on the pyramid- fields of Napata and the Island of Meroe, during the years 1899-1905, for the Trustees of the British Museum. After the pubUcation of that work, I decided to put on record, when circumstances should permit, a narrative of my three Missions to Mesopotamia in 1887, 1888 and 1890, and of my many Missions to Egypt to excavate and to acquire antiquities for the Trustees of the British Museum, and the present volume is the result of this decision. At the suggestion of friends I have prefaced my narrative by some notes on the influences and circumstances which led me to study the ancient languages of Western Asia, Eg5rpt, and Ethiopia, and determined the work of my life in the Department of Oriental Antiquities, ^ in the British Museum. In the present volume, as in my work on the Egyptian Sudan, the narrative is based on series of letters written to my wife. With one exception, these letters all reached home, thanks to the arrangements that I made personally with the Tattariyin, or Turkish postal couriers ; and my note-books furnish the main facts in the period covered by the missing letter. In the course of my narrative, I have often given the names of people who have helped me in my work abroad. But there are many others whom I have not named, ' The title of the Department was changed by the Trustees in 1886 to " Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities." vi Preface. both Europeans and natives, who also helped me there ; and to them all I offer my thanks. Furthermore, my grateful thanks are due to three devoted friends who read the proof-sheets of this book, and, though in their criticisms of it they dealt very faithfully with me, its completion is largely due to their encouragement and sympathy. With regard to the illustrations, I beg to offer my thanks to the Trustees of the British Museum for permitting me to photograph some of the objects that I acquired for them in these journeys ; and to my colleague, Mr. Idris Bell, for selecting the most suitable passages in the Greek papyri. I would also thank my old friend, Mr. A. B. Holland, for placing at my disposal a number of photographs that he took on the Tigris, Euphrates and Karun, on which rivers his official position gave him unrivalled opportunities ; and like- wise Captain the Rev. H. R. Cooke, M.C., Vicar of Princetown, for photographs of Mosul and Samarra. Whilst writing the description of the "Arch" of Ctesiphon I asked Mr. Holland to make enquiries in Baghdad with the view of finding out when the side of it which is wanting collapsed, and the reason for its collapse. In a letter recently received from him he tells me that a friend of his in Baghdad has found in a diary kept by the late Mr. Svoboda of that city, a statement to the effect that one half of the "Arch " of Ctesiphon fell down in the spring of 1887. The Tigris rose in that year to a very great height, and its waters spread in all directions for miles, and flooded the site of the "Arch," causing one side of it to collapse. E. A. WALLIS BUDGE. British Museum. January 2nd, 1920. CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. PAGE Prolegomena. Early Stxjdies in the British Museum ... 3 Cambridge 54 First Mission, 1886-87. Excavation of Tombs at AswAn ... 76 Second Mission, 1887-88. Egypt, BaghdAd and Babylon ... 123 Some Account of Baldak, Baldac, Baudas, Babylon, New Babylon, Bagdet or Baghdad 185 Journey to Babil (Babylon), IJillah, and Birs-i-NimrGd (Borsippa) 223 Native Views on Excavations in Mesopotamia and on the Trade in Anticas 268 Some Account of Babi-ilu (Babylon), the " Gate of God," AND OF THE Excavations which HAVE been MADE there ... 275 Return to Baghdad via AbO Habbah and Der 311 Third Mission, 1888-89. Constantinople. Across the Desert to MdsuL. Journey to Baghdad by Raft f.. 341 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS IN VOLUME I. Head of a portrait statue of Ptolemy XIII (?) Frontispiece The Elysian Fields. From a painted coffin from Al-Barshah To face page 92 Gravestone of Muhammad, son of 'UbM Allah, with Kiifi inscription „ 97 Gravestone of Barakah, the daughter of Husen, with Kufi inscription ,, 99 Monolithic shrine dedicated to Horus of Philae by Ptolemy IX and Cleopatra ,, 102 Semicircular engraved ivory amulet of the lady Seneb ,, 115 Wooden tablets of the waxen book inscribed with documents written with the stilus in tachy- graphic symbols, and a few memoranda in Greek Painted funerary stele of Sebek-hetep Chapter and vignette from the Papyrus of Nu ... Letter from Tushratta, King of Mitani, to Amen- hetep III, King of Egypt Portrait figure of Herui, a high official, wearing festal gold ornaments The Creek at Basrah The Toftib of Ezra The Arch of Ctesiphon in its present state The Arch of Ctesiphon. (From a drawing by Flandin) The Custom House at Baghdad The Courtyard and Mosque of Shikh 'Abd al- Kadar The minaret of the Mosque of Jama' al-Ghazl ... The Tomb of Shekh Ma'ruf in Western Baghdad Plan of Baghdad by Ta vernier Plan of Baghdad by Niebuhr .. 117 .. 136 }i 137 it 140 ft 148 it 164 a 172 176 *.. Page 179 To face page 182 jj 190 it a 194 196 ... Page 201 ft 203 List of Illustrations in Volume 1. ix The Tomb and Mosque of ShSkh 'Omar at Baghdad Plan of Baghdad by Felix Jones The Bridge of Boats at Baghdad The Courtyard of the British Residency at Baghdad, with the Sikh Guard and Staff Babylonian clay tablet and case Khan Iskandariyah The Mounds of Tall Ibrahim The Mosque of Hasan and Husen at Karbala ... The Tomb of 'Ajdshcih Khanum, the so-called " Tomb of Zubedah " The Ruins of Birs-i-Nimrud Remains of the ziggurat of the Temple of Nebo of Borsippa at Birs-i-Nimrud The basalt lion at Babylon discovered by M. I'Abbe Beauchamps in 1782 Plan of Babylon (after Koldewey) The Mosque and Tombs of the Imams Musa and Taki at Kazimen The remains of the ziggurat of Dur Kurigalzu at 'Akar Kuf, near Baghdad „ 326 Bridge over the Karun River, built by the Emperor Valerian ,, 330 Green basalt portrait figure of a king of the Xlllth dynasty „ 332 Vignette from the Papyrus of Ani, Scribe and Chancellor of the Religious Endowments of Thebes and Abydos ,, 335 Introductory vignette from the Papyrus of Nekht, a " real scribe," and Captain of the Royal Bowmen ,, 336 A column of hieratic text from the papyrus containing the Precepts of Amen-hetep ... ,. 337 Predynastic hunting scene „ 338 A page of the Karshuni Text of the Great Chronicle of the Patriarch Michael, who sat from A.D. 1166 to 1199 .. 415 To face page 204 ... Page 207 To face page 208 >t 230 ft 235 It 246 ... Page 249 To face page 253 ti 254 ... Page 255 To face page 256 II 288 ... Page 293 To fact page 322 PROLEGOMENA (EARLY STUDIES) 1865-1883. PROLEGOMENA. (Early Studies.) Love for the East and for the things of the East was born in me, and this is not surprising seeing that several generations of my forbears served the Honourable East India Company in Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, and at Al-Basrah (Busra) on the Shatt-al-'Arab, and at various ports in the Persian Gulf. My earliest recollec- tions are associated with figures of Indian gods, sandal wood and red lacquer boxes, inlaid stands, curious plaques inlaid with mother-of-pearl and coloured woods, carved brass vessels of weird shapes, strange objects from China, Japan, and Java, which filled me with wonder, and bundles of strips of inscribed palm leaves, which I was told were books. These last were a perpetual marvel to me, and even in those days I was fascinated by the strange-looking characters, and longed for someone to explain them to me, and help me to read and imder- stand them. In 1865 I was sent to school, and we were worked hard, for the masters spared neither themselves nor us. We began work at six in the morning, winter and summer, and the periods allowed for games and recreation were not so generous as those which schoolboys enjoy at the present time. The head master, who was a kinsman of mine, beheved that it Wcis good for boys to read books on any subject unconnected with their lessons when the tasks for the day were satisfactorily disposed of, and to a few of the older boys he practically gave the run of his own private library. This Ubrary he inherited from one of my Quaker forbears, who had been an eager but non-productive student of the Languages and Literatures of Semitic peoples, and it contained many hundreds of volumes, all connected with the subjects of his special study. The Greek, Latin, French and Italian classics, A 2 4 A Quaker Library. standard annotated editions of the works of ancient authors, etc., were kept in another of the school houses for general use. I looked for books which would tell me about India and China, and the things from these countries which I had been accustomed to see, but I looked in vain. More than one half of the books in the library were devoted to systems of religion invented by European theologians, whose views were of a very rigid and uncompromising character. Besides these there was a whole row of old hymn books, ^ chiefly of the eighteenth century, and scores of volumes and pamphlets explaining and commenting on the views and tenets of the Quakers, Muggletonians, Sandemaiiians, Glassites, Wesleyans, Swedenb'orgians, Calvinists, Scotch Cove- nanters, Welsh Evangelists, Baptists of many kinds, Plymouth Brethren, etc. Among the Oriental books were the famous Lexicons of Golius and Freytag (Arabic), Cast ell and Schaff (Syriac), Buxtorf and Gesenius (Hebrew), and Ludolf (Ethiopic), many printed editions of Semitic versions of the Old and New Testaments, Buxtorf's Treatise on the Hebrew Vowel Points, the Polyglot of Walton, a Latin translation of the Kur'an, and a number of elementary books and grammars by writers whose names are now rarely mentioned. Every boy who had the run of this library was * The books which treated of theology and systems of salvation I found dull, and a few of them were terrifying, but there was much in the hymn books which interested and amused me, and many verses of them I committed to memory. Thus Mr. John Peat, in singing of the end of the world, says : — " The bishops will then lodge with devils and swine Instead of a silk gown to clothe the false rubbish, Or bottle of claret to please his proud heart. Or fine high-cocked mitre to make him look bobbish, The waters of death will new torments impart." Of Eve Mr. J. Miller wrote : — " Before she did a being come She was by God designed, A net to catch the Devil in, And propagate mankind." Hebrew and Syriac Studies. 5 expected to choose a subject, and to study it systematic- ally, and once a week the head master asked him ques- tions about his reading, with the view of finding out if the books were being used by him to the best advantage. As I wanted to learn all I could about the wars of the kings of Israel and Judah, and as the idea of being able to read the Books of Samuel and the Books of the Kings in the original attracted me greatly, I determined to learn Hebrew. The head master consulted Mr. Charles W. Seager,^ the distinguished translator of the Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon of Simonis, at that time a famous work, and by his advice I was allowed to work regularly at Wolff's Hebrew Grammar, and at some of the easier passages in the Hebrew text of the Five Books of Moses. After I had worked at Hebrew for a couple of years, Mr. Seager added Syriac to my studies, and under his guidance I read the Four Gospels in the Peshitta Version, as edited by Dr. Lee for the British and Foreign Bible Society. He was a firm believer in the value of the study of Semitic languages educationally as well as theologically, and every one who was brought into close contact with him caught some of the fire of his enthusiasm, and worked willingly for him, and strove to win his approval. During the last few years of his life Mr. Seager devoted much time and attention to the cuneiform inscriptions, which the translations of George Smith had helped to bring prominently before the learned public. ^ He was an Oxford man, and lectured on Hebrew and other Semitic dialects under Dr. Pusey. He went over to Rome, and in 1874 Monsignor Capel (died 191 1) appointed him to the chair of Hebrew and Comparative Philology in the College of Higher Studies at Kensington, which was intended to be the nucleus of a Roman Catholic University. From 1869-1877 he was one of the ablest and most trusted advisers of Dr. Samuel Birch on the affairs of the Society of BibUcal Archaeology. I continued to work under him for several years, and visited him at his house on Brook Green weekly for the purpose. I received my last lessons from him during the summer of the year in which he died (1878). I found in him a kind, helpful, and judicious friend. He made no attempt to modify or change my religious views, as he believed me to be " invincibly ignorant." 6 George Smith and the Deluge Tablet. In the study of these he saw great educational advan- tages, but he was convinced that no student had any prospect of mastering their contents unless he was equipped with a good working knowledge of Biblical Hebrew and Syriac. By his advice I obtained in 1871 Smith's "Phonetic Values of Cuneiform Characters "^ and his " Annals of Ashur-bani-pal," and began to copy out the cuneiform characters, and to learn their values. In December, 1872, Smith read before the Society of BibHcal Archaeology his translation of the " Chaldean Account of the Deluge," three fragmentary copies of which existed in the British Museum. The value of the contents of several of the larger fragments had been recognized by Rawlinson and Oppert* some years pre- viously, but Smith was the first to arrange the fragments in their proper order, and to give a connected rendering of the legend in English. The paper was read in the very large room at g. Conduit Street, which was usually employed for exhibitions of pictures. The portion of the room set apart for the general public was crowded, and the platform was packed with scholars, theologians, archaeologists, and politicians, including Mr. W. E. Gladstone and Mr. ChUders, and the audience listened breathlessly whilst Smith, with characteristic modesty, described the Legend of the Sumerian Noah. The discussion which followed was worthy of the paper, and was most unusually interesting.* The immediate result of Smith's paper, which marks * This list contained all cuneiform signs of which the values had been deduced by Hincks, and all the signs in the Ust which Sir Henry Rawhnson had compiled for his own private use, and the additions made to it by Smith himself. ' See The Times, December 8th, 1872, where Rawlinson is reported to have said that 12 or 15 years ago (i.e., between 1857 and i860) he had just escaped discovering the bit of the tablet which actually mentioned the Flood. • Sir Henry Rawlinson presided, and among those on the platform were Dean and Lady Augusta Stanley, Mr. Giffard, Q.C. (the present Lord Halsbury), J. M. Rodwell, Samuel Birch, and Emmanuel Deutsch. The Times remarks (December 14th, 1872, p. 7) " The meeting concluded at a late hour." Introduction to Birch. 7 an epoch in the annals of Assyriology, was a rush to the British Museum by the pubUc to see the baked clay tablets from Nineveh, from which the Legend had been recovered. Among those who went was Mr. Seager, and he took me with him. He called upon Dr. Samuel Birch, Keeper of Oriental Antiquities, and introduced me to him, and whilst Mr. Seager told him of the attempts I had made to learn the cuneiform characters, he listened with much interest. As we were leaving he told me that I might come to him there in that room during official hours, whenever I could find time to do so, and that he would lend me books which would help me, as I was too young to be admitted to the reading-room. I lost no time in claiming his promised help, and I soon became a regular visitor to the little room, which was entered through a door at the south-west corner of the Nineveh Gallery, and was guarded by Dr. Birch's stem-looking but benevolent attendant, Mr. Slaughter. This room no longer exists, the building of the Mausoleum Room making its removal necessary. When Dr. Birch found that I was availing myself of the privilege of reading in his room to the best of my abiUty, he began to select works from the library of his department for me to read, and when necessary he had books brought from the Department of Printed Books for my use. In this way I became familiar with the works of Rich, Kinneir, Buckingham, Ker Porter, Welsted, Chesney, Layard, Loftus, and other authori- ties on Mesopotamian travel and discovery. All these works I was obliged to read in the Museum, for they could not be removed from the building, and I found it difficult to obtain the books I needed for work at home. In the summer of 1873 I was introduced by W. R. Cooper, 1 Secretary of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1 This remarkable man was " discovered " by Mr. J. Bonomi, Curator of Sir John Soane's Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields, who found him when still a boy earning his living by designing patterns for carpets. Being greatly impressed by some of his Egyptian designs, Bonomi advised him to devote himself to Egyptological work, and helped him to obtain it. He studied the writings of Birch, Chabas, 8 Introduction to George Smith. to W. S. W. Vaux/ Secretary of the Royal Society of Literature, who allowed me to borrow many books from the Library of the Society, and take them home to read. In the autumn of the same year I was introduced by Dr. Birch to George Smith,^ soon after his return from de Rouge, and other Egyptologists with success, and he wrote a number of papers and pamphlets, " Egyptian Obelisks," the " Serpent Myths of Egypt," etc. His zeal, enthusiasm, tireless activity, and tact enabled him to draw a great many scholars together, and induced them to devote their energies to a common object. Though neither an Egyptologist nor Assyriologist, he succeeded in founding the two series of books, "Records of the Past," and the "Archaic Classics," and in establishing the " Archaic Classes," and in filling the " Transactions " of the Society of Bibliced Archaeology with valuable papers. He was tall in stature, but his stoop made him to appear of medium height ; he had finely cut features and a large aquiline nose. He was nick- named "the Etruscan" because his features resembled those of the male figure on- an Etruscan Sarcophagus* in the British Museum. His zeal and activity consumed his frail body, and an attack of phthisis compelled him to retire to Ventnor in 1876, where he died two years later at the early age of 35. ^ Born February 28th, 1818, died June 21st, 1885. He entered the Museimi in 1841, and was Keeper of Coins and Medals from 1861 till 1870. He was President of the Numismatic Society from 1855 till 1874, and Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society from 1875 tiU his death. His works, " Nineveh and Persepolis," which went through several editions, and " Persia," did much to popularize the study of Oriental Archaeology in England. I visited him frequently at his house, 102, Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, and saw there Rawlinson's original copy of the texts of the Behistun Inscriptions. He showed me great kindness, and lent me the volumes of Rawlinson's " Cuneiform Inscriptions." ^ He was at that time Dr. Birch's assistant. I remember that he was a man of medium height, shy and nervous. He was thoroughly tired out, and had found travelling through the desert to Nineveh very exhausting. He had a broad, high forehead, and keen eyes set rather close together, and he wore a short beard. His hands were small, and his fingers were long and had curiously pointed tips. The staff of the Museum generally saw very little of him, and he passed his days in his little room on the south-west staircase in sorting tablets and in copying texts, which he took home to work out. A fairly good portrait of him appeared in the Christian Herald for November 17th, 1876 (No. 46), and a memoir, by Mr. Turpin, of the British Museum, and a summary of his work accompanied it. * B. 609, published by A. S. Murray, Greek and Etruscan Terracotta Sarcophagi in the British Museum. London, 1898, fol. plates IX-XI. His Missions to Mesopotamia. g his First Mission to Assyria. He was describing his work among the ruins of Kuyunjik (Nineveh), and its difficulties, with an air almost of apology, although the results which he obtained proved that his Mission had been a splendid success. His portion of modesty was so great that I have since thought that he left very little of that quality for the use of later Assyriologists who have built upon his foundations. He was kind to me, and was interested to hear that I had worked at his " Sign-List " and " Ashur-bani-pal," and he promised to give me a list of the errata in his " Phonetic Values," and of the signs which must be added to the work. He told me that there was only one way of learning cunei- form characters, and that was by copying a piece of text each day, and by trying to transliterate the signs in it. He cared for Assyrian texts and for very little else. I remember feeling that he seemed to think that the time I had spent in reading books of Mesopotamian travel was so much time wasted, and that he took very little interest in the early literature of Assyriology. He possessed some knowledge of Hebrew, and was able to use the Hebrew-English Lexicon, edited by Tregelles, with great advantage, but he attached little importance to the other Semitic dialects for his special line of study, and he made no attempt to learn Syriac or Arabic. The works of Grotefend and Lassen were sealed books to him, for he could not read either German or Latin. Before leaving the room he suggested that Dr. Birch should let me have from the cases in the Gallery some of the fragments of the historical texts that he had pub- lished in his " History of Ashur-bani-pal," and that I should copy them, and collate my copies with his printed text in order to correct my mistakes. This suggestion was readily agreed to, and fragments of tablets were given out to me to copy in Dr. Birch's room whenever I could find time to go to the Museum. Soon after my conversa- tion with Smith he left England on his Second Mission to Assyria, and was absent for several months. On his return he brought back a mass of valuable new material, and many fragments of tablets, which he succeeded in 10 Oriental Congress in London. rejoining to their counterparts, some of which had been obtained by himself on his former Mission, and some by Layard. His time was very fully occupied, and I saw little of him. I continued to work on the lines which he suggested, and was helped from time to time by Sir Henry Rawlinson, who was then actively engaged at the Museum in revising the plates of the fourth volume of his great corpus of texts, the " Cuneiform Inscrip- tions of Western Asia." He gave me a set of plates of this volume, and a copy of the first volume, which contained a mass of historical texts, and he lent me his working copy of cuneiform characters, which he had compiled for the use of Mr. Bowler, the lithographer. On several occasions he tested my progress by asking me to read to him portions of the " Standard " Inscription of Ashur-nasir-pal from the bas-reliefs in the Nimrud Gallery. In 1874 the Oriental Congress met in London, and Dr. Birch was unanimously elected President. I had the good fortune to see and to talk with many of the distinguished Orientalists from the Continent who visited Dr. Birch at this time, and from their conversations with him I learned a great deal about Oriental matters. I also made the acquaintance of Mr. Basil Cooper, ^ a writer on TAe Times, and he introduced me to Mr. William Simpson,^ the famous artist, for some of whose Oriental ^ He was deputed by the Editor of The Times to report the meetings of the Oriental Congress, and his abstracts of papers and his summaries of discussions were said to be admirable, both as regards substance and form. He took a keen personal interest in the discoveries which were made in the early " seventies " by Assyriologists and Egyptologists, and it was well said of him that he made the " dry bones " of Egypt and Assyria to live. It was also said that his well-written and informing articles contributed greatly to the success of the Congress. ^ This remarkable man was born in. 1823 and died in 1889. He is famous as the first war artist, and was with the British Army from 1854 to the end of the Crimean War. He went to Abyssinia with Lord Napier of Magdala in 1866, and was a prisoner with Marshal Bazaine in Metz ; he is said to have witnessed the surrender of Napoleon III. He sketched the excavations of the Palestine Exploration Fund in Jerusalem, and collected on the spot a great deal of important informa- Archaic Classes Founded. ii sketches I supplied the facts which he worked up into his " descriptive notes." At one of the meetings of the Hamitic Section of the Congress a resolution was passed declaring that the time had come when arrangements ought to be made whereby instruction could be given to students of Egyptology and Oriental Archaeology gener- ally. The task of giving effect to this resolution was committed to Mr. W. R. Cooper (see page 7), who threw himself heart and soul into the work. Mr. Wyatt Papworth, the distinguished architect, placed a room in his house in Bloomsbury Street^ at his disposal, and Mr. J. W. Bosanquet, the banker,^ undertook to be responsible for the necessary expenses during the first tion about the Tomb of our Lord, which he published in his paper on Jerusalem in the " Transactions " of the Society of Biblical Archaeology. He also sketched Dr. Schliemann's excavations at Troy for the Illus- trated London News. He travelled in many parts of the world, and the intercourse which he enjoyed with men of all climes and creeds made him tolerant and broad-minded. He always sank his personal interest in that of his work. His common sense enabled him to ihter- vene successfully at the meetings of learned societies when discussion became acrimonious, and his sense of humour saved many a tense situation. It was well said of him that " Wherever he goes he takes fresh air with him, and helps you to breathe better." His autobio- graphy, edited by G. Eyre Todd (London, 1903, 8vo), is a most interest- ing account of the doings and travels of a man who worked hard and lived hard, who accepted success and failure with equanimity, who was a S5mipathetic and delightful friend, and who kept his belief in God and his friends to the very end. ^ A large hotel now occupies the site of the greater part of the block of buildings in which this house stood. ' He devoted the last thirty years of his life to the study of the chronological problems of the Bible. He recognized the importance of Ass3n:iology for the subject of his special study, and he was the generous patron of all those who worked at it. His munificence secured the publication of Smith's Histories of Ashur-bani-pal and Sennacherib, and he provided funds to found the Society of BibUcal Archaeology. He defrayed the cost of printing his own papers in the " Transactions " of the Society, and of those of other scholars who were working on subjects which were connected with ancient history and chronology, e.g., the paper on the Egibi tablets, by W. St. Chad Boscawen. His works on Bible chronology and his " Messiah the Prince, or the Inspiration of the Prophecies of Daniel " (London, 1867) , created great general interest. 12 The Archaic Classes. two or three years. Courses of lectures were given by Dr. Birch on the Turin Papyrus of the " Book of the Dead," and on the " Tale of the Two Brothers " ; by Professor E. Naville on the recently discovered tombs of the Xllth dynasty at Beni Hasan and the texts found in them, and by the Rev. A. H. Sayce on Assyrian historical inscriptions. The lecturer wrote on a black- board the text which he was going to discuss and trans- late, and each student took away a printed paper con- taining questions which were to be answered in writing, and handed to the lecturer at his next lecture. The papers contained short passages printed in hieroglyphic and cuneiform types, and the student was required to translate or at least transliterate as many as possible. Among those who attended these classes were Mr. Walter Morrison, Solomon Drach,^ the Rev. D. J. Dunbar Heath, 2 Canon Beechy, Dr. Lowy, W. St. Chad Boscawen, Mr. Hay, and Miss Clendinning. The " Archaic Classes " were a success as long as the lecturers gave their services, and Mr. Bosanquet paid the expenses of printing the exercise sheets in Egyptian and Assyrian, and Mr. Papworth provided the room for the lectures. But as soon as the attempt was made to put them on a business base they became a failure. This was due to two causes : (i) lack of students, (2) lack of ^ He was a great Hebrew scholar, and a man with a very interesting personality and of varied attainments. He was a poet, and made excellent rhymed translations of passages from the Bible. He wrote on the " Statistics of Marriage in England " (London, 1859), oi^ the " Circle-arc and Heptagon-chord," " An Easy General Rule for Filling Up Magic Squares," " Hebrew Almanack-signs," " Observations on the Base-length of the Great Pyramid," " Pyramid Casing Stones," etc. 2 He wrote on the Exodus Papyri (London, 1855), and edited some " Phoenician Inscriptions " (Pt. I, London, 1873). He described one day at great length a difficulty which he had had with Bishop Sumner of Winchester. In 1859 he preached a series of sermons in which, inter alia, he laid it down that notwithstanding the almighty power of God, He was unable to restore the sinner to the state in which he was before he sinned. A suit was instituted against him, and he was deprived of his living at Brading, Isle of Wight. His " Proverbs of Aphobis, B.C. 1900, now first translated from the Egyptian " (printed at Ryde), created some interest, and the pamphlet is now rare. Edwin Norris. 13 elementary handbooks. The students who joined the classes during the second year found that they could not keep pace with those of the first year, for the lecturers had not time to repeat their lectures of the first year and to prepare new ones for the students of the second year. In these days, when there are so many elementary handbooks on the Egyptian and Assyrian languages and archaeology, it is well-nigh impossible to realize that in England, in 1875, no such books existed. The volumes of cuneiform texts, and the facsimiles of Egyptian hieratic papyri, which were issued without hieroglyphic transcripts, were costly, unwieldy, and unsuitable for the use of beginners. The few books which had been published by private benefactors, e.g., Norris's " Assyrian Dictionary"! and Smith's "History of Ashur-bani-pal," ^ Edwin Norris I saw only once, in 1872, when he was an old man. He was a great Cornish scholar and an expert on African languages, but his greatest work is his edition of the Scythic version of the Behistun Inscription, which he pubhshed with a translation and analysis in 1855. The general accuracy of his work remains unchal- lenged to this day. His insight into the language was so great that nearly aU the emendations of the text of Rawlinson's first copy of the Persian version, which he suggested to him by letter, when verified on the Rock of Behistun, were found to be the true readings. [Rawlin- son was Consul-General of Baghdad at the time, and Norris had undertaken to see his " Memoir " through the press.] He copied many of the texts in the first two volumes of the " Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia," and his work on the syllabaries and grammatical tablets forms the foundation upon which many have built. His " Assjnian Dictionary " remains unfinished, but the three volumes which appeared between 1868 and 1870 are a fine monument of his power of work and linguistic skill. For many years it was the only book which was of real help to the beginner. The labour spent in its compilation was enormous, and his knowledge of unpublished texts exhibited in it is wonderftil. Its appearance silenced once and for all the voice of learned scoffers at the system of Assyrian decipherment as laid down by Rawlinson, Hincks and others. Norris was a simple- minded, quiet and unassuming man, with all the shyness and modesty of the laborious scholar ; his merits have not been sufficiently recog- nized, and the work which he put into other men's books has not been adequately acknowledged. He lived long enough to see Smith's translation of the " Deluge Tablet " in type, and to rejoice in the success of this able decipherer of cuneiform texts, who had worked for four years under his advice and direction. 14 The Archaic Classics. were out of print, and copies of these works sold at a high premium. The fifth volume of Bunsen's " Egypt's Place in Universal History," which contained Dr. Birch's " Hieroglyphic Dictionary,"^ could only be obtained at the cost of several pounds, and I was obliged, when attending the Egjrptian classes, to copy out the whole Dictionary on sheets of tracing paper. Dr. Birch, and other scholars who lectured to the students of the " Archaic Classes," made a gallant attempt to supply them with elementary handbooks, and induced Mr. R. Bagster, the Director of the famous old Bible-house in Paternoster Row, to publish a series of works called the " Archaic Classics." Dr. Birch edited a volume of Egyptian texts, with transliterations and translations, Mr. Renouf wrote an Egyptian Grammar, Professor A. H. Sayce wrote an Assyrian Grammar and a volume of lectures, and I edited a little book of extracts from historical Assyrian texts. All the authors and editors of the above-mentioned books received no payment for ^ This Dictionary was printed in the fine, solid, Egyptian hiero- glyphic type, which was specially designed by J. Bonomi (born 1796, died 1878), Curator of Sir John Soane's Museum. Bonomi lived in Egypt for many years, and made the copies of the texts which were printed in Burton's " Excerpta Hieroglyphica," and the drawings for Wilkinson's " Ancient Egyptians " ; and Lepsius, when collecting material for the " Denkmaeler," availed himself of his services in the preparation of many plates. He was not an Egyptologist, but he was undoubtedly a most accurate cop5n.st. His drawings possessed the style and spirit of the originals, and those which he coloured were remarkable for their delicacy and beauty. He painted the casts in the British Museum which were made by him for Hay from the walls of the temples of Betal-Wali and Abu Zibbil (Abu Simbel) in Nubia, and as most of the colours have now disappeared from the originals these casts are of special value. His copy of the texts and vignettes on the alabaster sarcophagus in the Soane Museum, which he published under the name of the " Sarcophagus of Oimenephtah," is still valuable. There is scarcely a book or paper on Egypt which was published between 1830 and i860 which is not adorned by his drawings or facsimiles of texts. He was a great friend of Edward Lane, and illustrated many of his popular works. His stories of Oriental life and character were delightfully told, and were as much appreciated by Orientals as by E-uropeans. Professor W- Wright on Assyriology. 15 their work. Professor Sayce devoted much time and attention to his students, and he was so kind as to revise and correct the exercises and attempts at translation which he encouraged me to make, and returned them to me by post. In this way I copied out and translated the whole of the inscriptions of Ashur-nasir-pal, Shal- maneser II, Esarhaddon, etc. Meanwhile I continued to read Hebrew and Syriac regularly with Mr. Seager at his house on Brook Green, and in the summer of 1877 he began to discuss with other friends of mine the possibility of obtaining for me some appointment in which I could make use of the knowledge of Semitic Languages which I possessed, and also add to it. When Mr. W. E. Gladstone was consulted he wrote to friends at Cambridge about the matter. In reply they told him that every one who intended to make the study of the cuneiform inscriptions the work of his life should be equipped with a good work- ing knowledge at least of all the Semitic Languages, and of Comparative Semitic Philology. They further pointed out to him that the University had recently established the Semitic Languages Tripos, and said that they would welcome students who would take their degrees in it. Mr. Gladstone then asked Mr. Seager if a degree could be obtained in Semitic Languages at Oxford, and when he was told that no Semitic Languages School was in existence at Oxford, he consulted Dr. Birch and Dr. William Wright, Professor of Arabic in the University of Cambridge, about the matter. Dr. Birch's view agreed with that of Mr. Seager, but Professor Wright, though sharing their view, said with characteristic vigour and conciseness, " The man who takes up the study of Semitic Languages with the idea of making a living by them in England is a fool. Assyriology has, un- doubtedly, a future, but nowhere in England can a man make a living by it except in the British Museum." This discouraging opinion of the low commercial value of k knowledge of the ancient Semitic Languages by the greatest master of them then living in England in no way altered Mr. Gladstone's views as to their i6 Triibner's Oriental Series. importance for the study of the cuneiform inscriptions. He proposed that I should continue to work on the lines which I have already described for another year at least, and then go to Cambridge and take a degree in Semitic Languages. About this time (1877) things happened which proved that, although a knowledge of Semitic Languages in general might be useless as a means of earning a living, there was some money to be made out of a knowledge of Assyrian. Through the recommendations of friends, and especially of Dr. Birch, the editors of various papers commissioned me to write short articles and notes on books and antiquarian matters, and although the pay- ment was small the experience was of great value, and I felt that it was good to be doing work which was wanted. Mr. W. St. Chad Boscawen had published a very valuable paper on certain contract tablets recording the commer- cial transactions of a great Babylonian firm of merchants and bankers, which flourished in the reign of Nebuchad- nezzar II under the direction of one Egibi. It was expected that important information concerning the Book of Daniel might be derived from these tablets, which Smith had acquired in 1876 for the British Museum, and in consequence Mr. J. W. Bosanquet (see p. 11) employed me to copy a considerable number of the tablets which Mr. Boscawen left unpublished, and paid me for my copies. Further, I was employed to translate into English the valuable paper^ by the eminent French scholar, F. Lenormant, " Les Noms de I'Airain et du Cuivre, dans les deux langues des inscriptions cunei- formes de la Chaldee et de I'Assyrie." Mr. N. Triibner, who was actively engaged in publishing his now famous " Oriental Series," wished to include in it volumes of Assyrian Texts, and he asked me to prepare an edition, with text and translation, of the historical inscriptions of Esarhaddon, King of Assyria, and I began to copy the texts without delay. Always at the back of such offers of work, sooner or ^ See Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch.,, VI, 334-417. Egyptian Decipherment. 17 later, I discovered the hand of Dr. Birch, or of friends prompted by him ; and not only did he recommend me for work, but he took care to see that I did it. He was generous in his help, and his friendly criticism was a thing to be thankful for. I have already said that I was born with the love of the East and of the things of the East in me, but it was Dr. Birch who shaped the course of that love, and who made it express itself in practical work. He gave me free access to his room, and showed me how to make the best use of it. He allowed me to handle and copy cuneiform tablets, he advised and directed and criticized my endeavours, and both by word and example he taught me not only how to find and to use my materials, but how to aim at becoming a productive worker. More than this, when reading or copying in his room I learned to know per- sonally nearly all the great Oriental archaeologists of the day, and nearly all the Uttle band of scholars who were the contemporaries of Sir Henry Rawlinson and Dr. Birch, and who had successfully deciphered the Eg57ptian hieroglyphs and the cuneiform inscriptions. To sit and Hsten to such experts discussing their difficulties together, and comparing their facts and theories, was in itself an education in archaeology to a beginner like myself. Students of all kinds flocked to Dr. Birch, partly because of his great and varied knowledge, partly because of his caution and the soundness of his judg- ment and the practical nature of his advice and sugges- tions, and partly because of his official position. He had seen the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs begun by Young, and developed and completed by Champollion,^ and had worked out many important ^ I have been sharply criticized for coupling the name of Young with that of ChampoUion in connection with the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs, and accused of attempting to belittle the splendid work of that eminent Frenchman. In answer to my critics I would say that I spent several months in studying the whole literature on Egyptian decipherment, and read and made notes on every book and paper in the British Museum which could throw any light on the i8 Cuneiform Decipherment. details of it ; and he had seen the suggestions of Grotefend^ and others tested by RawUnson, Hincks, and Norris (see p. 13), and the pubHcation of complete translations of the cuneiform inscriptions on the Rock of Behistun,^ and on the historical cylinders from Nineveh subject. The result of my studies I published in the first volume of my " Decrees of Memphis and Canopus " (London, 1904), together with extracts from some apparently forgotten " Correspondence relative to the Rosetta Inscription," which appeared in Milseum Criticum, No. VI, and was reprinted, with additions, by Leitch, in the third volume of his edition of the " Works of Young " (London, 1855, p. 16 ff.). To ChampoUion belongs the glory of working out a nearly complete Egyptian alphabet, and his knowledge of Coptic, and his philological insight generally, and his marvellous power of work, enabled him to publish hieroglyphic texts and a Grammar, which are the foundations of all modern interpretation. His " Notices Descriptives " {Monu- ments de I'Egypte et de la Nubie, Paris, 1844 ff.) contains translations of difficult texts which may be consulted even at the present time with advantage. Considering the time when he made them their general accuracy is truly wonderful. ^ Born 1775, died 1853. The first good copies of cuneiform texts were published by Niebuhr in his " Reisebeschriebung." These were examined by Olaus Gerhard Tychsen (born 1734, died 1815), the famous Orientalist of Rostock, who all but proved that the Persian cuneiform characters were alphabetic. Grotefend was convinced that this view was correct, and worked out an alphabet containing about forty consonants and vowels, and identified three forms of cuneiform writing in the Behistun inscriptions, and proved that they were to be read from left to right ; he further assigned them to the period of the Achsemenidse, and identified conjecturaUy the name of Darius. Many of his views were proved to be correct by E. Burnouf (born 1801, died 1852), and by C. Lassen (born 1800, died 1876), who in his " Die alt persischen Keilinschriften von Persepolis " practically completed the system of decipherment laid down by Grotefend and Burnouf. Rawlinson's great merit rests on the fact that he arrived at the same conclusions as these scholars without the help of books and when he was living in Persia and performing his ardous official duties ; and he was the first to publish a complete translation of the inscriptions on the Rock of Behistiin. The Bahistiinu of—f of Yakut (I, p. 269) and opos Bayto-TacoK of Diodorus II, 13. It hes about 22 miles east of Kirmanshah in the province of Persian Trik. The sculptures of Darius and his inscrip- tions were fully treated by Rawlinson in the tenth volume of the "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society," and a very interesting Rawlinson's Work at BehisMn. 19 and Babylon. His position was unique, and his authority unquestioned, because he was the only servant of the Trustees of the British Museum who was intimately acquainted with the results of the excavations made by French and English explorers in Western Asia and Egypt, ^ and because he had charge of the Oriental Antiquities in the British Museum, and had practical knowledge of them. I have summarized elsewhere' the principal steps of his literary career, and published a list of his works, and many have written appreciations description of Rawlinson's work at the Rock is given by Felix Jones (in No . XLIII — New Series of " Selections from the Records of the Bom- bay Government " (Bombay, 1857), compiled and edited by R. Hughes Thomas). He says in his notes for September 4th, 1844 (p. 176), " The afternoon of this day was devoted to cleaning the sculptures and inscriptions preparatory to Major Rawlinson's revising his former labours. The ladders had been carefully fixed, and the requisite ropes for assisting the ascent up the steep face of the lower portion of the scarp properly adjusted beforehand. In about a quarter of an hour, not without sundry scratches and bruises, the platform at the base of the tablet was gained, and operations commenced accordingly. From this time, until the nth of the month, we remained in this vicinity. The Major constantly and indefatigably employed himself, from daylight to dark, revising, restoring, and adding to his former matericds. This was a work of great irksomeness and labour in the confined space he was compelled to stand in, with his body in close proximity to the heated rock, and under a broiling September sun." Rawlinson first ascended the Rock in 1835, and during the two fol- lowing years he continued to make ascents, and succeeded in copying the first column of the Persian text. In 1844 he copied the remaining columns, and also the Scythic version, and in 1847, with the help of a native, who scaled the Rock and made a paper squeeze of the Baby- lonian version, he was able to put revised copies of all these versions before the learned world. According to the trigonometrical measure- ments made by Rawlinson, the height of the Rock above the plain is 3,807 feet. A sketch of the Rock, made from a photograph, is given by WiUiams Jackson in "Persia, Past and Present " (London, 1906, p. 176). ^ Viz., Salt, Belzoni, Wilkinson, Arundale, Bonomi, Hay, Burton, Harris, Rich, Ker Porter, Buckingham, Botta, Place, Layard, Raw- linson, Taylor, Oppert, etc. " In the " Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archeology," vol. ix (1893), p. 143. See also " Diet. Nat. Biog.," vol. xxii, pp. 199-202. B 2 20 Samuel Birch. of his literary labours,^ but no writer has taken the trouble to describe adequately the man and his large- heartedness, and his great capacity for friendship, and therefore I propose to interpolate in my personal narra- tive a few remarks about him and the laborious life which he led in the British Museum, and about a few of his personal friends, whom I met in his room and learned to know. In 1870, when I first saw Dr. Birch, he was in his 57th year, and in spite of the thirty-six years which he had passed in the service of the Government (two under the Commissioners of Public Records, and thirty-four in the British Museum), he was strong and vigorous, and of generous build. His skull was large and broad, with a fringe of white hair at the base, and he wore a short, fairly thick white beard, and a moustache trimmed, as his friends said, " in such a way as to add ferocity to his appearance." As to his features, the nose was large, the upper lip, which projected well over the lower lip, was full, the mouth large and firm, the chin broad and the jaw obstinate. His greyish-green eyes were deep-set, and nothing escaped them, and when he was moved to mirth they laughed before the muscles of his mouth relaxed. His hands were well shaped, strong, and nervous, and were never still ; when he was talking their movements emphasized his remarks, and indicated to those who were much in his company the trend of his thoughts and the character of the decision at which he was arriving. His gait was that of a man whose thoughts travelled faster than his feet, and the length and quickness of his strides indicated with more than ordinary clearness the working of his mind at the moment. His dress was simple, the most characteristic portion of it being his long, black broadcloth coat, which was usually tightly buttoned up, and often awry. His trousers were made of some light material, with a black and white stripe, or check-pattern, and he wore patent * See the collection printed by his son, Dr. W. de Gray Birch, in " Biographical Notices " (London, 1886). His Work in the British Museum. 21 leather boots, with spring sides, often the worse for wear. His broad-brimmed black silk chimney-pot hat was quite the worst in the Museum, which is saying a good deal, and no one remembered it when it was new. He used to say that it was useless to brush any hat in the Museum, and that in any case his was not worth brushing, for the nap would never lie flat. The dust on its brim was so well established that a friend once told him that with the help of a little water, peas might be planted in it and they would grow. In small details of dress he was curiously careless, and in others he was almost dandified. There was a good deal of truth in the remark of one of his American friends who told him that he looked like a " cross between a jockey and a Bishop." The room in the British Museum in which he worked was entered through a door in the south-west corner of the Nineveh Gallery, and was one of the additions made to the building when the architect realized that per- manent officials needed accommodation on the premises. It was built over a section of basement containing apparatus connected with the heating of the Galleries, and the weird sounds which accompany the passage of hot water and steam through pipes, and the hissing of escaping steam, could be heard distinctly through the floor. Birch was firmly convinced that the engineer would one day lose control of his apparatus and blow the room and him in it up together. I have often seen him, when the sounds were especially loud or disturbing, rush out into the Gallery, and proclaim loudly to his attendant seated there that he would not stay in his room to be blown up at the engineer's good pleasure. When the noise was merely that of escaping steam, he contented himself by writing to the Clerk of the Works, and asking him to have the boiler fires extinguished at once ! The room had two windows, one on the north side, which gave a good light, and one on the west side, which faced and was close to a blank brick wall. Before the former stood a writing table at which students could sit and work, and before the latter a long low case, with a sloping top, which was much used by Birch when consulting the 22 Birch's Room m the British Museum. " ponderous tomes " of Rosellini, Champollion, and Lepsius. On the south side was a fireplace with a broad marble mantelpiece, on which stood a metal candlestick and candle, letter scales, a bottle of water and a glass, a dispatch box for official papers, agenda slips, etc., and a few Directories, English and foreign. In the summer a float-light burned in the fender (it was used in sealing letters), and in the winter the grate held a fire, of course. Over the mantelpiece hung a drawing of tlae " Cofiin of Antef," and a large-faced clock, bearing the date 1857. Oil 63-ch side of the fireplace stood an upright, narrow, polished oak bookcase, and four other larger cases of similar pattern stood in other parts of the room. The floor was nearly covered by a very old and discoloured much-patched carpet, and in the centre of it stood another writing table at which Birch worked. In this room, which only measured 18 feet by 16 feet, the whole of the business of the Department had to be transacted. Here Birch had to draft reports, often of a confidential character, and to answer letters, and visitors could, and often did, read as he wrote what he was writing. Here his interviews with officials and col- leagues had to take place ; here he had to discuss pur- chases and fix prices with dealers, in the presence of students who were reading or copying at the table by the window, and who, for the most part, listened to what was being said, and, whenever possible, joined in the conversation and gave their opinions on the business on hand. The marvel is that Birch acquired the knowledge he possessed of the collections under his charge, and that he did so much work, for though abounding in enthusiasm and nervous energy, he was not, physically, a strong man, and the perpetual interruptions to which he was subjected during the day left him always very tired in the late afternoon. From time to time assistants were appointed to his Department, but they did nothing to help him, and very often he was obliged to make copies of his letters with his own hand because the transcriber, whose. duty it was to copy them, had engaged himself to a George Smith, Assyriologist. 23 more self-asserting colleague, or could not be found. Until the year 1883 he never had an assistant who took the trouble to " get up " enough Egyptian to assist him in registration. Smith entered the service of the Trustees in 1867 as a cleaner and rejoiner of fragments of tablets, and he continued to do this work until 1870, when he was made Senior Assistant in Birch's Department. Even then he took no part in the routine work of the Depart- ment. He did not even attempt to make available for examination and study by the pubUc the bricks, tablets, etc., from which he derived his information about Assyria, and I never heard of his writing labels for the objects exhibited in the cases. As soon as he became Birch's assistant, the copying of texts for Rawhnson's " Cuneiform Inscriptions " absorbed a good deal of his of&cial hours, and the rest of his time he devoted to the search for duplicates of the " Deluge Tablet." Almost immediately after he read his paper on this Tablet in December, 1872, the proprietors of the Daily Telegraph, with great public spirit, sent him to Nineveh to re-open the sites where Layard had made his great " find " of tablets in 1854, in order to obtain the missing fragments and to bring back new material. His First Mission was a great success, and soon after his return to England in the autumn of 1873, he was sent on his Second Mission, and did not return until the summer of 1874. Between this time and October, 1875, when he went on his Third Mission to Nineveh, he was engrossed with his own private work, and he rendered so Httle general assistance in the Department that when I asked for tablets to copy, it was Birch who took me to the cases in the Nineveh Gallery, and let me take out what I wanted. To assist Birch in coping with the stream of visitors, and the mass of letters which were addressed to the Department after the publication of the " Deluge Tablet," the Trustees, during Smith's absence in the East, appointed as assistant a very capable and rising Assyri- ologist, Mr. W. St. Chad Boscawen. But this gentleman, having been commissioned to search for texts which 24 Birch's Catalogue " proved the Bible " — i.e., for tablets inscribed in cunei- form with versions of the story of Adam and Eve, and the expulsion of Adam from Eden, and the narrative of the Book of Daniel — became entirely absorbed in this work, and Birch was as badly off for help as before. In 1886, ten years after Smith's death, the Trustees ordered a Catalogue of the Kuyunjik Collection to be printed, and during the preparation of the material for this work more than 5,000 fragments of tablets were found in the cases unregistered and unmarked. The fact of the matter is that neither Smith nor his successor was qualified to arrange the collections of tablets for study, or even with a due regard for safe custody, for neither understood the value of systematic numbering and arrangement in dealing with a mass of fragmentary documents. Smith was the greatest copyist and the readiest decipherer of cuneiform that the Trustees ever had in their service, and the instinct which enabled him to divine the meaning of unknown words and obscure passages was almost uncanny, but his want of system in dealing with the mass of cuneiform material under his charge seriously delayed the progress of Assyriology. Birch's principal official work was the cataloguing of the Egyptian Collection. He had first to see that each object was " marked," i.e., had a registration number and date painted on it, and to superintend all the details of cleaning when necfessary, and mounting ; and when the objects were ready for exhibition he drafted the label which was painted on the mounts. He next entered in the Register a short description of them, with measure- ments, etc., and after this he wrote on slips of blue paper full descriptions of them, together with copies of the hieroglyphic inscriptions, and added transliterations and, so far as he was able, translations. The progress of Egyptology made frequent revision of these slips neces- sary, and from first to last he wrote, re-wrote, and wrote a third time many thousands of slips. He found it impossible to catalogue all the Egyptian objects under his charge ; nevertheless, the slips which he wrote form oj the Egyptian Collection. 25 ninety-eight volumes, which are preserved in the Depart- ment. He also spent many years in sorting and arranging and piecing together the broken Egyptian papyri, which the Trustees acquired through Salt,^ Wilkinson,* ^ Bom 1780, died 1827. He was sent on a Mission to Abyssinia by the British Government in 1809, and was made British Consul- General of Egypt in 1815. He employed Belzoni (bom 1778, died 1823) to excavate for him. He and Bnrckhardt (bom 1784, died 1817) presented to the British Museimi the bust of the colossal statue of Rameses II (Egyptian Gallery, No. 576). He excavated the temple of Rameses II at Abu Simbel, and subsidized the excavations of Caviglia and D'Athanasi. Two of Salt's Egyptian collections were bought by the British Museum, the first in 1823 for ^£2,000, and the second in 1835 for £4,500. The famous sarcophagus of Seti I was offered to the British Museum by Salt for /2,ooo, but the Trustees declined to purchase it, and it went to the Soane Museum, where it stUl is. Salt's collection of papyri was a very valuable addition to the British Museum Collection. * I saw Gardner Wilkinson on various occasions when he came to discuss with Birch the preparation of a second edition of his popular work on the " Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians." He had lived in Egypt for many years, and had excavated many tombs at his own expense, but he made no attempt to clear out any of the temples. He was the first to draw up a comprehensive plan of Western Thebes, and his descriptions of the remaining Theban monuments on both sides of the Nile were of very great use to generations of travellers. He watched the progress of Egj'ptian decipherment with s5Tnpathy and interest, but he had no special hnguistic talent, and never pro- fessed to be an Egyptologist. His " Materia Hieroglyphica " (2 vols., Malta, 1828) was a very valuable work, and it shows that he had at that time arrived at most of the conclusions which were reached by ChampoUion, and that his general knowledge of the meaning of texts was very considerable. He had neither the gifts nor the enthusiasm which make a great collector, and the small collection of Egyptian antiquities which he bequeathed to Harrow School might have been made by his own dragoman. He loved digging out tombs, but their topography and architecture interested him far more than the anti- quities his workmen found. The natives stole from his excavations, and sold their thefts to French and Italian amateurs in Egypt, many of whom made large and valuable collections. In 1842 the natives opened a tomb at Kfimah, wluch contained several thousands of scarabs inscribed with the names of kings of the XVIIIth dynasty ; the floor of the mimimy chamber was covered with a layer of them about 3 inches deep. A well known dragoman brought a zihbil (work- man's basket) fuU of them over to Luxor, and offered the whole lot to him for half a hint (i.e., half a Napoleon), and he refused to buy them, saying that they were " useless things, like beads." I noticed 26 Birch and the Papyri. Burton, Hay/ Harris, and other collectors, and this difficult work had to be done under very difficult condi- tions, and amid incessant interruptions. In these days there are large rooms, containing long, wide tables, on which papyri are unrolled and " laid down," but at that time Birch had to sort out his fragments on wooden boards laid upon chairs. These boards were carried downstairs by a very aged and feeble attendant, who was supposed to paste them on paper in his room, but as often as not he shook the fragments into disorder on the way, and the sorting had to be done all over again. If the reader will think for a moment he will remember that in the " seventies " there was no place where the general public could apply for information on Egyptology and Assyriology except Birch's Department ; as a result his visitors were legion, and his correspondence was very great. He endeavoured to answer, or at least acknow- ledge, every letter with his own hand, for he took the view that the public had the right to have their letters answered by responsible officials, and, besides this, he wished to encourage the public to take interest in the subjects dealt with by his Departnient. He was appealed to for information on every kind of antiquity, and the experience and knowledge of coins of all kinds, Greek vases, Roman and British antiquities, etc., which he had gained during the first twenty years of his service in the Museum, enabled him to satisfy the interest or curiosity of most of his visitors and correspondents. that his respect for Birch's knowledge of the Egyptian language was very great, and that he rarely ventured on passing an opinion on. Eg3rptology unless it had his support. On more than one occasion he advised me to get to Egypt as soon as I could, saying that no man who had not seen that country could ever hope to understand its history. With a laugh he often told Birch that if he had had a know- ledge of Egypt at first hand, he would have been the " perfect Egypt- ologist," and year by year he urged him to take if it were only a holiday in that country before he became too old. Birch did not take his advice, alas ! ^ Bom 1799, died 1863. In addition to papyri there are in the British Museum forty-nine large volumes of his architectural drawings, sketches, etc. (See Add. MSS. 29,812-60.) Birch and the Dealers. 27 He was careful to answer fully every question which was the outcome of an honest desire to learn, and when possible he indicated the sources where further informa- tion was to be obtained. He was frequently asked for pecuniary help by former friends and acquaintances who had fallen upon evil days, and they rarely appealed to him in vain. Jn cases where his means did not permit him to help he appUed to those of his personal friends who were wealthy, and they usually made him their almoner. He subscribed to several literary charities in order that he might be able to appeal with greater effect to their committees of distribution on behalf of those who both needed and deserved help. Many editors of papers asked him to read over articles submitted to them for publication, and many contributors to papers were glad to sit and wait whUst he " ran his eye over " what they had written. One publisher would consult him about the publication of a book, and ask him if so and so were able to write a good book on such and such a subject ; and another would apply to him to suggest illustrations for a book, and to tell him how and where to get them. Enthusiastic persons of both sexes who had weakly allowed themselves to promise to give lectures on the discoveries in Egypt and Assyria, and who thought that all they had to do was to read some book in which the information was given all ready cut and dried, came to Birch when they found that the book which they wanted was still unwritten, and he helped them to fulfil their promises. Dealers in antiquities were frequent visitors to Birch's room, and the objects which they offered for purchase were sometimes of very considerable interest. By listening to Birch's remarks on the objects brought to him I learned a good deal about them, and also about their market value. I noted also that antiquities possessed commercial as well as archaeological value, and that the acquisition of the knowledge of the current prices of antiquities among dealers and collectors formed a very important part of the education of a British Museum official. In those days a brisk trade in the 28 Forged Antiquities — Samson's Coffin. smaller antiquities from Egypt, Greece, and Assyria, was carried on by the dealers who lived near the Museum, and they and their clients were constantly coming in to show Birch their recent importations. Nowadays very few good things reach the dealers in England, for they are snapped up in Paris. Often the dealers had no desire to sell, but only to gain gratis an opinion as to the genuineness of their possessions, and to find out the meaning of any inscriptions which might be cut upon them, in order to be able to sell their goods to better advantage. As forgeries were already in the market, it behoved dealers to be careful, and their clients also. On one occasion a native of Diarbakr produced, among other things, certain coins, which Birch, after examining them, declared to be forgeries, and a further scrutiny revealed on their edges the letters RR, which were the initials of Robert Ready, the electrotypist of the Museum, who made them. On another occasion a Syrian brought some earthenware pots with inscriptions cut upon them in Phoenician letters, and he declared the vessels to be " Moabite Pottery." He also brought with him the copy of an inscription that he had made from a large stone coffin, with which the pots had been found, and he claimed that the coffin was that of Samson. Birch went to see the coffin, and though the name of Samson was easily legible upon the cover, its form was not that of the Samson of the Bible according to the Hebrew Scriptures, and he decided that the inscription was a forgery, and condemned both it and the pots. What became of the coffin I know not, but the pots were bought by a renowned Museum on the Continent, in the cellars of which they have been stored out of sight for the last thirty-five years. A considerable number of antiquities of all periods drifted to Paris and London as the result of the excava- tions which Mariette was making all over Egypt, and many purchasers — e.g., Hilton Price^ and H. Bruce ^ Born 1842, died 1909. He made a large and valuable collection of Egyptian antiquities, which he had mounted and labelled like the British Museum Collection. I described and translated the scarabs. Forged Scarabs. 29 Meux* — ^brought their acquisitions to Birch to be " passed " as genuine, and to have the inscriptions read. One of the commonest objects brought at that time to Birch was the scarab, of which large numbers were being " forged " in Egypt. The natives obtained the steatite in the country, and they covered their productions with which he published in his fine and well-illustrated " Catalogue " (Quaritch, London, 1897), and supplied material for the" Supplement " (Quaritch, London, 1898). His collections, books, coins, etc., were sold after his death, and his Egyptian collection realized a httle over £12,000. His knowledge of British, Romano-British, and mediaeval antiquities was very considerable, and he collected with care and discernment. He was a generous supporter of all archaeological undertakings in England, and assisted many learned Societies with his counsel, experience, and money. ^ Born 1858, died 1900. I made his acquaintance whilst he was an undergraduate at Cambridge, and I saw him frequently in Birch's room ; the first Sir Henry Meux and Birch's father had been friends. Mr. (later Sir) H. B. Meux inherited a small collection of Egyptian antiquities, which he added to during his visits to Egypt ; he travelled up the Nile into Nubia and purchased some valuable objects, which he succeeded in getting out of Egypt. I published a Catalogue of this collection in 1893, and gave in it a description and a facsimile of the mummy and coffin which Mr. Walter Ingram had given to Lady Meux, and about which so many curious stories have been told. It has been freely stated that a curse is written on the coffin to the effect that any one who removed the mummy in it from its tomb should died childless, and suffer a horrible death. As a matter of fact, there is no curse written on the coffin, but a series of extracts from the late funerary work, " The Festival Songs of Isis and Nephthys." A papyrus in the British Museum (Bremner-Rhind, No. 10,188) contains a complete copy of this work, and a Colophon (see my Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum, London, 1910, foHo, p. 12) including a very compre- hensive curse on the disturber of the mummy. Because extracts from the Festival Songs are painted on this coffin with which that papjnrus was buried, it has been assumed that the curse is there also. In 1895, with the consent of the Trustees of the British Museum, I bought a large collection of Egyptian antiquities for Lady Meux, and catalogued and arranged them for her at Theobalds Park ; the second edition of the Catalogue appeared in 1896. Sir Henry was greatly interested in antiquities of all kinds and in natural history. He was a great lover of animals, and an account of his attempt to keep an elephant, a bear, and emus and ostriches in his park would make amusing reading. He was a fine shot, and a humane as well a successful big-game hunter of the t5^e of Sir Samuel Baker. 30 Birch as a Sinologist. ancient glaze so successfully that it was almost impossible to detect their fraud. They crushed glazed beads from the coverings of mummies, and having smelted the glaze in a crucible they spread it over the scarabs by means of a blowpipe. On one occasion Walter Myers and his friend James Smith, an engineer, brought to Birch cornelian scarabs with their names cut upon them thus ^ (] Ij ^ M-i-r-s, and [1 ^ (] (] o S-m-i-t. These scarabs were made and engraved at Kurnah, a village on the west bank of the Nile, opposite Luxor, and the home of raajiy forgeries. Curiously enough. Birch's knowledge of Chinese enabled him to help the officials of the Chinese Embassy in London, as the following instances will show. One morning a Chinese official came to consult Birch, and he told him that a native of Peking had come to London, ostensibly on some financial business, and that he had been to the Embassy and asked for the support of the Ambassador in his work. This man had produced a document which purported to contain testimonials from high officials in China, and bore a long endorsement from some great personage, and impressions of seals. The Embassy had read the testimonials, but the endorse- ment they could not read, for although it was written in Chinese characters, these characters were unknown to them. He then handed the document to Birch, who read the testimonials easily, but the endorsement puzzled him for a time, and the official from the Embassy was not displeased. I do not know enough of the details to say exactly what the man who wrote the document had done, but I understood at the time that the characters of the endorsement were in reality quarters and halves of characters which were in use in China in very early times, and that Birch easily proved it to be a forgery as well as the seals. He transcribed the portions of the characters, and then rejoined them, and was able to show that the text which the forger had broken up in this way was an extract from a well-known Chinese classic. Birch then sent to the Library for a printed His Translations of Chinese Novels. 31 copy of the work, and when it was brought he pointed out the passage which was used by the forger. Subse- quently the Chinese Embassy received information that the man who had claimed the Ambassador's support was a notorious forger and swindler, who had succeeded in escaping to England. On another occasion the Marquis Tseng sent to Birch a couple of very old bronze vases, on the sides of which were inscriptions in a very com plicated character, which neither he nor the Embassy officials could read. It took Birch a couple of days to find the clue, but at length he read the inscriptions, and identified them in the printed text of a work of an ancient poet. Many have been surprised to learn that the great Egyptologist was such an accomplished Chinese scholar, but the fact is that Birch's father meant to send him to China, for he had many friends among the British mercantile communities in that country. With this object in view, he made his son study Chinese under a competent teacher, who not only taught him the classical language, but introduced him to many Chinamen who visited London. From these Birch gained a good know- ledge of the spoken language, and this served him in good stead when he was making his English translations of Chinese novels, which became very popular in China, and had a considerable vogue. ^ Owing to the death of an influential friend the career in China proposed for Birch was abandoned, but it was his knowledge of Chinese which caused him to gain an appointment in the British Museum in 1836, and the first piece of work given him to do was to catalogue the Chinese coins there. Even in his special line of study, Egyptology, Chinese was useful to him, for it enabled him to clear up the difficulty which surrounded the little Chinese scent bottles, so many examples of which have been found in ancient Egyptian tombs. Some authorities ' Of special interest are " Friends till Death," " The Elfin Foxes," " The Chinese Widow," and the " Casket of Gems " ; all these are now very scarce. 32 Birch's Visitors in the Museum. argued from the archaic form of the inscriptions on the bottles that they were certainly pre-Christian, and that the bottles might well date from the time of Rameses II, or even that of Thothmes III. But Birch proved that the inscriptions were extracts from the works of Chinese poets who flourished in the eighth and ninth centuries, and that the bottles were not older than the thirteenth century of our Era. This also was the opinion of the eminent Egyptologist and Sinologist, Goodwin. ^ Speaking generally, the visitors whom I met in Birch's room were of three classes : (i) Experts in some branch of Oriental archaeology or in some Oriental language ; (2) non-experts, who were seeking for information ; (3) theorists and cranks ; and taken together the three classes of visitors wasted a good deal of his of&cial time. Among the first class I well remember Canon Isaac Taylor,^ the distinguished student of the Etruscan Inscriptions, and author of many works. He wanted Birch to adopt his theory about the Etruscan language, and to accept his translations of the inscriptions. Birch was of opinion that no real progress could be made in translating Etruscan until a bilingual text was discovered, with one of the versions in some known language.* ^ His greatest Egyptological work is his translation of the " Stoty of Saneha," which he made from the hieratic text published by Lepsius. He made out the general drift of the story, and his rendering has served as the base of all subsequent work on that difficult text. He possessed a natural genius for the decipherment of hieratic papyri, and his instinct in finding out the correct meaning of unknown words was remarkable. During the last twelve years of his life he sat as judge in the Supreme Court at Yokohama, but in spite of his heavy official duties he succeeded in gaining a very considerable knowledge of the Chinese literary language. " Born 1829, died 1901. In his work " Etruscan Researches " (2 vols., London, 1874) he published the results of a close study of the Etruscan antiquities, and his theories about the family of languages to which he supposed Etruscan to belong. I paid him a visit at Settrington Rectory, Yorkshire, in 1888, and found that the criticisms of his opponents had not changed his views about the Etruscan language. ' This was the answer which Birch gave also to those who invented systems of decipherment of the Hittite inscriptions, and time has The Moabite Stone. 33 I remember, too, that the discovery of the " Moabite Stone "^ disturbed the minds of many Christians and Jews, who regarded the inscription upon it as a forgery. Among these was Dr. A. Lowy, an eminent and very learned Rabbi, who came often and harangued us about the " Stone," and said that nothing would ever make him believe that Mesha, King of Moab, defeated the King of Israel, and laid the spoils which he had taken from him at the feet of his god Kemosh ; and he asserted that Clermont-Ganneau had not only made the paper squeeze referred to in the note below, but had invented the inscription. It need hardly be said that Birch, who knew all the facts of the case, placed himself on the side of Clermont-Ganneau, as also did Professor W. Wright. Among the second class of Birch's visitors were many people who had heard accounts of " finds " and discoveries in Eg5^t and Assyria, and had understood them imper- fectly. Several of these had heard of the " Tale of the Two Brothers " in the D'Orbiney Papyrus, in which the story of Anpu and Bata and his wife closely resembles that of Joseph and Potiphar and his wife, and they came and asked to see the history of Joseph which was written in Egyptian and had been found in his tomb, and was now in the British Museum ! One visitor, having heard of a " find " of silver coins in Egypt, thought it must include the " twenty pieces of sUver " for which Joseph was sold, and asked Birch if they had yet arrived in the Museum. Another, having heard Mr. Boscawen lecture on the Egibi Tablets, came and asked to see the tablets which Nebuchadnezzar had sealed with his naUs, because proved the soundness of his view. No bilingual inscription has yet been found in which one of the texts is in Hittite and the other in some known language, and therefore the Hittite inscriptions still remain untranslated. ' It was found by the Rev. F. Klein at Dhiban, near the Arnon, in 1868. Clermont-Ganneau succeeded in getting a paper squeeze made of the inscription, and soon after, when he tried to acquire the Stone and to carry it away, the Arabs smashed it and destroyed some of the pieces. All that is left of the Stone is in the Louvre, and there is a cast of it in the British Museum. 34 Noah's Books. he wanted to find out whether the nail-marks were those of the king when he was in the form of a man or in that of a beast. The lecturer had said that some of the tablets of the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II bore the im- pressions of the nails of witnesses in Ueu of impressions of seals, but one of his audience at least had misunderstood him. Another visitor whom I well remember was a little old lady who wore a grey stuff dress, a striped shawl, and a sort of poke bonnet, and who came from some charitable institution. She came to the Nineveh Gallery, and asked for the " books which Noah buried before he went into the ark," and she was so certain that they were in the Museum that Slaughter brought her into Birch's room. When she was seated comfortably she repeated her request, and told Birch that she was quite certain that the books were in the Museum, because her son, who was in the Royal Navy, and was a " great scholard," had written and told her so. He was a " great hand at reading," and he had written and told her some time ago that when his ship was anchored in the Red Sea he and a mate had gone in a boat to Moses' Wells, and that close by they had seen lying under water parts of the wheels and bodies of the chariots of Pharaoh. Quite recently he had written home to her and told her that a man from the British Museum had been to Nineveh and dug up Noah's books. Birch listened attentively, and then, thinking that it was the " Deluge Tablet " which she referred to as " Noah's books," he took her out into the Nineveh Gallery and showed it to her, and told her a little about its contents. As she listened she nodded her head from time to time and said, " I knew my boy was no liar," and this conviction was far more important to her than the actual contents of the Tablet. As it was closing time we had followed Birch and the old lady to the case, and as we walked out by her side afterwards we saw her fumbling in her pocket for something. When we reached t'he end of the Gallery Birch shook hands with her, and as he was turning away she tried to give him whatever it was she had found in her pocket, but was too late. She then turned quickly to me and pressed Daniel Fagg. 35 the gift which she had intended for Birch into my hand, and hurried off with her friend who had been waiting for her. Her gift was three-halfpence, and her goodwill and gratitude were so evident that the only thing left to be done was to accept them, and I did so. Among the third class of Birch's visitors I include a number of men who made themselves a nuisance to him and to everyone else in his room by their talk on Biblical Chronology. The immediate cause of their visits was Smith's publication of the " Eponym Canon," which had upset their systems of chronology of the last Assyrian Empire, and reduced them to despair. They first dis- puted the accuracy of his translation, and then of his copy of the text, and when they could prove neither wrong they accused the ancient Ass5n:ian scribes of making mistakes and of not knowing their business. They produced large charts on which every event recorded in the Bible had a date assigned to it ; and I heard one ingenious gentleman assert that in the majority of cases, certainly in all the important ones, he could name the year, the month, the day of the month, and even the hour in which a given event had taken place. On being asked by Birch when Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise he consulted his chart gravely, and then replied: " They were turned out of Eden at sunset on Friday, the 20th day of the month Tebheth, four thousand seven hundred and thirteen years before Christ." When asked how long they had Uved in the Garden, he consulted his chart, made a rapid calculation, and said, " Eighty-nine days and seven and a half hours." As an example of another class of time-wasters, I quote the case of the individual whom Walter Besant has immortalized under the name of " Daniel Fagg " in his novel, " All Sorts and Conditions of Men." This student was a little, shabbily-dressed man, with dark, piercing eyes and a shaggy beard, who haunted the office of the Palestine Exploration Fund and the British Museum. Time after time he had been turned out of the former building, but he could not be turned out of the Museum because it is practically a public institution, and when not c 2 36 Daniel Fagg's Common Alphabet. engaged in harrying the officials, he sat in the Egyptian Gallery, over one of the hot-air gratings, and meditated upon the wilful ignorance and blindness of the officials and the magnitude of his great discovery. He was a member of the Syro-Egyptian Society, which had been kUled by the founding of the Society of Biblical Archae- ology, and he had a good working knowledge of Hebrew. He believed that the Jews, Hittites, Assyrians, Baby- lonians, Medes, Persians, and Egyptians all spoke one and the same language, and that anyone who possessed enough knowledge of Hebrew to use a Hebrew dictionary, and was acquainted with the " Common Alphabet " which he had invented, could read the languages of all the peoples mentioned above, and many others, such as Sanskrit, Chinese, and Mexican. He professed to be able to read every inscription in all the Galleries of the Museum. He stopped Mr. (later Sir) C. T. Newton one day, and, pointing to a Greek inscription, told him that it was wrongly labelled, and that it contained a copy of one of St. Paul's love-letters to the lady Thecla and her reply. Mr. Newton was not credited by his colleagues with the ability to " suffer fools gladly," and great was his indignation on this occasion. The inventor of the " Common Alphabet " asserted that the Chinese inscrip- tion on the great metal bell preserved in Mr. (later Sir) A. W. Franks' Department contained copies of the Psalms, and that the Chinese characters were merely the older forms of the Hebrew letters. According to him the inscriptions in the Nimrud Gallery contained the story of David and Jonathan, and an account of the capture of Jericho by the Israelites, and a full description of the falling down of the walls. The text on a large stele in the Central Saloon was a complete history of the life of Jezebel ; another stele described the amours of Samson and Delilah ; and another inscription in the old Phoenician Room dealt with Balaam and the ass and Balak. I was present at one long interview between Birch and the inventor of the " Common Alphabet," and when the former remarked that he did not know that the The Founders of Assyriology. 37 monuments under his charge contained such wonderful stories, the inventor said : " No, of course you don't, for you are one of the scholars ; but you can't deceive me. You know quite well that the two stones which you have put in a comer downstairs are the Two Tables of the Law which God gave to Moses, and you tried to hide them from me because the text of the Commandments is different from that given in your Bible. They are the Tables which Moses held in his hands, and on the top corners are the impressions left by the thumbs of Moses." The man's belief in his " discovery " was genuine enough, and he was firmly convinced that all the learned Societies and all the experts in the British Museum were in league against him. Argument was out of the question, and all that any one could do was to sit still and listen till patience gave out. I saw him once again with Birch, and this time he had brought with him a huge bundle of manuscript, which was the book he had written to explain the " Common Alphabet." (It may be mentioned in passing that the letters were formed by series of triangles arranged in different positions.) Many charit- able folk had subscribed for his book, and paid their subscriptions in advance; and those who have any recollection of Birch will not be surprised to hear that although he regarded the " Common Alphabet " as nonsense, he helped its hungry inventor by subscribing for two copies and paying for them on the spot. During the years in which I worked in Birch's room I had the good fortune to meet and to talk to three of the four^ men who founded the Science of Assyriology, ^ The fourth was Edward Hincks, who was born in 1792 and died in 1866. He wrote many papers on the Egyptian hieroglyphs, and Brugsch was of opinion that he was the first to discover a true method of decipherment. Later, he turned his attention to the cuneiform inscriptions of Persia, Wan (Van) and Media, and simultaneously with Lassen, Burnouf, and Rawlinson discovered the alphabet of the Persian version of the Behistun Inscription. His work on the phonetic values of Assyrian characters appeared in 1850, and his translation of the Inscription of Tiglath-Pileser I seven years later. His Assyrian Grammar remains unfinished. 38 The Founders of Assyriology. namely, Rawlinson, Oppert, and Fox Talbot/ and the great excavators Layard, Nathan Davis,* Lang' and Prideaux.* The martial and imposing figure of Rawlinson was frequently seen in Birch's room in the early " seventies," for he devoted every hour he could spare from the India Council to the revision of the sheets of the " Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia," which he edited for the Trustees of the British Museum. I found him a little stiff and abrupt, but he was a kind friend to me. His knowledge of Oriental lands, peoples and languages was astounding ; it may have been equalled, but never surpassed. Yule and Birdwood, who were themselves great masters of Oriental learning, always accepted his decisions as final. There was no literary jealousy or meanness in him, and he gave his advice and the best of his learning freely to all honest inquirers. He was always interested in the work of the students in Birch's room, and asked what we were doing, and looked ' He was the inventor of the " Talbotype " system of photography, and was a mathematician and astronomer. Under Hincks' influence he turned his attention to the decipherment of the cuneiform inscrip- tions from Nineveh, and was one of the four experts who translated the Inscription of Tiglath-Pileser I. He was one of the original Council of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, to the " Transactions " of which he contributed many papers on Assyrian Rehgion and Grammar. He also wrote on the texts recording ecUpses and other celestial phenomena, and on the Mazzaroth (Job xxxviii, 32). He brought an expert knowledge of modem astronomy to bear upon ancient astronomical texts, and recent workers have much benefited from the hints which he threw out. He was dignified in bearing and his manners were courteous, and he was tolerant towards his fellow workers ; his quaint, old-world reserve was very attractive. He died in 1897 and his friends missed him greatly. * He was born in 1812 and died in 1882. From 1856-1858 he carried on excavations at Carthage for the Trustees of the British Museirai, and the Phoenician Inscriptions which he discovered were pubhshed by the Trustees in 1863. * Mr. (later Sir) R. Hamilton Lang excavated many sites in C3rprus, and published a collection of Cypriote Inscriptions ; he was a generous friend of the British Museum. * He excavated many sites in Southern Arabia, and many of the Himyaritic Inscriptions which he discovered there are now in the British Museum. Rawlinson. 39 at our copies frequently. He remembered the contents of all the tablets which he had examined with a view to publication when he worked daily in the Museum/ and nothing seemed to escape him. After Oriental languages, Oriental geography seemed to be his favourite study, and his knowledge of Armenia, Syria, and Mesopo- tamia was so exact that he could follow in his mind the campaigns of the Assyrian kings with unusual facility. Speaking one day about the statement in the Annals of Sennacherib, in which the king says that in going over a certain mountain he was obliged at one place to leave his chariot and continue his journey on foot, Rawlinson said that he knew the pass well, and when crossing that same mountain he dismounted and walked. He had read all the works of the great Arab and Syrian geographers and historians, and most of the writings of Syrian Christians on ecclesiastical history, because of the geographical references which they contained. At his death I was, through the kindness of his son, able to acquire his copies of nearly all the Arabic texts of geographers and historians like Yakut, Abu '1-Fida, Ibn al-Athir, and Tabari, and AssemS,ni's " Bibliotheca Orientalis," and everywhere in them I find notes which prove how carefully he read the texts. In these days we are often in danger of forgetting that Rawlinson was the " Father of Assyriology," and that the part he took in deciphering the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia was, if anything, more important than his decipherment and translation of the Persian text of the Behistun Inscription. In the former case he was the leader and teacher of the little band of decipherers ; in the latter, Lassen, Burnouf, ^ He occupied the room over the Secretary's of&ce, which is now the office of the Accountant, and here on tables all round the room were the tablets which Rassam obtained at Nineveh in 1854. Rawlin- son, Norris and Smith worked in this room making ready " copy" for Mr. Bowler, the lithographer. When Smith, on Rawlinson's recom- mendation, was made Birch's Senior Assistant, a room was set apart for him on the south-west staircase,'' and he removed there with the tablets. 40 Rawlinson. Norris, and Hincks were at least equal in merit to him. In spite of his greatness Rawlinson was curiously patient with some of the students who worked in Birch's room, and who assumed the attitude of original decipherers, and emphasised the importance of their work at every opportunity. I remember that when Birch presented Dr. Friedrich Delitzsch to him, Rawlinson asked the young Privat-docent what work he was doing. He replied, " I will make a reading book for students." Rawlinson said, " Why not use the historical texts in my ' Cuneiform Inscriptions,' which the Museum has published at such great expense ? " Delitzsch answered, " That is impossible, they are so full of mistakes ; but I will correct them all." We all expected some sharp reply from Rawlinson, and Birch was about to make an indig- nant remark, when Rawlinson quietly said, " That may well be. Norris and I were only pioneers, and I am no scholar," and he wished him success in his work. The reading book was finished in due course, and its compiler must have regarded it as the " perfect book," for on its last leaf it bore the words, " Fehler — vacat." On another occasion Dr. Delitzsch afforded us great amuse- ment. One morning, soon after the lamented death of Smith, a gentleman from the Principal Librarian's Office came in to discuss with Birch the choice of a successor, and all present in the room could hear their conversa- tion. In the afternoon, when Dr. Delitzsch returned from his lunch, he walked over to Birch, who was standing by the fire, and told him that in passing through Russell Square he had seen the ghost of George Smith, and that it told him he was to succeed him in the British Museum. Whether Birch did not believe in the wisdom of Smith's ghost or in the story is not clear, but he did not recommend the Trustees to make his assistant a young man who had never edited a single text of his own copying in all his life. I also saw a great deal of Rawlinson's great friend and rival, Jules Oppert, the great OrientaHst, and one of the four founders of Assyriology. He was born at Hamburg in 1825, and studied at Bonn under Lassen, Jules Oppert. 41 from whom he learned all the art of cuneiform decipher- ment. After his return from his famous Mission to Mesopotamia, in which he covered France and himself with glory, he became a French subject, and did splendid work in Paris. He was of small stature, and had an enormous head, which, when I saw him first, was already covered with a mass of long white hair. His mouth was large and firm, his chin large and square, and his deep-set, very bright eyes seemed to pierce everything. For several years after Lassen and Rawlinson published their systems of decipherment, many eminent men — among them being Sir G. Comewall Lewis — ^refused to believe that any real progress had been made in cunei- form decipherment, and Assyriologists were called upon pubUcly to substantiate their claims. The challenge was accepted by Rawlinson, Oppert, Hincks, and Fox Talbot, and they offered to translate independently a long historical inscription, and agreed to submit their transla- tions for examination and analysis to any committee formed of competent judges. The inscription selected for their translating was that of Tiglath-Pileser I, which contains 810 lines of text, and when the translations were made they were handed over to a carefully selected committee of scholars. Among the members of this committee were Hayman Wilson, the Persian and Sanskrit scholar ; Cureton, of the British Museum, the eminent Semitic scholar ; Gardner Wilkinson, the great Egyptian archaeologist ; Whewell, the mathematician and philosopher ; Milman, the historian of the Jews ; and Grote, the historian of the Greeks. After com- paring the four translations submitted to them, they found that each of the four translators had made out the general meaning of the whole inscription, and that so many paragraphs in each translation agreed so closely with those of the other three translations, that it was impossible any longer to doubt that the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions had been achieved with conspicuous success. Oppert illustrated the philological notes which he appended to his translation with copious comparisons drawn from half a dozen Semitic dialects. 42 Oppert. and his work was a wonderful proof of the depth of his knowledge of Oriental languages and of his linguistic skill. In the days when Rawlinson was working in the British Museum at the mass of tablets which Layard sent from Nineveh in 1854, Oppert was allowed to join him when visiting London, and between 1868 and 1870 he made out the general meaning of many fragments of the " Gisdhubar (Gilgamesh) Legends." On his return to Paris he obtained a grant from the Academie des Inscriptions to enable him to come to London and publish these tablets, considering them to be of more value than all the bas-reliefs, and colossal lions and bulls from Nineveh, Nimrud, and Khorsabad put together. When he arrived in London he found that the Trustees of the British Museum had already decided to pubhsh the tablets, and on making application for them to Smith, in whose charge they had been placed, he was informed that they could not be found. He was bitterly disappointed, and expressed his annoyance vividly and picturesquely in many languages. He bore no maUce against Rawlinson and Norris, for, said he, " they are scholars," but he took a great dislike to Smith, whom he described as a " mechanic." Once, when discussing Smith's work with Birch, he said, " Smith is a great excavator," and then with scathing emphasis added, "and he writes like one." As years went on Oppert's eyesight began to fail, and reading and writing, to say nothing of the copying of cuneiform texts, presented serious difficulties to him. When he heard of and saw the work produced by others in the field of Assjrriology, which he considered to be the domain of Rawlinson and himself absolutely, he became irritated, and he boldly accused each student of the younger generation of having stolen all his know- ledge from him. But a kindly smile usually accom- panied the accusation, and took the sting from his words, which, by the way, were often true, and those who used a little tact with him on such occasions made him their friend for life. One day, when I was reading a proof with the original text on a tablet, he said to me, " What Oppert. 43 is that ? " and I told him. He said, as usual, " Ah, you have stolen that from me," and I repUed, " Of course, there is no one else worth stealing from," and expected from him some sharp retort. Instead of this he laughed, and asked me if I possessed copies of his books and papers. When I said, " No, I have few books, because they are so expensive," he answered, " I shall send you all my books, and you shall go on stealing in comfort." And sure enough, a few weeks later, I received by post copies of all his papers and several books, including his translation of the Sargon Inscriptions. He was in the habit of expressing his opinion of other scholars quite freely, even in their presence. On one occasion an English professor told him that he never troubled to read anything which he had written on Ass5n:ian since 1857, and Oppert replied, " I read the works of every Assyriologist, even yours, therefore am I wise. You do not read my books, therefore you are a fool." I saw much of him at the meetings of the Oriental Congress in Berlin in 1881, and he afforded great amuse- ment to aU his friends by the running fire of comments which he kept up in English, French, and German, on paper after paper as it was read. The author of one paper was foolish enough to assume that Oppert was a Frenchman by birth, and that he knew no German, and in the discussion of his paper which followed he was rash enough to make some very rude remarks about him and his scholarship. Whilst this was going on Oppert made repeated attempts to leap to his feet and interrupt the lecturer, but was held firmly down by his friends behind him, who were grasping his coat-tails. Suddenly with a jerk he heaved himself up, and his coat-taUs parting from the waist of the coat, remained in our hands, as he rushed amid great laughter — for all had heard tbo splitting of the cloth — to the platform to speak. When the laughter had subsided he addressed the meeting in German with a vehemence and fluency which were start- ling, and he completely silenced his opponent ; but the sight was one never to be forgotten — ^the raging little gentleman on a high platform, shaking out his long white 44 Layard. hair as a lion shakes his mane, and thundering out his arguments as fast as he could fit words to them, and standing before the learned assembly with the lower half of his coat torn off at the waist, and the fragments of the lining hanging down. At the Oriental Congress held in Stockholm he thoroughly enjoyed himself, for everyone, from the King downwards, delighted to honour him. Dr. Wright told me that when Oppert left one of the meetings which the King had honoured by his presence, he stepped into the royal carriage which was waiting for His Majesty, and, in spite of all protests by the officials, drove off in it to his hotel, bowing right and left to the people he passed on the way. He was a brilliant teller of Oriental tales in French and English, and he loved Persian, Turkish, and Arabic poetry, and at Sir Charles Newton's dinner parties I have heard him recite in the originals extracts from the Mu'allakat, and from the poems of Sa'di and Hafiz, for an hour at a time. I saw the great Assyrian explorer, Layard, in Birch's room twice, and in a conversation which I had with him he complained that students were devoting too much energy to the study of the ancient Assyrian texts, and not enough to the continuance of excavations on the site which he had opened. He attributed the difficulty which the Trustees of the British Museum had in obtain- ing a faramdn {i.e., permit) to continue the excavations to the fact that he had not been elected a Trustee, and did not seem to realize that it was due to the natural wish of the Sultan to preserve in his country the antiquities which still remained there. He urged me to seize the first opportunity of going to Assyria, and promised me help and introductions to his friends in Mosul and Baghdad; but it is sad to relate that through my Missions to Mesopotamia in 1888, 1889, and 1891, I incurred his bitterest enmity. Whilst travelling with Mr. Mitford in the East in 1842, Layard visited Botta, the French Consul at Mosul, who was excavating the ruins of Nineveh on behalf of the French Government. When Botta abandoned the mound of Kuyunjik, where his results had been few, and went to Khorsabad, Layard Layard. 45 obtained permission from him to carry on the work, and Stratford Canning provided the money for the under- taking. He began work at Kuyunjik in 1845, but in 1846, acting on instructions from Stratford Canning, he left Kujmnjik, and began to excavate the remains of the buildings of Ashur-nasir-pal (b.c. 885-860) at Nimrud, the site of the ancient city of Calah (see Genesis x, 11, 12), about 20 miles down-stream of Nineveh. [Stratford Canning was led to give him these instructions as the result of reading a report on Nimrud and the ruins of the buildings there, which were then above ground, made at his request by Mr. Badger a few years before Layard began to excavate there.] Layard obtained splendid results at Nimrud, which he beUeved to be Nineveh, and it is much to be regretted that he did not excavate the whole site completely. In 1849 ^^ renewed excavations at Kuyunjik and the mound of Nabi Yunis (where, according to tradition, Jonah preached repent- ance to the Ninevites), and obtained good results. On his departure from Assyria in 1851, Rawlinson,i who was then Consul-General of Baghdad, undertook to direct further excavation work in Assyria, and Layard aban- doned Assyrian archaeology in favour of a political career. Layard was at one time haUed as the " discoverer of Nineveh," but the site of Nineveh, as will be shown later on, was always well known. He was a man of tremendous energy, but he was neither a scholar nor an Assyriologist, and most of the information of a linguistic, ^ Felix Jones gives an interesting description of Rawlinson's zeal and energy about this time : — " Colonel Rawlinson was daily thus employed in a most inclement season. Book in hand, sometimes seated in a swamp, sometimes protected only by an umbrella from the torrents coming down from above, he persevered and succeeded in obtaining copies of all the legible tablets uncovered within the mounds both of Nineveh and Nimrud. It was ludicrous and interesting indeed to witness the shifts he was occasionally put to to obtain a glimpse of hght upon a defaced and uncertain character of the inscriptions. His activity of mind and body in the pursuit of his favourite study in every situation is certainly deserving of the success which the public and his numerous friends most cordially wish him." — Jnl. Royal Asiatic Soc, vol. xv, p. 326. 46 Birch and Lepsius. historical or learned character found in his books was supplied to him by Birch, Vaux, and Ellis, of the British Museum, and by Rawlinson. The importance of the greatest treasure which he found at Kuyunjik, i.e., the inscribed baked clay tablets of the Library of Nineveh, was not recognized until it reached England. Birch told me that Layard thought the writing on the tablets was a species of ornament, and hardly deemed them worth the carriage to England. They were shovell^ without any packing into old digging baskets, which were tied up and put on rafts, and in this way they arrived with the larger objects at Basrah, where they were shipped to England. They suffered more from their voyage from M6sul to London than from the fury of the Medes when they sacked and burned Nineveh. Layard was a splendid horseman, and I found that he was remembered by the natives for his long rides more than for his excavations. I often heard him mentioned by the greybeards on the Khabur and at Sinjar in 1891, and Jeremiah Shamir, of M6sul, told me many stories of his physical endurance. The Shekh of Baibuk remembered him, and compared him to Antar, a very famous Arab warrior and horse- man. They told me also that he treated his horses as if they were his " maternal brother's children " — i.e., his cousins — that he fed them far more carefully than he fed himself, and that he understood the " tongue of horses," and could converse with them. As the official custodian of the antiquities from Mesopotamia, Egypt, Phoenicia, Southern Arabia, etc.. Birch was for nearly five and forty years the adviser and helper of many excavators, and of all the scholars who were engaged in completing the decipherment of the cunei- form and Egyptian inscriptions. He and Lepsius worked through all the material which the savants who accom- panied Napoleon had collected, and they were the first Egyptologists to pubhsh literary texts. Lepsius issued a facsimile of the Book of the Dead, as contained in the Turin Papyrus, in 1842, and in 1843 and 1844 Birch pubUshed the " Belmore Collection," and " Hieroglyphic and Hieratic Papyri," and the first part of " Select Papyri Samuel Sharpe. 47 in the Hieratic Character." At this early period he assisted Sharped in the preparation of his " Egyptian Inscriptions " (Part 11), and supplied him with much material for his other works. Every writer on Egypt turned to Birch for help, and much of his best work went forth into the world under the names of others. Of what value would Bunsen's " Egypt's Place " have been without Birch's contributions ? And though he never professed to have any deep knowledge of Assyrian and Babylonian cuneiform, he was consulted by every ^ Samuel Sharpe (died 1881) was a scholar of great merit, and was well known for his works on Egypt and for his English version of the Bible, which passed through many editions. In the early " thirties " he realized that material must be provided for would-be Egjrptologists, and in 1835 he published some copies of hieroglyphic texts in tiie British Museiun ; in 1837 he published his " Vocabulary of Hieroglyphics." He then compiled a History of Egypt, and wrote works on Bible Chronology and Egyptian Christianity. His theolo- gical opinions interfered with his progress in Egyptology, for he never forgot that the Pharaohs were the oppressors of the IsraeUtes, and believed that they and their people were pagans ; moreover, he thought little of Egyptian Literature. He worked at hierogljrphs because they interested him, and because he regarded the inscriptions as so many puzzles, but he never took the trouble to understand the later development of Egyptology. Had he done so he would have been the first to admit that most of his earlier opinions on the subject were untenable, for he was a fair-minded man. He talked well in a low, quiet voice, and his remarks in discussions at meetings were very much to the point ; his criticisms had a " bite " in them which many of his opponents found disconcerting. He warned me earnestly on one occasion against allowing the influence of the works of the " god- less French and Germans " to undermine my religious beliefs, saying that if I did, I should end by " hugging the knees of Baal, and eating the cakes of Ashtoreth, and worshipping in the house of Rimmon." He purchased and gave to the British Museum the remarkable flint agglomerate statue of Kha-em-Uast, the eldest son of Rameses II, because he believed that prince to have been one of the magicians who withstood Moses. Birch had no money to buy the statue when it came up for sale, and Sharpe being determined, as he said, that " so remarkable a proof of the authenticity of the Book of Exodus, and of the truth of Holy Scripture " should not leave the country, bought it and gave it to the nation. In 1907 two of his daughters presented to the Museum some fine bronze figures of Egyptian gods which their father had purchased at the sale of the Third Salt Collection. 48 Birch and the Cypriote Inscriptions. decipherer, and in one form or another they had to acknowledge the value of the advice which his wide knowledge enabled him to give them. He corrected the manuscript and proof-sheets of Layard's " Cuneiform Inscriptions," and Hincks adopted his suggestions in his list of cuneiform signs. He was President of the Society of Biblical Archaeology from the time of its foundation till his death, and there are few papers in its " Transac- tions " which do not contain information supplied by him and marks of his learning. In some cases while editing its publications he was really the author of the papers. This was the case in Smith's papers on the decipherment of the Cypriote inscriptions. It was Birch who made the discovery, which obviously was beyond Smith's reach, as he knew no Greek. Birch's suggestions were invariably put forward with such diffidence and modesty that even the most irascible and opinionated of authors accepted them, if not always gratefully, at least with the conviction that there was " something in them." Some of the pleasantest hours I ever spent in Birch's room were those when London was wrapped in a dense fog, and when, for want of light, copying became impos- sible. As there was always a chance of the fog lifting we sat and waited, and passed the time in talk. In some departments business was carried on by the light of locked moderator lamps, but as the Museum only possessed a limited supply of these, it frequently hap- pened that Birch failed to get one. On such occasions he would stand with his back to the fire, and discuss any subject which anyone in the room wanted to talk about. Certain phases of politics interested him greatly, and when arguing with opponents the usually quiet, self- contained man became changed into a fierce debater. His favourite subject for abuse was Mr. Forster's Educa- tion Act, and those who understood it said that Birch had noted all the defects in it. He prophesied that the misfortunes which had fallen upon the Chinese, whom he regarded as the most educated nation in the world so far as book-learning is concerned, would fall upon England through this Act. He talked well on the His Religious Views. 49 campaigns of Napoleon, to the study of which he seems to have devoted considerable attention, and also on our wars with China. About the latter he had much to say which was amusing, and the extracts which he quoted from Chinese papers that discussed the operations in i860 and 1861 formed really funny reading. He had the greatest contempt for the system of government of India as carried on by the authorities in London, and he fought many a wordy battle with Rawlinson on the subject. According to Birch, the home authorities were ignorant of the history of India, had no true sympathy with its peoples, lacked understanding of their religions and mental characteristics, and treated their traditions and prejudices with bad behaviour and tactlessness. On the other hand, he greatly admired the tact, patience, devotion and loyalty of the Civil Service of India. Next to politics religion was his favourite subject of discussion, and he Ustened eagerly to the views of the ministers of all religions and sects, both Orientals and Occidentals, who consulted him about the trend of the discoveries which archaeologists were making so rapidly. I have heard him tell some of these inquirers that none of the discoveries either in Archaeology or Science ever dis- turbed his personal religious beliefs, which he said he had formulated for himself when a young man. I never heard him say, and I have never met anyone who knew, what his beliefs really were. Whatever they were he was careful to keep them concealed. When tactless people pressed him hard to make some statement he invariably said, " I believe all Science and all ReUgion." Personally, I should have classed him among the " godless good." He had great contempt for those who cam'e to him always seeking for " proofs " of the truth of the Bible from the cuneiform inscriptions, and always said that they could not know the difference between belief and history. He thought that each race in the world possessed beliefs peculiar to itself, and that, owing to differences in physical constitution and in mental characteristics and linguistic difficulties, no one race could ever be brought 50 The Egyptian Trinity. to understand thoroughly and completely the beliefs of the other. When speaking on this point he would quote passages from the Chinese and other Oriental versions of the Bible, and would show that whilst the translators produced texts which the Orientals could understand, their renderings failed to bear the exact meanings which Christians in Europe gave them. Discussing the Trinity one day, he said that the ancient Egyptian conception of a Trinity was quite logical and understandable from a native point of view, though not from that of Syrian and Greek and Roman Christians, and that the funda- mental conception of the origin of the members of the Egyptian Trinity was entirely different from the concep- tion of the origin of the Persons of the Trinity as formu- lated by the early Christian Fathers. If, he said, the Christian theologians of the first four centuries of our Era had realized how impossible it was for Africans and Asiatics to understand the meanings which they gave to <^uo-is and Trpoa-coTTov, natura and persona,] they would never have used them, and a great many of the con- troversies of the Church would never have taken place ; and he went on to say that professional teachers of religion in England ought to study more deeply the languages, history and archaeology of Western Asia and Egypt. Though he disliked intensely the teachings and ceremonial of High Church services, he had great regard for the Ritual of the Roman Church, and for her learned conservatism and authority ; and he admired and respected the learning and scholarship which produced such works as the " Acta Sanctorum " of the BoUandists, and the " Bibliotheca Orientalis " of Assem§,ni. He had little belief in the value of the destructive criticism of Dutch and German theologians, and still less in that of their followers in England, nearly all of whom lacked the training and scholarship of those whose ideas they reproduced in their books. Many of our difficulties in the matter of Bible history are due to the fact that the sources from which the Hebrew writers drew their information vary greatly in value and historical accuracy. When they had trustworthy information on which to The Bible and the Monuments. 51 base their statements they agree with those of the monu- ments ; and many of our difficulties are entirely due to our lack of documents and to insufficient evidence. In connection with this subject he often referred to the passage in Isaiah (xx, i), in which the prophet says that the Tartan of Sargon, King of Assyria, " came unto Ashdod, and fought against Ashdod, and took it." The distinguished commentator, Professor T. K. Cheyne, had assured him that this was impossible, and that Isaiah had made a mistake ; but very soon afterwards Smith rejoined the fragments of a cylinder of Sargon which were in the Museum, and they contained the account of the capture of the city by Sargon, and the deposition of its kuig, Azuri. This event probably took place about B.C. 711. Very much more might be written about Birch's merits, and the services which he rendered to all honest seekers after knowledge. He possessed the art of making friends, and he was kind and genial to aU comers, especially to young beginners, in whose hands lay the future of his beloved studies, and his sympathy, encouragement and example made productive workers of many who came to him. No earnest worker ever appealed to him for help in vain, but the trifier and pretender found in him a stern foe, and instances are known which prove that he could be a " good hater " as well as a good friend. Returning to the subject of myself after this somewhat long, but, in my opinion, necessary digression, I find that in the winter of 1877-78 I became acquainted with the distinguished Orientalist, Rev. Dr. William Mead Jones. ^ He was the Minister or Pastor of the Seventh Day Baptists, 2 or Seventh Day Independents, who held their ^ Born May 2nd, 1818, died February 22nd, 1895. He livedfat Mill Yard from September 14th, 1872, when he became Pastor, until his death. For obituary notices see The Times, February 25th, 1895 ; Freeman, March ist, 1895 ; Baptist, March ist, 1895. * They were originally known as " Traskites," an early name which was given to the Sabbatarians who were commonly grouped under the denomination of " Anabaptists." The name of " Seventh Day Men " was not given to the Traskites until the end of the seventeenth century D 2 52 Mill Yard Chapel, Goodman's Fields. weekly services in the famous Baptist Chapel in Mill Yard,^ Goodman's Fields,^ Whitechapel. He had been a missionary in Jerusalem, where he continued his study of Arabic, both literary and spoken, and with the help of the Samaritans of Nablus he had become a fine Samaritan scholar. He adopted the tenets of the Seventh Day Baptists or Independents, and so left Palestine and came to London, where he married Miss Black,* and became the Pastor of the Mill Yard Chapel. I visited him frequently in his house in Mill Yard, which was attached to the Chapel,* and he devoted much time (Chamberlain, " Present State of England for 1702," p. 258). John Trask was a schoolmaster in Somerset, and became a preacher in London in 1617. He inculcated three-day fasts, continuous prayer and " quaking," and a very rigid observance of Sunday. A man called Jackson persuaded him that the Sabbath had never been abro- gated, and that the Traskites ought to observe it instead of Sunday ; Trask adopted these views. In 1634 he was brought before the Star Chamber and his arguments were refuted by Bishop Andrewes. Trask was put in the pillory, and is said to have recanted. His wife was in prison for fifteen or sixteen years. See Blunt, Diet, of Sects (London, 1874, p. 599). '■ Maitland in 1739 says that the " Anabaptist meeting house was in Mill Yard, Rag Fair. The first Chapel was burned down in 1666 and rebuilt ; the second Chapel was burnt down on February 24th, 1790, and the foundation stone of the third Chapel was laid on Sep- tember 1st of the same year. On October 19th, 1733, a magistrate visited the Chapel whilst the Pastor, John James, a weaver, was conducting a service, and had him dragged from the pulpit, and accused him of treason ; the wretched man was hanged on the following November 26th." See Ivimey, History of the English Baptists (London, 1830, vol. iv, p. 232) ; and Pike, Ancient Meeting Houses (London, 1870, p. 193). ' Goodman flourished in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and on his farm, or " Fields," now stands a part of the Minories. Stowe, the antiquary, used to drink a halfpennjrworth of milk (about 3 pints !) whenever he passed the farm. Pike, op. cit., p. 195. ' Probably a descendant of the W. H. Black, who succeeded WilUam Slater as Pastor of the Chapel in 1719. * This Chapel was a good-sized room, about 45 feet long and 22 feet wide, with seating accommodation for about 300 people. A gallery on pillars ran round three sides of it, and the pews were painted a dull grey colour. At one end were two windows with arches over them, and between them was a platform with rails ; on the platform was a reading desk for the use of the Pastor, and by the side of it / Publish Translations from Assyrian. 53 to teaching me the rudiments of Arabic, and in return I wrote some short articles for the " Sabbath Memorial," the organ of the Seventh Day Independents, which he edited. I also helped him to compile the chart of the names of the days of the week in many languages, a work on which he spent many years. He possessed much information about the Samaritans, and I read with him the first two of the Five Books of Moses in a lithographed reproduction of a Samaritan manuscript which he was preparing for publication.^ In the spring of 1878 the results of my work at Assyrian began to take pubUshed form, and my translation of an inscription of Sennacherib from Nabi Yunis was printed in the eleventh volume of the " Records of the Past " (Old Series), and my paper on Assyrian Incantations to were high cushioned seats for the Elders. The Ten Commandments were painted in black on the wall above the platform, with the exception of the Fourth, which was in red. Between the platform and the pews was the large rectangular tank, with a stairway down into it at one end, in which total immersions took place. The pews were narrow, high-backed, and very uncomfortable. Up in one corner near the platform was the entrance to the vestry. Besides the Chapel and the Pastor's house there stood on the plot of ground (which was the property of the Mill Yard Settlement from the days of Charles I) two almshouses, a bakery, a brewery, and a wash-house ; and a part of the plot formed the cemetery of the little community. The whole was surrounded with a high brick wall. The site was acquired compulsorily by a local railway company for an extension of its sidings, and all the buildings upon it were pulled down. Lieut.-Colonel T. W. Richardson, of the Seventh Day Baptist Church, Mornington Hall, Canonbury Lane, N., kindly informs me that the Chapel register shows that a baptism took place in Mill Yard Chapel on June 6th, 1885. I remember seeing the sheets of copper being stripped from the Chapel roof in the summer of that year. The endowment of this famous Chapel in the eighteenth century was said to be considerable, but in Dr. Jones' time it was only worth about £100 per annum. At one time the Chapel had two Pastors, and when one of them died, the congregation split itself into two parties, and went to law about the division of the endowment. The case was heard by Lord Chancellor Eldon, and no doubt much of the endow- ment disappeared in law expenses. ^ He also wrote The Agony of Sunday (London, 1876, 8vo) ; Letter on the Desecration of the Seventh Day (London, 1876, 8vo) ; The Sign cf the Messiah (London, 1879, 8vo). 54 Christ's College, Cambridge. Fire and Water in the sixth volume of the " Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology." At this time my friends could not agree about the work which I was best qualified to do in life, and some wanted me to settle down to copying cuneiform texts for publication, and others wanted me to go to the East and help Mr. Rassam, who was then about to start for Assyria to continue excavations at Nineveh and other places. In May Mr. Gladstone wrote to Mr. Seager, and said that he had decided that I should go up to Cambridge in the following October, and asked him to do all he could meanwhile to help me to pursue the study of Semitic Languages as he wished. This Mr. Seager did with characteristic thorough- ness, and I read with him until the Saturday before he left London to assist at the Oriental Congress in Florence. There he died at the Hotel de la Ville, September i8th. Alas! In October I went up to Cambridge, and entered as a Non-Collegiate Student, and began to read for the Semitic Languages Tripos, which had recently been established. In the Lent Term of the following year Dr. Peile, Fellow and Tutor of Christ's College, proposed that I should migrate thither, saying that the Master and Fellows were prepared to give me an Exhibition for Assyrian if I did sufficiently well in the College Examina- tions in May. I accepted the proposal gratefully, and was admitted a pensioner at Christ's under Messrs. Peile and Cartmell, AprU 23rd, 1879. In May I was examined in Hebrew and Assyrian, the examination papers in the latter language being set by Professor A. H. Sayce, and on June nth I was elected Otway Exhibitioner. The following year the College prize for Hebrew fell to me, and in June, 1881, 1 was elected a Scholar of the College. Early in 1882 I took my degree in the Semitic Languages Tripos, for which I was the only candidate, and in May I was awarded a Tyrwhitt University Scholarship for Hebrew. The College most generously offered to con- tinue my Scholarship for another year, and thus I was enabled to stay up at Cambridge and read Arabic,. Ethiopic and Talmudic Literature. Professor William Wright. 55 The four and a half years which I spent at Cambridge were filled with hard work, and during the first two years I often wondered if I should ever obtain my degree, for my ignorance of mathematics was absolute. To those who had worked at mathematics at school the examina- tion in the Additional Subjects (Trigonometry, Algebra and Statics), which every candidate for a Tripos was, at that time, obliged to pass, was a comparatively easy matter ; but this was by no means the case with me, for during the past ten years (1868-78) I had given all my time and attention to the study of the Semitic Lan- guages. The " coach " to whose charge I was specially coromitted found me inexpressibly stupid. College lectures on mathematics were wasted on me, and my progress in mathematics was very slow, and I was " plucked " in arithmetic. After this disaster my friend and fellow student, Mr. Edward Haigh (15th Wrangler in 1880) took me in hand, and understood my difficulties, and he " coached " me to such good purpose that I was able tO' satisfy the examiners, and so became free to devote my whole time to Tripos work. Though Professor W. Wright held firmly to his view that any young man who studied Semitic Languages with the idea of getting his living by them in England was a fool, I soon found out that one of the dearest aims of his life was the publication of Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic texts, with English translations. It was with much fear and trembUng that I called upon him in his rooms in the second court of Queens' and announced my arrival, but the firm grasp of his hand and kindly smUe reassured me, and I learned at once that, as Dr. PeUe often said, " Wright's bark was much worse than his bite." He carefully explained to me that there was still time for me to abandon Semitic Languages, because, as he said, the man who took them up to gaio a living by them was a fool, but, of course, if I persisted in my foolish idea, he was there to help me, and he would do so. Re- marking somewhat sadly, " He that will to Cupar maun to Cupar," he at once sketched out a plan of work, and terrified me with the list of books which he expected me 56 Wright's Oriental Catalogues. to read. Certain set books in Syriac and Arabic he would read with me himself ; Syriac works which were transla- tions from the Greek were to be read with Mr. R. L. Ben sly, who would help me in translating English into Syriac ; and the Hebrew and Chaldee books were to be read with the Rev. W. H. Lowe, who would direct me in Hebrew composition. Wright's Catalogues of the Syriac and Ethiopic Manuscripts in the British Museum, and his editions of Arabic and Syriac texts, are monuments alike of his mar- vellous power of work and his almost incredible accuracy. He was unquestionably the greatest authority on Semitic and Oriental studies that our country has produced. He expected his pupils to follow his example, and for those who did he could never do enough. He spared neither time nor pains in teaching me to work at Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic, and he never ceased to tell me that the best work I could do was to edit texts, and to publish them with translations. It was useless, he said, to attempt to write histories of Semitic peoples and their civilization as long as their literatures remained in manu- script, and therefore inaccessible to the majority of students. Every Oriental text ought to be pubhshed in full, and no text should be given to the world without a translation of it in some European tongue. A bad translation was better than none at aU, because it would at least afford material for someone to make a better one. I worked very hard under his direction, and tried to deserve his generous help, but about one subject we quarrelled frequently, and that was Assyriology. Some years before I became his pupil he had studied the writings of Oppert and Schrader, and other Assyriolo- gists, in order to learn something of Assyrian grammar for purposes of Comparative Semitic Philology. He made no attempt to learn the cuneiform characters, even the simpler Ninevite script, because he considered the task hopeless, and he regarded the Babylonian character used in the Nebuchadnezzar texts as " complicated fiendishnesses," and " sheer inventions of the devil." How far his studies in cuneiform went I cannot say, but I Begin to Publish Assyrian Texts. 57 they took him far enough to convince him that all the younger group of students and teachers of Assyrian knew neither Hebrew nor any other Semitic Language. More than that, he found that some of them made state- ments about Semitic grammar in general which he was able to prove were untrue. Therefore he regarded Assyriologists as " impostors," and the wrath which he should have distributed over half a dozen people (many of whom he disHked personally!) he concentrated upon me ; and he was always urging me to drop my " nasty Assyrian," which none of you know anything about, and devote myself to the study of languages which are known and understood, and of which " decent " grammars and dictionaries exist. In March, 1879, I read a paper on a " Recently Discovered Text of Ashur-natsir-pal, B.C. 885," before the Society of Biblical Archaeology, and when Wright saw the account of it in the papers he was very angry ; but he was mollified when the College soon after elected me Otway Exhibitioner for Assyrian and Hebrew, and the storm blew over. When I was " plucked " in arithmetic, Wright was perfectly certain that my failure was due to my having spent aU my time on my " nasty Assyrian," and he thought worse of Assyriologists than ever, and openly expressed his derision and contempt for them all over Cambridge. To me personally, however, he went out of his way to be kinder than ever, and one day, I imagine to console me, he told me that, in his opinion, " Arithmetic and Paley's ' Evidences ' " were " just nasty trash." In October, 1880, the great peace which had existed for four terms between Wright and myself was broken. The cause of the trouble was the publication of a little volimie of " Ass5n-ian Texts," which Messrs. Bagster had asked me to prepare in 1877 for the series of elementary handbooks caUed the " Archaic Classics," of which mention has already been made. The book was ready for the printer in 1878, but Messrs. Bagster decided to abandon the publication of such costly books, and Mr. Triibner undertook to bring the book out. The expense of setting the type caused delay, and during the 58 Further Studies Under Wright. Christmas vacation of 1879 I went to the printer's office and set up the matter for several pages, and about the middle of 1880 the book was published. During the summer it was reviewed in several papers, and the writers of the reviews treated me considerately. The Aihenceum (No. 2752) said that " a reading-book of this sort was very much needed by both pupils and teachers," and spoke well of the editing and the notes ; and the Academy (No. 427), the Guardian (August i8th, 1880), and Notes and Queries (October 23rd, 1880), welcomed it, each for different reasons. The last-named paper mentioned that another publication by me was announced, and was kind enough to say that " after the present instance of the editor's knowledge " it looked forward to its appear- ance. These notices, though gratifying to me, were very displeasing to Wright, and when we began reading again in October he was exceedingly angry once more. It was quite useless to try and show him that the greater part of the work had been done before I came up to Cambridge, and he was greatly irritated by the remark in Notes and Queries as to the other publication by me which was announced. A month or so later, before he had recovered his equanimity, my " History of Esarhaddon " appeared, and its publication did not make for peace. Wright told me that undergraduates ought not to publish books on Assyrian inscriptions or any- thing else, and that those who did so always " wrote rubbish and wasted their time." The reviewers treated the book, on the whole, kindly, and The Times gave it its blessing (January 29th, 1881) ; but before Wright would continue his reading with me he made me promise to drop Assyrian until after the Tripos. I read with him the whole time I was up at Cambridge, and for several years after I came down I enjoyed the inestimable benefit of his direction and help in editing and translating Syriac texts. Before I went to Mesopotamia in 1888, he gave me instructions to seek for and to obtain, if possible, at Mardin, M6sul and Baghdad, Syriac and Arabic manuscripts which were wanting in the National Collection, and promised to pay for them out of his own Rabbi Schiller-Szinessy. 59 pocket if official funds were not forthcoming. I was fortunate enough to be able to report to him, just before he died in 1889, that I had secured most of them. My debt to him for eleven years of judicious friendship and constant and priceless help is very great. As soon as I was free from the bonds of mathematics Wright arranged for me to attend the Rabbinic and Talmudic lectures of the Rabbi Schiller-Szinessy, which he dehvered at a time most inconvenient for under- graduates, namely, three o'clock in the afternoon. The career of this extraordinarily learned Rabbi was remark- able. He was bom m 1820, graduated at Jena, was ordained a Rabbi and made a professor at Eperges, in Hungary. He became a revolutionary in 1848, and was wounded and made prisoner, but managed to escape and find his way to Ireland. He became Minister of the Four Congregations in Manchester, but resigned his post in 1866, and came to Cambridge, where he was appointed Teacher in Talmudic and Rabbinical Litera- ture. The title of "Teacher " was subsequently changed to " Reader." He was the first Jew in either University to be placed on the Electoral RoU (Peile, Biog. Reg. Christ's Coll., ii, p. 659). He gave a great impetus to Rabbinic studies in Cambridge, and was the source of inspiration in the Palestinian Mishnah of the Rev. W. H. Lowe and the Pirke Abhoth of Dr. Taylor, the Master of John's. His lectures were attended chiefly by " dons," and I have frequently seen among his audience Aldis Wright, C. H. W. King, R. L. Bensly, W. H. Lowe, and Streane, of Corpus. The lectures were a Uttle diffuse, but most interesting, and under the Rabbi's skilful handling the diE&cult passages in the wordy battles between the irascible Shammai and the gentle HUlel became perfectly clear. He kept up a running fire of commentary on the text, filled with quotations from ancient Rabbis, whose works he seemed to have learned by heart. He had a wonderful power of describing the East and its conditions of life to their smallest detail, and as he spoke of the colleges of Jerusalem and Baghdad, and their baz§,rs and the gardens of the latter city and 6o R. L. Bensly. its crowded, narrow streets, they seemed to materialize before the eye. He was saturated with Rabbinic lore, and was always applying the Aphorisms of the Fathers to the conditions of modern life in the West with singular skiU and dexterity. He was a good authority on the manners and customs of the modern Jews in many parts of Europe. R. L. Bensly, with whom I read Syriac for three years, was a very distinguished Orientalist, who devoted many years of his life to work on the Syriac Old Testa- ment, and on the Philoxenian version of the New Testament, as revised by Thomas of Harkel (Heraclea), Bishop of Mabbogh. He discovered in the Town Library at Amiens the missing portion of the Latin translation of the Fourth Book of Ezra, and identified the Palestinian version of the Gospels which was found by Mrs. A. S. Lewis in the Monastery on Mount Sinai, and he published both texts at Cambridge in 1875 and 1894 respectively. During the years I read with him, I turned, with his help, the greater part of the " Pilgrim's Progress " into Syriac, as an exercise in composition. He was a tall, shy, modest man, with a large handsome head, and fine eyes and features. When he began to lecture he became so absorbed in his subject, and so anxious to "do a little more " or to " finish the chapter," that time ceased to be for him, and the luncheon hour rarely entered into his calculations. He frequently lectured from a little after twelve o'clock until nearly three, and finding that there was no time for either of us to get lunch we went on from his room in Caius College to the Divinity Schools, where the Rabbi SchiUer-Szinessy began his Ralabinic and Talmudic lectures five days a week at three. Bensly 's d,eath in 1893 was a severe blow to Semitic studies in Cambridge, for no other English scholar possessed such exhaustive knowledge of the Syriac Recensions of the Old and New Testaments. The Rev. W. H. Lowe (born 1849, ^^^^ 1917). Hebrew Lecturer of Christ's College, was a great Hebrew scholar and Talmudist, and he published a learned edition of the " Palestinian Mishnah " (Cambridge, 1883), which is a W. H. Lowe. 6i monument of Rabbinic lore and research. His know- ledge of Biblical Hebrew was very great, and he could repeat by heart in Hebrew all the poetical Books of the Bible, and the last forty chapters of Isaiah. He was an eloquent and impressive preacher. He worked at his favourite subjects unceasingly, and it was a common thing for him to read all night, especially when he was bringing out a book. He was a good but exacting teacher, and expected his pupils to work hard. He and the half- hearted student soon parted company. His great delight was to find a man who wanted to read Rabbinic works like the Book of Z6har, or the Moreh NSbhuchim of Maimonides, which were not " set " by the examiners in the Semitic Tripos, and was wUling to read them with him hour after hour whilst he smoked innumerable pipes. On such occasions, like Bensly, he lost all count of time. I attended his lectures and " coached " with him for three years, and owe him much. He was a tall, fine, handsome, broad-shouldered man, with a splendid physique, and many stories were current in my days of his great muscular strength when an undergraduate. He rowed against Oxford in 1868,^ 1870 and 1871, and though he broke all the regulations as to diet when training, he could not be done without. He was essen- tially a kind-hearted man, and the geniality of his disposi- tion showed itself in every line of his face. He had a great faculty for seeing a comic or ludicrous side to most things, and when his sense of humour was roused his eyes laughed before his lips moved. He was extremely unconventional, and the disciplinarians of Cambridge often disapproved of his actions. During the whole period of my residence at Cambridge the general course of my work was directed by John Peile, Fellow and Tutor of Christ's College from 1871-84, and Master from 1887 till his death on October 9th, 1910. ^ On going up to Cambridge he was given his rowing Blue as a freshman without having taken part in the trial eights. He rowed No. 4 against Oxford in 1868, No. 5 in 1870, and again in 1871 ; in 1870 and 1871 Cambridge won. In 1891 he became rector of Brisley, Elmham, Norfolk, where he died. 62 Dr. John Peile and his I attended his lectures on the Ion of Euripides, and they were perfect. Not only did he construe the text and translate it into modern speech, but his explanations and illustrations were so clear and full that it required very little imagination on my part to believe that I had actually seen the play acted. I found Peile to be a man of immense sympathy, and one who was ready to make the best of everything and believe the best of everybody, and to help every lame dog, no matter how lame, that crossed his path. He was shrewd in a kindly way, and had great tact and patience. Many generations of under- graduates found in him their best friend ; the help which he gave was always adequate, and his praise was judicious and was also free from the exaggeration with which friends so often harm those they mean to benefit. He followed the careers of those who had been under him with keen interest, and in spite of his heavy college duties he found time to correspond with many of them,i and to * I cannot refrain from quoting in extenso two letters of his to me : — I. — March 24th, 1903 : " Dear Budge, — I thank you equally, I think, for your cornelian (which is very beautiful, and not at all superstitious) and for your letters. Affection like yours is a real comfort as one grows old, espe- cially if it be a sort of ' geometric progression,' as I beUeve that I am growing. I had been thinking about you a good deal, and feeling that it was much longer than it ought to have been since we met. " My work has never brought me of late to the B.M., but always to the Record Of&ce, I often thought last term of asking you to come over and dine, but when a man won't sleep like a Christian in the house where he dines, it seems brutal to ask him to travel 114 (?) mUes for so very small a time. Do think it over — sleep at the Lodge — you can be at King's Cross by 9.50 next morning. I shall be in Cambridge again on Monday next at latest, and we shall be very glad to see you any day. I am very glad that you like the photogravure copy of the portrait. The portrait is good — excellently painted. Most people think it too severe ; my own judgment is the same as yours, only you wouldn't say that it is benevolent to the verge of senility, as / should. And now I have the unpleasant task of telling you that it is not a present from me. You wrote so kindly about it that I feel a miscreant. But you have to thank only yourself and the other subscribers. There was so much more subscribed than was needed, that the balance has paid for a replica for my wife, for those photogravures for everybody, and for about £120 made over Biographical Register of Christ's College. 63 retain their afEection and gratitude. He knew how to ■" show himself friendly," and therefore he had many friends. He spent many years in coUectkig the histories of Christ's CoUege men, which appeared in two portly quarto to the College in trust, to be employed in part payment of the cost of bringing out my Biographical History. Now the minder is out. I have been over to Chichester yesterday and to-day, working 11 hours at the Diocesan Registry for that same B.H., and I brought home a very little bag. My wife, daughter, and I have been here ten days. We leave on Friday. My wife is better on the whole, but stiU quite the invalid — ^knocked over by infinitely small and quite uncertain causes. Still she is better. I am very sorry indeed to hear that Mrs. Budge is not. No more till we meet — ^let it be soon. Ever yours, John Peile." II. — ^May 4th, 1905 : " My dear Budge, — I do not know how long you have been back in England, but I hope that your time in Eg5^t (?) has done you good. I imderstand that you had to go there for your health, but I suspected that you might have some illicit object as well. Perhaps I did you wrong, but I hope not ; for I would rather that you went voluntarily than because you were ill. " I am really sorry to hear so bad a report of Mrs. Budge. She is indeed robbed of much of the good of life ; some folks always are, but it is hard. How does she find your official home suit her ? I have some idea that the houses are not too 'comfortable.' Big they probably are, and dignified. For you it is something to be near yoiu: work. But I shall be very sorry if your housekeeping (in the strict sense) prevents you from dining on July 4th. We shall not see another centenary of the CoUege. And we want to gather our men of note ; the number has been much depleted of late years. Is there any time within moderate date when you will know ? I mean for certain. We were obliged to fix a seemingly needlessly early day for reply, because we want to ask so many more than the 300 (odd) whom we can accommodate, that we begin now to invite a second list, and we want to give them properly long notice. But I should like to have you. My wife is somewhat better ; but she has weak health now, and is often very low in spirits. I am not too " grand " either (as we say in the north). I was 67 a week ago, and sometimes I feel more. When I was 60 I felt but 40. Ever yours, John Peile. " P.S. — If you really can't come to dine, you mustn't come on July 3rd or 4th in the hope of seeing anything, worth coming for, of MS two. We shaU be swallowed up by the host. You must come some other time when we are alone." [To my great regret " house duty " did claim me on July 4th— 5th, and I cotdd not go to Cambridge.] 64 The Homilies of Aphraates. volumes in 1910 and 1913, under the title of " Biographical Register of Christ's College." The amount of labour which he put into this was enormous, and the book is both a memorial of his zeal and love for the College, which, under his rule, grew and flourished, and a monu- ment to the labours of many generations of its members. During Peile's tenure of the Vice-Chancellorship, the long- standing conflict between the Town and the University was brought to an end, chiefly through his tact and influ- ence. The University surrendered its jurisdiction over persons not belonging to its own body, and received representation on the Town Council. As soon as the Semitic Languages Tripos examination was over in the Lent Term of 1882, Wright arranged to read Arabic and Ethiopic with me, and continued to do so until the end of the Lent Term of 1883. I was fortunate enough to hear the course of lectures which he gave on Comparative Semitic Grammar in the winter of 1882-83, the first of the kind ever given in England. They were of special value to me because he showed, as no Assyriologist had ever been able to do, the true position which the Semitic language of the Assjrrian and Baby- lonian inscriptions occupied in the northern group of Semitic Languages. Many of the texts which we read were studied in his own house, and there in his work- room, with his beloved grey parrot uncaged by his side, he helped me to struggle through Phoenician inscriptions and many chapters of the Mandaitic text in Norberg's " Codex Nasareus." He impressed upon me the neces- sity of reading Semitic texts of all kinds continually, and he proved to me that the best way of doing this was to copy and translate unpublished texts and to prepare them for publication. He was emphatic in insisting upon the necessity of publishing translations of such texts in some modern language for the use of theologians, his- torians, and others who would never have the time to learn Oriental languages. As an exercise in such work I translated the whole of the HomUies of Aphraates in Syriac, which he had edited, and he revised the transla- tion and wished me to publish it, but finding that a Wright Plans my Future Work. 65 German translation^ was about to appear I abandoned the idea of publishing it. At this time he drew up a list ot Syriac and Ethiopia texts, and suggested that the pubHcation of these with translations into English would form a useful occupation for me for the rest of my life. Several of these I have already published, and I hope that I may be able to publish the rest of them in due course. The parrot referred to above, which might almost be regarded as Wright's " familiar," deserves much more than a casual mention. He began his career in Wright's house in the drawing-room. After a short time, when he had found his bearings, he began to say to visitors either " Give us a drink," or " Give us a kiss," and when disturbed by any sudden noise or movement he would exclaim, " O HeU ! " One day a beautiful Persian cat, which was a great pet in the house, and was idolized by everyone, jumped up on the table near his cage, and walked over to the side of a visitor, expecting to get a drink of milk. The parrot screamed with rage, and his language was such that he was promptly banished to his master's study, where he lived circumspectly for some time. Finally he disgraced himself in the presence of two " dons " by whistlings and noisy chucklings, and when he was sternly rebuked by Wright in a very severe voice, he cried out, " Damn David, damn David," in a voice which so closely resembled that of his master that the " dons " were startled and greatly amused. The parrot was then removed to the dining-room, and aU went well, and he behaved himself with great propriety, untU a certain evening when Wright gave a small dinner- party. On that occasion Wright's guests consisted of eight University friends, among them being two Pro- fessors of Divinity, Dr. Campion, of Queens', and Professor Bensly. The parrot was pleased with the conversation, and whistled and chuckled, and called " puss, puss, puss," and mewed like a cat, and thoroughly enjoyed ' By Bert, who published his translation in Von Gebhardt and Hamack's Texte und U titer suchungen, vol. iii, Leipzig, 1888. 66 Wright's Grey Parrot. himself. Then he exclaimed, " O HeU ! " once or twice, which created a general laugh, and then Mrs. Wright got up and, taking the large handkerchief which was kept for the purpose, threw it over the cage, and promised the parrot a " bone " if he was good. Presently, in the unaccountable way in which such things happen, a silence fell upon the company, and suddenly the parrot cried out, " Damn the Minor Prophets ! " in a tone of voice which was so like that of his master that the speaker might have been Wright himself. This expres- sion by the parrot of his opinion of the Minor Prophets was followed by shouts of laughter, in which the parrot joined. When these had subsided somewhat, Wright, who was one of the Committee of the Revisers of the Bible who were then actually at work on the Minor Prophets, began hastily to explain that the parrot must have picked up this profane remark from the lad who worked in the garden, and said that he would admonish the lad at the first opportunity. But I could never find out that any of his guests on that memorable evening were prepared to accept that explanation unreservedly. After that evening the parrot was taken back to the study, where he was more often out of his cage than in it. He thoroughly enjoyed his master's society and remarks, and perched on his shoulders and sidled down his arms, and no doubt added to his wisdom and vocabulary. He was a very handsome bird, and his articulation was extraordinarily clear and distinct. He never admitted me to full membership in his friendship, but he honoured me so far as to eat through my coat collar when he sat on my neck, and on another occasion he bit my cap in pieces, and caught my thumb in his beak when I tried to take the remains from him. No one with the love of Oriental languages in him, and the will and the power to work, could wish or hope for a pleasanter life than that which I led for a year at Cambridge when examinations were things of the past. There was a vast amount of work to be done, facilities were abundant, encouragement was to be met with in every quarter, and assistance was to be had for the Employment in the British Museum. 67 asking. But scholarships do not last indefinitely, and permanent emplo5m[ient had to be looked for. In the autumn of 1882 I had an interview with Mr. Gladstone, who decided what this employment was to be. In 1880 Birch wrote to Cambridge and told me that Mr. Rassam had telegraphed from Assyria asking for my services, and wanted to know if I would go out to the East to assist Mr. Rassam on a two years' appointment. When the offer was placed before Mr. Gladstone he advised me to decline it, saying that if I ever went to the East to do archaeological work it must be as a servant of the Trustees of the British Museum, on their permanent staff. At the interview with Mr. Gladstone in 1882 he referred to the offer made to me in 1880, to go and assist Rassam at Mosul, and said that he was of opinion that I should be of more use in the Department of Oriental Antiquities in the British Museum than anjrwhere else. He went on to say that, after a conversation with Birch on the matter, he had obtained a nomination to an Assistantship in the Department, that he would have the necessary provision made in the British Museum Esti- mates for the year, and that if I satisfied the Civil Service ' Commissioners it would be possible for me to take up my duties at the beginning of the next financial year, i.e., in April, 1883. I ventured to remind him that the initial salary (;£i2o) was very small, but he brushed aside my objection, and told me that a man's salary was a matter of very little importance in comparison with the progress of the subject on which he was working. Salaries in the British Museum were notoriously small, and he had made some efforts to increase them, but the constitution of the Museum made his efforts futile. But personally he considered an occupation in the Museum, such as he was proposing for ine, so delightful that he thought that a man ought to be glad to work there for no salary at all. He wished that such a life of study had been his lot, for he had always wanted to have unlimited time in a large library, where he could work out in full all the questions connected with the archaeology of the Iliad, and the E2 68 / Enter the Service of the Trustees. general history of the early civiUsations of the Mediterranean. His friend. Lord Acton, worked in the Museum constantly, and had told him that he enjoyed his toil there so much that he often forgot about his lunch, and went on making extracts and notes, until the officials, to his great disgust, reported that closing time had arrived, and he had to leave the building.^ There- fore he wished me to enter the Museum, and to do all the original work I was capable of, and he finished the conversation by telling me that if it were necessary for me to visit Paris, or Munich, or Rome, to work in the libraries there, he would be glad to find the neces- sary funds. Early in 1883 Mr. (later Sir) Edward A. Bond, Principal Librarian and Secretary of the British Museum, 2 communicated with me, and on April 9th, 1883, I became an Assistant in the Department of Oriental Antiquities, at a salary of ^^120, with an annual increment of £10. Between 1880 and 1883 very considerable changes had taken place in the Department, and these were caused chiefly by the removal of the Natural History Collections to South Kensington. The immediate result of this removal was that five rooms in the Northern Gallery were allotted to Birch's Department, and also ^ This fact about Lord Acton is literally true, and Dr. Garnett told me that during the periods when Lord Acton was reading regularly in the North Library, he always took care at closing time to have the recesses in the various rooms searched, lest Lord Acton should be locked up for the night in one of them. ^ The Principal Librarian was by the Act of Incorporation (26 George II, Cap. 22, § XV) chiefly entrusted with the care and custody of the Museum. He is responsible for the safety of the Museum and of the property and collections therein, and exercises a general super- intendence over the Departments, manages the staff , and grants admis- sion to all who study in the Museum or need admission for any purpose whatsoever. He is also the Secretary to the Trustees, and as such attends all meetings of the Trustees, takes down the minutes of their proceedings, transmits the orders to the staff, etc. He is assisted in the care and custody of the Museum by the Subordinate Officers, viz., Keepers, Assistants and Attendants. The Principal Librarian is now styled " Director and Principal Librarian," or " Director," and the Attendants are now styled " Museum Clerks." Re-arrangement of the Assyrian Collections. 69 the two studies at the west end of the Northern Gallery, which had been occupied by Mr. Story-Maskelyne and Professor Sir R. Owen, and the large room^ which ran parallel with the fourth room of the Northern Gallery, on the north of it. When the Trustees decided to build the Mausoleum Room, Birch had left his old room (see pp. 21, 22), and migrated to the study in the Northern Gallery upstairs, formerly occupied by Mr. Story- Maskelyne, and the little room had been pulled down. He had begun to transfer the Egyptian Collections, which were exhibited in the last two rooms of the present Vase Gallery, to "the Northern Gallery, and had brought up from the ground floor and basement the large cases which contained the Egyptian Papyri, and various collections of unexhibited Assjnrian antiquities. These changes were warmly welcomed by Birch, who, for the first time, was able to exhibit the smaller Egyptian antiquities, and could now work at the papyri with more facility and convenience than he had ever enjoyed. For some months after my entry into the Museum I was occupied in continuing the removal of the Collec- tions to their new places, under Birch's instructions, and in helping him to create an Assyrian and Baby- lonian Room in the Northern Gallery, and a Phoenician Room, 2 and in working off some of the arrears, which were very great. In 1884 RawHnson, who edited the " Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia " for the Trustees of the British Museum,^ suggested that I should assist in copying material for his great Corpus of texts, and Birch agreed to the suggestion. In endeavouring to carry out this work difficulties, which need not be described here, were made in a certain quarter, and the obstruction became so pronounced that I determined to abandon the work, and told Birch my decision. An interview with the Principal Librarian followed, and he ^ This is now absorbed in the large room which joins the old to the new building. ^ This was due to a suggestion made to Birch by Wright. ' He was elected a Member of the Standing Committee in 1878. yo Work with Birch. told me that he had discussed the matter with Birch, and I had better abandon the copying of Assyrian for official purposes, at least for a time, and devote all my time and energies to the Egyptian section of the Depart- ment, Which sorely needed attention. This arrangement eased the situation, though it seemed to me as if all the years of study which I had undertaken for a specific purpose were wasted. I could not then foresee that such knowledge of cuneiform as I possessed was to be put to a decided test in a few years' time (1887) in Egypt, and that I should be called upon to decide whether the Tall al-'Amamah Tablets, which were written in cuneiform, were genuine or not, and whether I should acquire them for the Museum or not. No cuneiform tablets had ever been found in Egypt before 1887, and none have been found there since. If I had known no cuneiform I should certainly have rejected them as forgeries, ^ and the British Museum would have possessed no portion of this wonderful " find." One fact, however, was quite clear, and I believe that it counted for much in the mind of the Principal Librarian. Birch sorely needed help, for when I began to serve under him he was in the seventieth year of his age, and the work in the Depart- ment was increasing daily. Up to the time when the Principal Librarian made this arrangement, none of Birch's Assistants had ever assisted him in the Egyptian section of the Department, for each was too much occupied with his own work to have time to help in the daily routine. The whole of the removal of the collec- tions to their new resting places was superintended by Birch, and he re-arranged them with his own hands. It is possible that he might have obtained help if he had pressed his claims like other Keepers ; but it was the nature of the man to bear anything and do anything rather than make a fuss. Whether as scholar or official he was equally diffident. ^ For some years after they were found Oppert persisted in declaring that they were forgeries, just as Maspero asserted that the predynastic antiquities dug up at Abydos by AmeUneau were forgeries made by natives of Kurnah. / Study Egyptology under him. 71 Birch having decided upon his course of action set to work without delay to train me to become useful. The only Egyptological knowledge I possessed I had derived from the Egyptian lectures which he and Professor Naville had given at the house of Mr. Wyatt Papworth in 1875-77, and from copying out during those years the whole of Birch's " Dictionary of Hiero- glyphics,"! and on that knowledge he began to build. Under his direction I read through his " Egyptian Texts " and Reinisch's " Aegyptische Chrestomathie," and the works of Chabas, de Rouge, and Maspero, and he revised my transcripts of hieratic texts. I also read with him many parts of ChampoUion's famous " Gram- maire Egyptienne," and several religious and myth- ological texts in his " Notices Descriptives," and he explained to me why the eminent Frenchman's system of decipherment was correct, and made me see the im- portance of his great knowledge of Coptic, and how it contributed to the final success of his work. Always anxious for the publication of new texts, he advised me to copy and translate the whole mass of religious texts on the sarcophagus of Queen Ankhnesneferabra, and when the manuscript of the work was finished he helped me to find a publisher for it.* When the book ^ Published in the fifth volume of the English translation of Bunsen's Aegyptens S telle in der W eltgeschichte. A writer in the Saturday Review, January 2nd, 1886, rightly remarks : " He {i.e., Birch) never asserted his ownership of ideas and discoveries. . . . When we seek, for example, the two most important pieces of work tliat Dr. Birch, or indeed any Enghshman ever did in Egyptology, we look in the Catalogue, not under 'Birch' but under 'Bunsen' and under 'Wilkinson.' Who would think of consulting the 'Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians ' for accurate information, but for Dr. Birch's annotations on a text written with imperfect knowledge and the bias of a strong prejudice ? Similarly, the fifth volume of a book so full of theories, most if not all of them mistaken, as ' Egypt's Place in Universal History,' owes its exceptional value to the Grammar and Dictionary which Dr. Birch added to it." To these examples may be added Birch's " Introduction to the Study of the Egyptian Hieroglyphics," in Wilkinson's " Egyptians in the Time of the Pharaohs " (pp. 175-282). ^ The Sarcophagus of Anchnesraneferdh (London, 1885, 4to). 72 Book of Overthrowing Apepi. was published he handed over to me one of the Bremner (Rhind) papyri to transcribe from hieratic into hiero- glyphic characters, and translate it, but he did not live to see its publication.^ Thus things went on for about a year and a half. In the summer of 1885 Birch began to show signs of failing health. A few years previously he had obtained permission from the Trustees to relinquish his official residence within the precincts, and from about 1880 to the time of his death he lived in Camden Town. The daily journey to and from the Museum tired him greatly, and in the winter he often arrived in his room wet through. He kept two coats and two umbrellas specially for his daily journeys, but he was worse off than the man who had only one coat and one umbrella, because owing to his forgetfulness they were rarely available when he wanted them. His mental faculties were clear and active, ctnd he continued to be the mainspring of much archaeo- logical work. With the view of making him take a holiday, his friends persuaded him to attend the British Archaeological Congress, which was held at Brighton in the late summer of 1885, and he did so. But instead of resting and enjoying the results of the labours of others, he threw himself heart and soul into the work of the Congress, and he was welcomed enthusiastically by its members. He read papers on the history of Chichester under the Romans, and a paper on British Coins, on which at one time he had been a leading authority, and went about on excursions and described the Roman remains in the neighbourhood to large audiences. When he returned to London it was clear to all that he had over- taxed his strength. About the middle of December he got wet, caught a chill, and died on Sunday, the 27th. 1 I published a complete hieroglyphic transcript of this papyrus (Brit. Mus. No. 10,188), with interlinear transliteration and translation, in Archeeologia, vol. lii, and a facsimile of the hieratic text, with a revised hieroglyphic transcript and translation in Facsimiles of Egyptian Hieratic Papyri in the British Museum, London, igio, folio. This papyrus contains the famous " Book of Overthrowing Apepi," now generally known as the " Book of Apophis." Death of Birch. 73 By the death of Birch Egyptology lost one of its founders, the Society of BibUcal Archaeology its creator and President, and the Trustees of the British Museum the greatest " all-round " scholar and original thinker and archaeological pioneer who was ever in their service. On the death of Birch the Department was placed for a few days under the charge of Mr. (later Sir) C. T. Newton, Keeper of Greek and Roman Antiquities, and when he resigned^ it passed into the custody of Birch's old friend and colleague, Mr. (later Sir) WoUaston Franks, Keeper of the Department of British and Mediaeval Antiquities and Ethnography. He was a man with a marvellously wide knowledge of every kind of antiquity, and possessed an almost uncanny faculty of recognising forgeries whenever and wherever he saw them. A mere list of his gifts to the Museum would fill a volume, and he was a generous supporter of all worthy archaeological projects. He loved the Museum, and was proud of its honourable traditions, and, in the words of his successor, always " preferred the old methods to any change that might involve loss of the ancient dignity of the Institution." In 1886 and later he proved himself a good friend to me. On January 5th, 1886, Mr. Franks wrote to the Trustees, suggesting that the Department of which Birch had been Keeper should be re-named. He pointed out that his own Department was the depository of antiquities from the Far East— e.g., Burmah, Java, India — and that he was about to open an exhibition gallery which would be called the " Oriental Saloon," and since Birch's Department con- tained the Egyptian Collections, and collections from Carthage, Phoenicia, and Mesopotamia, he suggested that it should be re-named " Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities." On February 13th the Trustees approved the suggestion made by Mr. Franks, and the Department of Oriental Antiquities received its ^ He was succeeded by A. S. Murray, LL.D., on February 13th, 1886. 74 The Egyptian Tombs at Aswdn. new name. On May ist Mr. (later Sir) P. Renouf was appointed Birch's successor in the Department. In the summer of 1886 General Sir F. W. (now Field- Marshal Lord) Grenfell, Sardar (Sirdar) of the Egyptian Army, was in England, and was seeking for someone with a knowledge of Egyptology who would go out to Egypt and dig out for him the rock-hewn tombs of the Vlth and Xllth d5aiasties at Aswan (Syene), where, with the help of Mustafa Shakir, he had made some interesting discoveries. A number of antiquities had been found during these clearances, and of these General Grenfell claimed a share ; and it was reported to the Principal Librarian that he was willing to give this share to the British Museum, if the Trustees would send me out to Egypt to finish the work which he had begun. The new Keeper of the Department reported favourably on the proposal, and when the Principal Librarian brought the matter before the Trustees they ordered application to be made to the Treasury for the necessary money. The Treasury consulted the Foreign Office, and the Foreign Office referred the matter to the British authori- ties in Cairo. There was considerable delay in obtaining an answer, due, I heard later, to the fact that the British Consul-General in Egypt feared that some " interna- tional complication " would take place if a servant of the British Museum were allowed to occupy himself with antiquities in Egypt. Fortunately for me, the question was referred by Sir Evelyn Baring to General Grenfell, who, during his career as Sardar and subse- quently as General Commanding the British Army of Occupation, proved himself to be a true and powerful friend of myself and of every archaeologist. General Grenfell argued that as representatives of the great national Museums of Russia, France and Germany were already in Egypt, and were doing well for their Govern- ments, there was no good reason for preventing a representative of the British Museum from following their example, and he was in favour of my going to Egypt, and reported accordingly. In his report he pointed out to Sir Evelyn the great importance of the First Mission to Egypt. 75 tombs, both archaeologically and historically, and urged him to sanction the proposal, especially as the clearance of the tombs would cost Eg3rpt nothing, and all expenses connected with the excavations would be defrayed by himself. Further, he wrote to Lord SaUsbury, who supported his scheme, and told the Treasury that he had no objection to my proceeding to Egypt to excavate the tombs. The Treasury, therefore, sanctioned the ' expenditure of ^^150 on the Mission. The Trustees gave me four months' leave of absence, and directed me to place myself at the disposal of Sir Francis GrenfelL I was also directed, if possible, to get into touch with native dealers from whom a regular supply of antiquities might be obtained for the British Museum. The Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University (Dr. Swainson, Master of Christ's), hearing that I was to be sent to Egypt, asked the Principal Librarian (through Professor W. Wright) to allow me to expend the sum of ;^ioo on Egyptian antiqtiities on behalf of the Fitz- william Museum, and with his full consent and approval I undertook the commission.^ ^ The objects which I purchased for the Fitzwilliam Museum were exhibited at a meeting of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society in May, 1887, when I gave a full account of them. At the same time I sub mitted a detailed list of them, which was printed in the Cambridge University Reporter, No. 686, May 17th, 1887. A fuller description of them is printed, with the hieroglyphic texts, in my Catalogue of the Egyptian Collection in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1893, 8vo). FIRST MISSION, 1886-87. I LEFT Tilbury Docks on November i8th in the P. & O. steamship " Pekin," and arrived at Port Sa'id on the last day of the month. A stay of twelve hours at Valetta, and the help of a friendly monk, enabled me to see most of the sights in the town, and also the famous " dried monks " at Flbriana. Those who embalm the monks seem to be acquainted with a system of mummification uncommonly like that practised by the ancient Egyp- tians. Among the passengers was the Rev. W. J. Loftie, Assistant-Chaplain of the Chapel Royal, Savoy, and an enthusiastic archaeologist.^ He gave me a great many ^ He was obliged to winter in Egypt for his health's sake, and he took the opportunity of visiting many parts of the Delta where Europeans rarely go. Though not so profound, his knowledge of modern Egypt was of the same character as that of Lane and Bonomi. He knew very little Arabic, but he and the natives understood each other, and they loved him, and he and his donkey were favourite guests in every village. He had great taste, and was a very successful collector of scarabs and of small, pretty Egyptian antiquities ; his instinct was rarely at fault, and he seldom bought forgeries. He made several collections of scarabs, and the best of these collections, con- sisting of 190 specimens, was acquired by the British Museum in 1890. Whether the day was hot or cold, or wet or dry, or whether he was in the desert or in the town, he always wore the characteristic dress of the English clergyman, and he was very fastidious about small details of dress in England. I used to see him sitting on a bundle of sugar canes by the side of a canal in the Delta, eating onions and water melons and native bread, and drinking out of the earthenware bottle which was common to all, and which was filled from time to time from the said canal ; and I marvelled if this could be the same man whom no cook in a London Club could satisfy. And the fact that he was surrounded by hot, perspiring, more than half-naked fallahin, whose style of eating and drinking was somewhat primitive, seemed to be hardly noticed by him. Loftie was a witty and amusing companion, with a quick sense of humour, and he was naturally clever, but his delicate health prevented him doing all that he was well able to do in History, Arclxitecture, and Art. He advised and guided many young workers. Few of Kate Greenaway's most ardent admirers know George Royle of Port Sa'id. yy hints which proved to be valuable, and at Port §a'id introduced me to several of his friends among the European residents. On arriving at Port Sa'id, Mr. George Royle, ^ the Director of the Suez Canal Coal Company, and P. & O. Agent, who was commonly called the " King " of the Port, took me ashore in his launch, and facilitated my departure for Cairo the next morning by the Post-boat, which left at dawn. Incredible though it may seem, no serious attempt was made to join Port Sa'id and Cairo by railway for many years after the occupation of Egypt by the British. To reach Cairo from Port Sa'id the traveller had to go to Isma'iliyah, the nearest point on the Cairo-Suez line, and board the train there, and the only means of reaching Isma'iliyah quickly was a small steam launch, which carried the post, and took six hours to cover the fifty miles that divided the two places. Stepping into the Post-boat from Mr. Royle's roomy and comfortable launch, the accommodation seemed very limited ; there was no shelter from sun or wind, and the passengers who failed to bring their own food with them went hungry. We left Port Sa'id as dawn was breaking, and when I saw the variety of lights which accompanied the sunrise, it seemed to me that I had entered a new world, and that that it was he who first recognized her extraordinary abihty to illus- trate children's books, and that it was entirely due to him that she was brought to devote her energies to the branch of art which has made her name a household word. ^ The development of the Port is due largely to George Royle, whose farsightedness enabled him to see a brilliant future for the wretched little town, which was then a mere coaUng place for steamers, and the abode of the scum of the Levant. He advocated the reclama- tion of the land on the west of the Port, and the large residential quarter which he estabUshed there, and which is continually gro\ving, is a fine monument of his foresight and judgment. He next attacked the keepers of the nxmierous gambling heUs and dens of infamy which flourished there, and Uttle by little got them suppressed. His wife, whom sailors on all the sea routes which passed through the Suez Canal caUed " beautiful Mrs. Royle," lived year in and year out at the Port, and devoted her days with conspicuous success to making better the health, morals and manners of the natives and foreigners about her. y8 Suez Canal and Isma'tUyah. I had never seen the sun rise before. I was amazed at the sight of the Suez Canal, with its seemingly endless processions of ships gliding silently northwards and southwards over that insignificant strip of blue water ; and the sight of the sandy and stony wastes which stretched away into indefinite distance on the eastern side of the Canal, though smiling under the golden rays of the morning sun, filled me with a certain fear, which has always returned whenever I have looked upon the desert. Everything was strange, everything wonderful to me, and we passed through Lake Manzilah almost before I realized it, and came to Al-Kantarah, where the Canal cuts through the " Bridge of Nations." Another hour took us through Lake Balah, and very soon after we tied up at the landing-stage of Isma'iliyah. At that time many passengers for Cairo preferred to travel from Port Said to Isma'iliyah in the large ships, and special arrangements were made at the latter port for their disembarkation. As these were supposed to be especially weU-to-do, the natives awaited the arrival of the mail steamers with eagerness, and not only expected, but actually received, much bakhsMsh^ for carr5dng their luggage to the train. Those who travelled by the Post-boat were not held to be of much account, and therefore only the scum of the town turned out to meet us and transport our baggage. As soon as our boat was tied up a most evil-looking lot of half-naked natives swarmed on to it, and seizing the baggage made off with it, leaving its owners to follow as best they might. There were no polyglot officials of Mr. Cook, with gold-peaked caps, to help the visitor at Isma'iliyah in those days. As the train from Suez was late there was plenty of time to look about the pretty little settle- ment of the Canal Company's officials, and to admire the skill with which they had made squares and streets, bordered with rows of trees, and gardens out of a miserable 1 Persian u^-fsi! a "gift," "tip," "pourboire"; commonly pro- nounced "bukhshish." Children in Egypt often shorten the word to "shish." Wddt TUmMt and Goshen. 79 swamp. Many of the natives had a bleached, fever- stricken look, and cases of fever were very numerous. Fifteen years later the town authorities decided to drain away all the shallow pools of water in which mosquitoes bred, and the health of the town improved at once. Returning to the station after the train came in — for in those days trains in Egj^t waited for the passenger — we found the taking of tickets and weighing of luggage a serious matter. The men who had seized the baggage pushed their victims wherever they pleased, and shouted instructions to them at the top of their voices ; and many free fights took place at the train doors between those who had carried the baggage and those who only said they had. The most serious difficulty was encountered by a party of American ladies, who had some very large Saratoga trunks, which could not be got through the door of the brake-van, even though they had paid a good round sum for excess luggage. Everybody in the station gave his advice freely, and cigarettes were lighted, and the public and the officials talked the matter over in a leisurely manner with great content ; only the engine- driver seemed impatient, and at last, after frantic whistling, he started the train and left the boxes behind. Viewed in the light of knowledge acquired subsequently, it is sad to think how the passengers by the Post-boat that day were robbed. The first part of the journey through the Wadi Tumilat was uninteresting, for the whole country was then desert, and the reclamation of the land had not begun, but when the rich, fertile district about Kassasin and Tall al-Kabir was reached it was easy to understand why the Jews settled there under Joseph's protection. At Zagazig (Az-Zakazik) the station was crowded with natives, and to a stranger like myself the whole scene was most interesting. Dealers in anticas from the site of the ancient city of Bubastis climbed up into the carriages from both sides of the line, and the half hour's halt was agreeably spent in buying good Delta scarabs for two or three piastres apiece, and quite good figures of the cat-headed goddess Bast for a piastre apiece. 8o Balbis and Cairo. It was my very first deal in anticas, and as my negotia- tions were carried on chiefly in the language of signs, I, of course, paid too much for my purchases ; but I made the acquaintance and somehow gained the good will of two natives, from whom, in later years, I acquired many valuable objects for the Museum. Zagazig was then even more noisy than it is now, and the huge bales of cotton loaded on endless rows of trucks, and the little locomotives, and the shouting, ragged workmen interested me greatly. Besides the anticas I was thankful to be able to buy some native bread-cakes, dates, boiled eggs, and a porous earthenware bottle full of cool, clean Nile water (one of the most delicious things in the world), for nothing to eat was to be had at Isma'iliyah. More- over, during the railway part of the journey we were smothered with dust. The line was unballasted, the coaches were old and rickety, the windows and doors were loose, and the dust, in a continuous stream, came in under the doors and between the window-sashes, and through the circular openings made in the roof to admit lamps. This choking, blinding dust filled the ears, nose and eyes, and caked on the lips, and was most irritating to mind and body because the annoyance was so unnecessary ; with a little more care in build- ing the coaches could have been made practically dust- proof. We continued our journey to Cairo via Balbes, instead of Benha as now, and when nearing Cairo I caught a glimpse of the two larger of the Pyramids of Gizah, standing out Uke a pair of twin breasts against the red light of the western sun. Then the minarets of the citadel appeared in slender beauty, and then many more minarets and domes of mosques, and then, having passed through luxuriant gardens and planta- tions, we ran into the old " Railway Station." I found it impossible to believe that I was actually in " Grand Cairo." There the scene I had witnessed at Isma'iliyah was repeated on a larger scale, and the cries and shouts of the self-appointed porters and donkey-boys were deafening and bewildering. In the midst of all this a The Sarddr's Plan of Work. 8i British soldier, sent by the Sardar, Sir Francis Grenfell appeared, and I was delivered from the Egyptians, and driven to the Sardar' s house, where I received a very warm welcome. The Sardar introduced me to many of the British officers who were in the service of the Khedive, and spared neither time nor trouble in helping me to carry out the instructions which I had received from the Principal Librarian and from my immediate Chief. In the course of the evening the Sard&,r told me his plans, and what he expected me to do. He intended to leave Cairo on the following Friday, December 4th, to make a tour of inspection in Upper Egypt and Nubia, and to take me with him to Aswin, where he would leave me in order to prepare a report on the tombs there. On his return to Aswan he would consider the report, and decide upon a course of action. Thus I had three days clear in which to go about Cairo and make the acquaintance of the dealers in antiquities, to visit the Bdlak Museimi of Egyptian Antiquities, and to improve my Arabic. On the following day I waited upon the British Consul- General, Sir E. Baring, and presented my letters of introduction. He was civil to me, but gave me to understand, with the frankness of which he was such a master, that he was not prepared to support any scheme of excavations by any agent of the Trustees of the British Museum, whether working on their behalf or that of anyone else. He thought that excavations made in Egypt by a British official were likely to " com- plicate political relationships," and that the occupation of Egypt by the British ought not to be made an excuse for filching antiquities from the country, whether to England or anywhere else. He spoke with some irrita- tion of the annoyance which he had suffered from several British archaeologists and amateur dealers who were in Cairo at that moment, and having quite made up his mind that I was of the same kidney, he politely but firmly got me out of his, room. In the afternoon of the same day, at an entertainment given by the Sardar in his house, I met Sir John Eldon Gorst, who at once 82 Colossal Statue of Rameses II at Memphis. began to talk to me about the colossal statue of Rameses n, which was then lying buried in a deep hole in thp mud at Mit Rahinah (Memphis). This statue was given to the British Nation by Muhammad 'All in 1820, and after the Occupation by the British in 1882, a move- ment was made by archaeologists to get it dug up out of the hole, and despatched to England. Sir Frederick Stephenson, who commanded the British troops in Egypt, took very great interest in the matter, and was collecting a sum of money among his friends to pay for the tackle, labour, etc., necessary for raising the statue. Sir John Gorst told me that he did not believe the statue had ever been given to the British, but whether it had or not, we ought not to attempt to remove it because its removal would annoy the French. I told him that the eminent French archaeologist, Mariette, had stated that the statue was the property of the British, and that I hoped Sir Frederick Stephenson would get it up out of the mud and send it to England. Sir John warned me not to repeat this hope, and called upon me to support, by every means in my power, the opinion of Sir E. Baring and himself, that the statue must not leave the country. He was wholly opposed to the export of antiquities from Egypt ; it was quite right of the British Museum to send me to help the Sardar to dig out tombs, but everything found must stay in Egypt. The attitude of Sir E. Baring and Sir J. Gorst puzzled me, but as I knew quite well that the agents for the great Continental Museums regularly despatched to them collections of antiquities, I determined to follow their example, if I could find out the way they managed their affairs, and send home collections to the British Museum. In the course of the evening the Rev. W. J. Loftie carried me off to an annexe of the Hotel du Nil, in the Muski, where I found assembled Walter Myers, Henry Wallis, Greville Chester, a couple of dealers, and several other men who were interested in Egyptian antiquities. The Hotel du Nil (unfortunately it no longer exists) was in reality an old Khan, which a clever Frenchman had managed to turn into a modern hotel, and it was The Mummies of Div al-Bakart. 83 comparatively cheap and exceedingly comfortable. It had been much frequented by the better class of native travellers, who found ample accommodation for their donkeys and camels on the ground floor, and for them- selves in the upper floor, in the cubicles which ran round three sides of the courtyard. In the course of a long even- ing's talk I learned many things about the " antiquarian politics " of Cairo, and found the information I received from the company generally most useful in later days. The next day (December 3rd), I devoted the whole morning to an examination of the Egyptian antiquities which Maspero had cleverly arranged in the main building of the old Post Office at Bulak. The statues from the mastabah^ tombs at Sakkarah, the bas-reliefs of the earliest dynasties, and the sarcophagi of the Ancient Empire, filled me with wonder, for I had never seen any- thing like them before, and the beauty of early Egyptian art, and the waU-decoration from tombs of the IVth dynasty came upon me as a revelation. The sight of the royal mummies from Der al-Bahari was distressing, though of thrilling interest. Aahmes I, Thothmes III, Amenhetep III, Seti I, Rameses II the Great, and many another mighty king lay there naked in mean deal cases, glazed with the cheapest of blown glass ; the frames of the covers had shrunk, and none of them fitted, and in several of them the shrinking of the frames had broken the glass panes. The waters of the Nile washed the walls of the Post Office, and whenever a heavy white mist rose from the river in the winter mornings it entered the Museum, and condensed on the glass panes in the cases which held the royal mummies, and ran down inside on the floor of the cases ; and the floor of the Museum on which the public walked was reeking wet through the white mist from the river the day I was there. It seemed as if no one at Bulak knew or cared about the preservation of the antiquities. Maspero's " Guide " was a delightful book, at once interesting and informing, ^ The word means literally a " bench," then a bench-like long low seat or dtwan. F 2 84 The Buldk Museum. but it is astonishing that a man like Maspero, who demanded so much in the way of indexes and critical apparatus, etc., from other scholars, should have sent his book out into the world without an index ! Thanks to the kindness of an official of the Bulak Museum, who found me wandering about, I was enabled to see the " Magazine," or store-house, in which were heaped up the objects which could not be exhibited in the Museum owing to lack of space. There I saw stacked up coffins and mummies, funerary-boxes, tomb-furniture, and end- less cases of smaller antiquities which had been brought there from all parts of the country. The " Magazine " consisted of many sheds, which had been built one after the other as occasion required, and every one of them was so full that I could not imagine where further acquisi- tions could be stored. I found, by asking questions, that none of these objects were registered, or even numbered, and that no one knew exactly what the contents of the " Magazine " were, not even Maspero himself. The natives used to say that any official of the Museum might steal anything he liked, and that if he could carry it out of the buUding he would never be detected ; and as both the Museum and the " Maga- zine " stood in an industrial quarter of Cairo, and were surrounded by workshops of all kinds, the risk from fire seemed to me to be very great. In spite of this there was no adequate apparatus for extinguishing fire, and I saw no hydrants in either building. Guided by Greville Chester^ I went about Cairo and made the acquaintance of several dealers, and also ^ Ill-health compelled Chester to winter in southern and eastern climes, and he travelled extensively in Southern Europe, Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. During these travels he began to collect antiquities, and his good classical education and a naturally good antiquarian instinct enabled him to acquire many valuable objects at very moderate prices. On returning to England at the end of his first journey, he found that the Keepers of the Departments of Anti- quities in the British Museum wanted to buy most of his acquisitions, and he made it convenient to sell them, making a small profit on the transaction. Each year he bought more than the last, and each year the Keepers increased their purchases, and thus, little by little. Greville Chester the Collector. 85 visited a number of private houses where antiquities were stored. It was interesting to find an ancient Egyptian custom surviving among the modern dwellers in Cairo. The ancient Egyptians used to bury figures of gods, etc., under their houses to prevent evil spirits and devils entering them from the earth, and I found in Chester became a source of supply, more especially for the Egyptian Collection. His taste and judgment were good, and he quickly profited by the hints of the Museum experts ; given a little more capital and boldness he would have developed into a first-class dealer. He was a tall, large, bearded man, with handsome, well-cut features and shrewd grey eyes, and of generous disposition. The Egyptians loved him, and his kindness, sympathy and bonhomie endeared him to them. He tcdked very little Arabic and that little badly. I have seen him, rather scantily clad, stiiding through villages in Upper Egypt shouting, " Fi dumdum rakhis " (i.e., " Has anybody got any beads [to sell] cheap ? "), or " Fi antikat " [i.e., " Has anybody got any anticas [to seU] ?"). He filled many traveUing bags with his collections, and we always marvelled how he managed to pass his treasures through the Custom Houses of Egypt, Turkey and Greece. He got into diffi- culties with the officers of Customs in every port, and baffled them by feigning ignorance of the language and making a judicious use of bakhshish. His friends never understood how he managed to persuade the officials that his heavy leather bags contained nothing but " wearing apparel " when they were filled with pottery, bronze statues, stone stelae and even parts of coffins. Only once was he worsted, and that by a Greek whom he described for ever after as a " bloodless pagan." He was arrested at Jabel in Sjoia " for trafficking in anticas and possessing a Kur'an and corrupting the Syrians," and all the artifices which he usually employed when in such situations having failed, he presented his bags and their contents to the Mudir of Customs. During the night the Mudir sold them back to him, sent them on board, and accompanied Chester the following day to the steamer, and wished him a successful voyage. At Berut also he was arrested, but a native fellow passenger was induced by him to declare that Chester's bags were his property, and the Mudir of Customs apologised for his mistake in thinking that they were Chester's. By a strange coin- cidence, two days later, he found the native and the bags of anticas on the ship in which he was saihng for Athens. He assured me in relating the incident that Syrian Christians were much maligned men, and that when Europeans took the trouble to understand them their virtues appeared. For many years the importation of the Bible into Syrian ports was prohibited, but Chester always managed to secrete his copy, and he treasured it greatly because, he said, it reminded him daily of the many " happy fights " which he had had over it with the officers of Customs in the East. 86 Leave Cairo for Aswan. Fustat, or " Old Cairo," that many householders had buried under their thresholds bronze figures of gods, stone ushahtiu figures, and even portrait statues, for the same purpose as their ancestors. In one quarter the first stone a man stepped on after passing through his street door was always an ancient Egyptian sepulchral stele, and the greater number of those which I saw were laid with the inscribed side uppermost. Both the stones and the inscriptions were supposed to be " lucky," and the hieroglyphic characters were believed by many to have magic in them. The householders who owned such stones, having discovered that they possessed monetary value, were taking up the inscribed stelae inside their doors, and selling them, and in later years I bought many good ones at moderate prices. On December 4th the Sardir left Cairo with his staff on a tour of inspection in Upper Egypt and Nubia, and took me with him, as arranged. We travelled by rail to Asyut (which was then the terminus), where we arrived in the early morning, and I rode out with some of the party into the hills to see some tombs of the Ancient and Middle Empires, of which we had received information. On our return we embarked on the new and splendid passenger steamer, " Prince Abbas," the first of the new line of large passenger steamers which Messrs. Thomas Cook had prepared for the Nile, and Mr. J. M. Cook was on board, personally directing her maiden voyage. We arrived at Akhmim (the ancient Panopolis) early on Sunday morning, and Mr. J. M. Cook stopped there for some hours to enable us to inspect the mass o^ Graeco-Roman and Coptic antiquities and manuscripts which had been found there a short time before we visited the town. The dealers welcomed us warmly, and whilst many of the passengers went off to see the old Christian cemetery and the Grseco-Roman tombs in the hills, the Sardar, and Captain John Grenfell MaxwelP and myself examined the antiquities. I secured 1 Now General the Right Hon. Sir J. G. Maxwell, G.C.B., K.C.M.G., etc. Sir John Maxwell has always been an enthusiastic collector of Kand and Luxor. 87 * some things, and was astonished to find that the dealers were ready to send their property with me to England, and to receive payment later on. The following day we arrived at Kana, and as the Sardar had important mihtary matters to discuss with the Mudir, Mr. J. M. Cook kept the steamer there for several hours longer than usual, and I had plenty of time to visit the houses of the dealers, and see their collections. Our next important stopping place was Luxor, where the steamer was to remain for three and a half days. With the help of the Sardar's Oriental Secretary, Mr. Milhem Shakur, I made the acquaintance of many natives on both sides of the river, and the Sardar, Maxwell and I examined every collection of antiquities which we heard of in the town. I also made the acquaintance of the Rev. Chauncey Murch, American Missionary at Luxor, and a good business man. From that time to the day of his death he was a most energetic and loyal friend of the Museum and of myself. He was an enthusiastic collector of Egyptian antiquities, and speciaUzed on scarabs, of which he had a first-rate knowledge. His three best collections are now in the British Museum. The houses of the dealers at Luxor were filled with antiquities of all kinds, and their " maga- zines" contained all the best coffins of the "find" at Akhmim, and a mass of very important objects from Kus. We continued our journey to Aswan on the nth, and Mr. J. M. Cook made excellent arrangements for us to examine the temples of Edfu, Asna, and Kom Ombo (Ombos), and in due course we arrived at Daraw. Here the crew " dressed " the steamer with many hundreds of the gaudy flags which are so dear to the heart of the Egyptian antiquities, and has taken the profoundest interest in Egypt, and in the Egyptians, both ancient and modern. The sympathy which he has always shown during his distinguished career in Egypt has endeared him to the natives of all classes, who admired his soldierly abilities, and respected his straightforwardness and just dealing. His departure from Egypt was, in my opinion, a calamity, the results of which cannot yet be told. I am indebted to him, both officially and privately, for many acts of kindness. 88 Aswan and its Tombs Egyptian, and when we started again a large crowd of natives ran along the river bank waving flags, and shout- ing and beating little drums with appalling vigour. We steamed on quite slowly, accompanied by an awful noise from the bank, and as we neared the town we saw that almost every building in the town was decorated with flags. When we passed the " North End " of Aswan, rifles were fired from the bank, and everyone afloat and ashore shouted and screamed his loudest. All this noise was in honour of (i) the steamer, the largest which had ever been seen at Aswan, and the symbol of many tourists, and therefore of much bakhshish ; (2) Mr. J. M. Cook, owner of the steamer, and " King of Egypt," as the natives called him ; (3) the Sirdar of the Egyptian Army. I mention these objects of honour in the order in which they were enumerated to me. When I arrived in Aswan, I found that the town was occupied by a considerable number of British troops, which were being slowly withdrawn to Cairo and Alexandria. There were camps at Shallal, opposite Philae, on Jabal^ Tagug, behind the town, in the town close to the Nile, and at North End. All these belonged to the force which had marched into Nubia in the autumn of 1885, and which, under Generals Sir F. Stephenson and Sir Francis Grenfell, had inflicted a crushing defeat on the Mahdi's troops at Koshah and Ginnis, on December 30th, 1885. There was no hotel at that time in Aswan, and not even a Greek restaurant, but the serious question of board and lodging for me was solved by Major G. T. Plunkett, R.E.,^ who caused me to be elected a member of the Rest Camp Mess, and gave me a mud hut to live in on the river bank within the camp. By a curious coincidence my first visitor in this hut — he arrived even before I had unpacked my bullock-trunks — ^was the Rev. S. P. Hammond Statham, ' Though the g is pronounced hard in Egypt, I have transcribed ^ throughout by;. 2 Now Lieut.-Colonel G. T. Plunkett, R.E., C.B., Director of Science and Art Institutions, DubUn, 1895-1907. of the Sixth and Twelfth Dynasties. 89 M.A.,^ who was up with me at Cambridge, and was then an Army Chaplain. Soon after his departure Mr. Mustafa Shakir came to talk about the further excavation of the tombs in the hills across the river. I asked him if he had the keeping of the Sardar's share of the results of the recent excavations, and went on to tell him that the Sardar had promised to hand it over to me for the British Museum. In answer he said that it was quite true that a large number of things had been found, but that only a very few of them were really of interest and importance. The latter had somehow disappeared, and he really did not know what had become of them.^ As for the rest of the " find," including his own share, everything had been seized by the representative of the Bulak Museum, who was stationed in Aswan, and who declared that he had sent everything to Professor Maspero, Director of the Service of Antiquities in Cairo. When, at a later date, I claimed the Sardar's share from Maspero, he said that nothing from Aswan had ever reached him, and that he heard at the time that every object of any interest which Shakir had found was given, he did not know by whom, to British officials as bakhshish. The conclusion of the matter was that there were no antiquities for me to take over for the British Museum. The following morning the Sardar, Major Plunkett and I sailed over to the western bank to arrange a plan for clearing out the tombs that had been partly exca- vated. We found that the hill contained three layers of tombs. The oldest tombs, those of the Vlth dynasty, were in the uppermost layer and had been partly cleared, but the tombs of the Xllth dynasty were practically untouched. This layer of tombs was approached by means of a great stairway hewn out of the solid rock, and it is probable that coffins, or sarcophagi, or both, were dragged up it from the funerary barges on the river ^ He is the author of the History of the Castle, Port and Town of Dover, 1889, and Dover Charters, 1902. ^ A few years later I saw the beautiful little statue of Heq-ab, whose tomb is in the hill opposite Aswan, in the possession of Sir Edward Malet. 90 Grcsco-Roman Mummies and Pottery. to the ledge which ran before the tombs and served as a path. The stairway was then choked with sand, and its line of direction could only be guessed at. The Sardar decided to have the stairway cleared at once to provide easy access to the tombs for visitors and workmen, and when that was done to have the Vlth dynasty tombs cleared, and also the ledge running to the right and left of them. The amount of work to be done was greater than he expected, for many hundreds of tons of sand had to be shifted. He instructed Major Plunkett to get on with the work without delay, and asked me to prepare a short account of the tombs at the top of the stairway for publication, and that afternoon he left Aswan for Widi Half ah on his tour of inspection. Major Plunkett managed to collect men, and digging tools, and baskets in which to remove the sand, in a few hours, and we began work at daybreak next day. In three days we cleared the stairway, which, I may re- mark, is the most perfect in Egypt, and in the sides of it at the top, just below the ledge, we found long rectangular chambers containing wooden coffins and mummies of the XXVIth dynasty. The coffins were rotten, and collapsed under the touch, and the mummies could not be removed. The threads of the blue bead-work shrouds with which they had been covered had rotted, and the beads lay in heaps on the bottoms of the coffins. In clearing out the tombs at the top of the stairway we found several skeletons, presumably of modem Egyptians, and many mummies of the Grseco-Roman period, or later, and rough mud figures of Anubis and other gods of the dead, and fiat bits of worm-eaten wood, which had served as sepulchral stelae. In a small chamber on the right hand side near the bottom of the stairway we found some hundreds of small, coarse red-ware pots,^ on each of which was written in the Demotic character the name of some medicinal substance. The discovery of these things proved that the halls of ancient tombs were used as cemeteries in the Graeco-Roman period. Whether * Many of these are in the British Museum. Tombs of Sabben, Mekhu and Sa-Renput. 91 the sand was carried into them specially for this purpose, or whether it drifted in, is uncertain. When once the site was cleared it was easy to write a description of the tombs of Sabben and Mekhu, and to copy the inscriptions both inside them and on the face of the rock outside. These inscriptions were of importance, for they showed that the nobles of Abu, or Elephantine, were directors of the caravans which traded between Egypt and remote countries in the Southern Sudan. When tlae Sardar returned from the south he approved of the work which had been done, and of the report, and decided to make an appeal^ to the public for subscriptions, and meanwhile directed us to continue the work. After the Sardar' s departure we cleared out the tomb of Heq-ab, which we found had already been rifled, and the tomb of Sa-Renput, of the Xllth dynasty, the largest and in every way the best of the tombs of this period at Aswan. Besides these we cleared wholly or in part about eighteen other tombs, and made paths to them for the convenience of the workmen and visitors. The works which we carried out during the next seven weeks were unproductive so far as material results were concerned, and all that I could find to remove were the fragments of the lower half of what must have been a very fine statue of Sa-Renput ; these we found at the end of the long corridor of his tomb, in a deep niche like a shrine. We expended a very great deal of labour on the excavation of this tomb. To the right of the corridor, at the end, we found a sloping and curved passage, which I believe led downwards and ended in the mummy chamber under the shrine. We began to dig this out, but found our way barred by many brick walls, which seemed to have been built with special care. We broke through several of these, but the air became so foul that the candles would not bum, and we had to abandon the clearing of that shaft. This tomb was remarkable for another reason. The walls of the large ^ His appeal and my description of the tombs we had cleared were printed in The Times, January 28, 1887, p. 13. 92 Historical Inscriptions at Aswan. hall, which was entered from the colonnade, were covered with a thin layer of plaster, and on this was painted in bright colours a long inscription of about i6o lines. The hieroglyphs were carefully drawn in black outliiies, which were filled in with colours, in a style closely resembling that of the large hieroglyphs on coffins from Al-Barshah. The layer of plaster had become separated from the wall, and had fallen away in places near the ceiling, and the beginnings of some of the lines of the inscription were destroyed. It was most important to obtain a copy of the inscription, for its contents were historical, as I recognized from the few words which were visible. We inserted a length of matchboarding between the sand and the wall horizontally, and then removed the sand to the depth of six inches. We then pushed the piece of wood lower down, and I copied on a paper ruled with lines the tops of the columns of hieroglyphs thus made visible. This done, we cleared away more sand, pushed the wood lower down, and I copied the text which thus became visible. We repeated this process, and at length I copied the whole inscription. This text recorded the names and titles of Sa-Renput, including those which we knew from the inscriptions on other parts of the tomb, and contained a description of five expeditions which he made into the Southern Sudan after the manner of Sabben and Herkhuf, his predecessors at Aswan, several hundred years earlier. On one side of the door- way leading into the corridor was a list of names of countries and towns in the South, and on the other a list of the objects which he brought back either in the course of trade, or as tributary gifts ; of these also I made copies. The meaning of much of the narrative of the expeditions was easy enough to make out, for the sentences were short and simple, and as they were state- ments of fact there was no ambiguity in it. There were, however, in places many words of the meanings of which I was ignorant, and several signs, the phonetic values of which I did not know ; but I had noticed that the words which I did not know occurred in the inscriptions which -were cut on the rock by the sides of the doors of three To face p. 92, vol. i. <|y'^(tO^=- .ai'^ilMrrr^^ D^^-i^g^tgi^ii;.- f §21' ■ ^"-*— ^ iwiiiiiiiill I'll I r I n fi ■.^.-r^:^^:^::^-"*" I JCl! »5 •a; I-. '7X1 * m The Elysian Fields. From the inside of a painted coffin from Al-Barshah. Brit. Mus., No. 30840. General de Montmorency. 93 or four tombs — e.g., Sabben and Pepi-nekht — and some of the signs which puzzled me also. I therefore made paper squeezes of these inscriptions, and adding to them the copy of Sa-Renput's inscription, I sent the whole batch of text to my immediate chief in the Museum, Mr. P. Le Page Renouf, Keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities. I hoped that he would rejoice at the good fortune which placed such important unpub- lished texts in his hands, and that he would take the earliest opportunity of publishing them in the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, of which he was President. On my return to England I made eager enquiries as to the contents of the paper squeezes and the copy of Sa-Renput's text which I had sent back, and I learned to my sorrow that my chief had taken them home to study, and had never been able to find them again. This is the reason why copies of these most valuable historical inscriptions did not appear in the paper on the Aswan Tombs which I read before the Society of BibUcal Archaeology in November, 1887. It would have been impossible for us to do all the work we did at these tombs without the generous assist- ance of General the Hon. R. H. de Montmorency (who was affectionately known among his friends as " Black Monty ") and Colonel Leach, R.E., the Commandant, who placed a mass of railway plant at our disposal, and fre- quently sent over to us a Corporal of Sappers, who kept the natives at their work. When Major Plunkett was transferred to Malta, Major Hare, R.E., undertook the direction of the excavations in his place. We carried on the works in the hill until the middle of February, 1887, when we were compelled to stop, for the Eleventh Company of Royal Engineers were ordered to leave Aswan for Cairo, and to take their railway plant, tackle, etc., with them. In spite of all our efforts, which we re- doubled towards the end of our time, and the great depth to which we penetrated in the shafts of the tombs, we did not succeed in finding the mummies or coffins of the great chiefs of the old frontier town of Abu — i.e., Elephant-City or Elephantine — under the Vlth and 94 Holled Smith's Excavations at Aswdn. Xllth dynasties ; but I feel sure that they rest in the hill somewhere, and that it would be worth the while of some archaeologist of experience, who possessed modern implements and tackle, to make a further search for them ; and it goes without saying that we left many tombs unexcavated. Some of those who continued our work in the hill were more fortunate than we were. Thus, two months later, Colonel Holled Smith cleared out for the Sardar a tomb belonging to the second layer of tombs, and found in it a mummy and coffin, several uninscribed pots, two funerary boats, and a square box containing the model of a granary. This last-mentioned object is of considerable interest. It is the model of a granary with seven bins, and each has a sliding door, through which the grain was taken out, and over each door is written in hieratic the description of the grain in the bin. A stairway leads to the roof over the bins, and up this the grain was carried in sacks, and shot into them through holes in the roof. A figure of the keeper of the granary stands by the stairway, and near him is the grain measure. In 1888 the Sardir decided to present one of the boats^ and the granary^ to the British Museum, and handed both to me in Cairo to pack up and take home. In December, 1887, I received a letter from Professor Alexander Macalister, of Cambridge, stating that he was then working at the craniology of the ancient Egyptians, and was trying to find out to what race they belonged. Further, he asked me if it would be possible to obtain for him a collection of ancient Egyptian skulls, mummified or otherwise, for examination and measurement. Fortu- nately for him we had just opened a large deep pit containing the mummies of priests of the third and fourth orders, who ministered in the temple which stood on the Island of Elephantine during the Saite and Ptolemaic periods. These mummies were not well made, and the bandages were scanty, and as they were laid in ^ Formerly exhibited in the Third Egyptian Room (No. 21,805). * Brit. Mus. No. 21,804. Described and illustrated in the Guide to the Third and Fourth Egyptian Rooms, pp. 182, 183. Egyptian Skulls as Bone Manure. 95 rows one above the other (there was not a single head- rest or pillow ^ in the pit), most of the heads were either very loose or actually separated from their bodies. We collected about eight hundred heads, and then closed up the pit. These I brought across the river, a load at a time, and stacked up at one end of my hut until I could get wood to make packing cases ; but after they had been there for a week the pile seemed to me to be very much reduced, and I was puzzled to account for it. It was most unlikely that any native would want to steal my skulls, and if they did my hut was in the Rest Camp, and there were sentries at all Jhe gates. The puzzle was soon solved for me, for one night I was awakened by a noise caused by the skulls rolling down on to the ground, and I saw two or more jackals, each with a head hanging to his jaws by the bandages, rushing out of the hut. What nourishment they could obtain out of mummified human heads I could never understand, but so long as there were skulls loose in the hut I saw jackals prowling under the river bank in the evening, watching their opportunity to steal my skulls. It may be men- tioned in passing that there was difficulty in getting the boxes of skulls through the Custom House at Alexandria because I truthfully declared what their contents were. There was a law prohibiting the exportation of mummies and human remains, and the official refused to pass the boxes because, he said, " heads of mummies " were human remains. He did not for one moment believe that anyone could want " heads of mummies " for scientific purposes, and he said that the only use for mummies was to turn them into manure. After further conversation he tore up my declaration, and gave me another form, and told me to describe the " heads of mummies " as " bone manure." This I did, and paid export duty of one per cent, on them as manure, and they went out of Egypt without further difficulty. On this occasion, and also on many other occasions in the East when dealing with Customs' officials, I discovered that, after all, there is a good deal in a name. Meanwhile some of the men in AswS.n came to realize 96 Greek Inscription from Elephantine. that I was in quest of " anticas/'^ and I began to get the reputation of a collector. The man to whom I chiefly owed this reputation was, I was told, a representative of the Bulak Museum of Egyptian Antiquities in Cairo, who had been sent up to watch my doings, and to frus- trate the least attempt I might make to " strip Egypt of her monuments." He, it was said, gave the natives to understand that I had an unlimited supply of money from the British Museum, and that my methods were absolutely unscrupulous, if not something wo;rse. He begged them, in their own interest, to have nothing to do with me ; but, without in the least intending to be so, he was my best friend, for the natives believed that I really had much money to spend, and as to my being a rogue and a swindler (Shatar) and a law-breaker, they would rather have dealings with such than with a fool. The result was that natives came to me in boats by night in my hut on the river bank, and offered to sell me statues and stelae, etc.; and many of their things I was anxious to acquire. I told them I had no money, and then they pressed me to take their things to England and send them the money. Among the objects offered to me for purchase was the central slab of a monument nine feet high, inscribed in Greek with a statement of the benefits which Ptolemy X (Soter H) had conferred upon the priesthood of the Island of Elephantine.* This important stone was being used as a doorstep by its owner. I bought the slab at a very moderate price, but one swallow does not make a summer, and I felt that I must obtain other objects if I would justify my Mission to Egypt. Whilst I was casting about in my mind how and where to obtain such objects, good fortune, in a somewhat ^ The Egypftians seem to have taken over the Itahan adjective antica and turned it into a noun ; at all events we have antika ^Sulaf, with the plural aniikat ut,^5y»\. It is possible that they have confounded antica with their own word 'ati^ah tLsk " ancient," plur. ^^tbx. They apply antica, or anttcat, to all kinds of curiosities as well as antiquities, and they have given it an Arabic form. ^ See Guide to the Egyptian Galleries (Sculpture), p. 261, No. 963. Tn face p. 97, vol. i. "*&- [■♦•1 ^V ^ w€l!lu.l 1^ 44-44 4"^ JA ^ 55J-I (iSUtj •r^" Gravestone of Muhammad, son of 'Ubed Allah, who died on the 20th day of the month of Ramadan, A.n. 4/]^ (a.d. 105.)). Bril. Mils., No. 692. Torrential Rain at Aswdn. 97 strange form, came to my help. One day the sky became covered with dense grey clouds, which I was told were rarely seen in Aswan, and for three days there was no bright sunshine, but only a subdued misty grey light which was very pleasant. In the afternoon rain began to fall, and the natives were happy, but the rain con- tinued to come down, and when evening came it fell in torrents. The natives were in despair, and for the first time I learned what tropical rain was like. The Rest Camp Mess was one of the best houses in the town, and it had two stout roofs, each of which was made of a row of palm trunks, covered with good thick layers of mud ; but the rain which collected on the upper roof dissolved the mud between the palm trunks of both roofs, and flowed down on the table whilst we were eating, and made the dinner uneatable. It rained all night, and the camp and the town were flooded; the only house in the town with a roof was that of the P.M.O., who had rigged up tarpaulins over his roof when the rain began to fall. The scene at the back of the town was strange indeed. The tents of the Bish^rin were standing in a lake, and pools of water were to be seen in the desert in aU directions. On the low hills, close to the town, where the modern inhabitants buried their dead, bare human bodies lay exposed, for the rain had washed away the sand and pebbles which covered them. When we went there the people of the town were reburying their dead, and collecting large stones to lay upon them, for the jackals had already scented out the place, and several bodies showed the marks of their attentions. Over in the old Arab cemetery, which lay near one of the ancient granite quarries in the hills, we found two of the notables of the town lamenting the damage which the rain had done. Some of the tombs here were the oldest known Muhammadan sepulchres in Upper Egypt, and belonged to the earliest centuries of the Hijrah,^ when Aswan was an authorized place of ' The first Hijrah, or " flight," of Muhammad the Prophet took place in 615, and the second Hijrah on June 20th, 622, on which year the Arabs base their chronology. G 98 The Dead Washed out of their Graves. pilgrimage, and was regarded as a holy site. For the dwellers in the remote south the pilgrimage to Aswan was considered as meritorious as a pilgrimage to Mecca (Makkah), and the bodies of the illustrious dead were brought there from all parts of Egypt, and buried there. These tombs were all built of mud, and some had pillars and friezes which suggested that they were copies of Byzantine originals, also made of mud. The graceful little Kuhbas {i.e., domes or cupolas) were kept well whitewashed, and were striking objects in the grim and strong landscape. At the head of every tomb of an important man was set up a large rectangular tablet of sandstone, on which were cut in Kufi characters the name of the deceased, a passage from the Kur'an, and the date of his death. As many of these memorial stones dated from the third and fourth centuries of the Hijrah, their importance both historically and palaeo- graphically is evident. When we joined the notables they pointed out the terrible damage to the tombs which the rain had done. It had melted the Kuhhas and pillars and the mud and plaster decorations, and the mud-brick backings of the inscribed tablets of stone had collapsed, and the tablets were lying in pools of liquid mud. It was out of the question to rebuild the tombs, and the notables said it was impossible to preserve the inscribed tablets in their proper places above the graves, for they would assuredly be stolen and used for building purposes. At that time there were only one or two poor examples of Kufi tomb- stones in the British Museum, and I was very anxious to obtain a selection of those which I saw before me. The notables were quite willing for me to have as many as I wanted, provided I took them out of Egypt to a place where they would be preserved and respected, and I selected fourteen of the oldest and best of them without delay. That evening one of the officers and I went out with camels and brought them into the camp, and on the following morning packed them in strong wooden boxes, and stored them in my hut. Thus, through the rainstorm I obtained a welcome addition to my little collection. 1 ojace p. y9, vui. Gravestone of Barakah, the daughter of Husen, who died a.h. 445 (a.d. 1063). Bni. Mus., No. 690. Gravestones with Inscription in KAfi. 99 There is an interesting sequel to my acquisition of these Kufi grave-stones. When the representative of the Bul^k Museum heard of it, he came to me and claimed them for his Museum as by right, and when I refused to surrender them he offered to buy them from me ; and when I declined his offer he went, according to rumour, into the town to the Ma'amur [i.e., Governor), and called upon him to seize the stones, and tried to stir up mischief among the natives. The Ma'amur told me, when he came to see me soon afterwards, that he was thankful to learn that the British had taken possession of the stones, for he could not have protected them adequately. He then suggested that I should acquire from him six other Kufi grave-stones which he had in a shed near his house, and as his price was very moderate, I did so. The repre- sentative of the Bulik Museum reported the action of myself and the Ma'amur to his chief in Cairo, and received orders from him to take possession of all the Kufi grave- stones he could find in Aswan, and to despatch them to him in Cairo on the steamer belonging to the Service of Antiquities. The representative collected men, and went out with them to the modern cemeteries of the town, and began removing from the graves the tombstones of men whose descendants were still living! The result was a big row in the town. He paid no heed to the remonstrances made to him, but had the grave-stones carried down to the river, and loaded into the steamer that had been sent up for them. In due course he set out with his load for Cairo, and all went well until the steamer began to take the bend of the river near Kom Ombo. Then, either through the failure of the steering gear, or through the direct action of the Ra'is (or Captain), the heavy boat, which drew four or five feet of water when unloaded, drove straight on to the great sandbank there, and stuck so firmly that no efforts of her captain and crew could move her. There she stayed the whole summer through, and her crew grew water melons in the sand on each side of her. The natives, of course, asserted that it was the power of the dead shekhs that drove her on to the bank, and that it was their hands which held her there. G 2 100 Abil Simhel and Wddt Half ah. Towards the end of the year General de Montmorency found it necessary to send an armoured stern-wheeler on patrol duty from Shallal to Wadi Half ah, and he asked me to go in her and examine the temples of Nubia as far as the Second Cataract. I gratefully accepted his offer, for in no other way could I have visited those temples that year. The military commander of the steamer was Colonel Leach, Commandant of Aswan, and fellow passengers with me were Colonel (now Major- General) R. H. Fowler Butler, and Colonel (now Major- General Sir) H. C. Chermside. Colonel Leach stopped the steamer at every important ruin, and gave us ample time to examine everything carefully, and the many remains at Kal^bshah, and the rock-hewn temple of Rameses II at Bet al-Wali, occupied much time. We stayed a few hours at Korosko, and went up the mountain to the signal station, where we obtained a magnificent view of the deserts on both sides of the Nile, and saw the caravan tracks stretching away into apparently infinite distance. The itinerary of the steamer was carefully planned, with the result that we arrived at Abu Simbel about 2 a.m., and were able to explore the mysterious depths of the great temple of Rameses II by lamplight ; in the dim light the Osirid pillars assumed colossal proportions and were awe-inspiring. Colonel Leach then took the stern-wheeler over to the eastern bank, and we were able to watch the effect of the false dawn and sunrise on the faces of the four colossal statues of the king. The effects produced on them by the ever- changing colours of the lights of dawn and sunrise were of superlative beauty, and were to me indescribable. At Wadi Halfah we were received by Colonel (now Major-General Sir) C. HoUed Smith, who most kindly arranged for us to see all that could be seen there in a short time. The engineers had managed to repair the railway, which in the days of Isma'il Pisha reached as far as Sarras, and he took us over about twenty miles of it, and we saw some of the camps which the Dervishes had evacuated. Parts of the railway they had destroyed very thoroughly. With the sleepers they made fires, and Holled Smith's ExcavaUons. loi bent the rails into all sorts of shapes ; the fish-plates they made into daggers, and the bolts into spear-heads, many of which were to be seen lying about ; with parts of the telegraph wires they stiffened the shafts of their spears, and all the rest they heaved into the Cataract. Colonel Holled Smith also arranged an excursion by camel to the Rock of Abusir, which stands a little to the south of the foot of the Second Cataract. We read on the Rock the names of many travellers who, in their day, were famous for their Egyptian travels, and among them the name of Miss Ameha B. Edwards,^ who in England always protested loudly against such " vandalism." Of much more interest to me were the works which Colonel Holled Smith had done in connection with clearing out the temples on the west bank of the NUe. He carried away whole hills of sand from the temples of Thothmes II and Thothlnes III, and laid bare their outer courts and walls, which must have been covered up for centuries. In making this clearance he found a door-jamb of ^ The well-known novelist. In the winter of 1873-4 she made a trip up the Nile with a few friends under very pleasant circumstances. The country and climate and mommients exercised so strong an influence over her that when she returned to England she abandoned her craft of novel-writing, and devoted herself whole-heartedly to the advancement of Egyptology. I saw hpr often in the Museum, when she came to Birch for help in the historical parts of the narrative of her journey which she was writing. In 1877 she published this narra- tive under the title of " A Thousand Miles up the Nile," and her book was deservedly an immediate and great success. Her energy, enthu- siasm, and zeal brought about the foundation of the Egypt Exploration Fund in 1882, and for some years it owed its success entirely to her tact and work and extraorcfinary power of organization. Profiting by her acquaintance with Birch, Maspero and NaviUe, which she cultivated assiduously, she acquired a good knowledge of Egyptian history and archaeology. She was large-hearted, kind, and S3mipa- thetic, a delightful companion, and a good friend. Birch thoroughly enjoyed her visits, and would sit for an hour at a time listening to her fine descriptions of Nile scenery, and sunrises and sunsets, and the subtle differences of appearance which the monuments exhibit at different times of the day. I never met anyone who had so thoroughly absorbed the mystic and magical influences of Egypt past and present, and who could clothe the impressions which they make upon the mind in such well-fitting and expressive words. 102 Repairs on the Island of Phil(z. Thothmes III,i a part of a stele of the same king dated in the thirty-fifth year of his reign, ^ a statue of Ka-mesu, a viceroy of the Egyptian Sudan,' a stele set up by Seti I in the temple of Thothmes II,* a stele of Setau,^ another viceroy, and a stele of Mernetchem,* an inspector of the gold mines in the Sudan. All these valuable objects he packed up in cases, and handed over to me for the British Museum, and all of them are now exhibited in the Egyptian Galleries. He had explored all the country on the east bank northwards beyond the Island of Faras, and the island itself, and he told me that all that district abounded in ruins of Coptic churches and houses of the Byzantine period. Had he remained in Wadi Halfah he would certainly have excavated the Island of Faras. Before I left Aswan for Wadi Halfah a company of' Royal Engineers, under Captain Handcock, R.E., began to clear out some of the buUdings on the Island of Phfise, and they repaired many parts of the walls of the so- called " Kiosk." Several of the arches, by reason of the broken stones in them, were in imminent danger of collapsing, and many parts of the cornice had begun to crumble away, and large pieces of stone fell frequently. In the course of clearing the bases of the walls. Captain Handcock found many pieces of sculptured stone, which once formed parts of ancient buildings, and these he set aside for the British Museum. When I returned to Shallal he had them packed in cases, and handed them over to me, and I stored them with my collection, which was now becoming important. During one of the clearances which we made on the eastern side of the Island of Philse we unearthed a massive grey granite shrine, about eight feet high, which was lying flat on its right side on a foundation of rough stones. The ^ Northern Egyptian Gallery, No. 365 (Bay 10). ' Northern Egyptian Gallery, No. 368 (Bay 11). ^ Northern Egyptian Gallery, No. 452 (Bay 7). * Northern Egyptian Gallery, No. 571 (Bay 8). ' Northern Egyptian Gallery, No. 608 (Bay 17). * Northern Egyptian Gallery, No. 645 (Central Saloon). :V.^m m^ Monolithic shrine which held a figure of the hawk of Horus of Philae ; it was dedicated to the god by Ptolemy IX and his wife Cleopatra. Byit. Mus., No. 1134. Shrine of Ptolemy IX. 103 inscriptions on the front state that the shrine was dedi- cated to Horus of Philae by Ptolemy IX and his wife Cleopatra. As there are very few examples of this kind of monument in existence, this "find" was important. I applied without delay to the Director of the Service of Antiquities, asking him for permission to take the shrine to London, and he refused to allow it to leave the country. I then offered to purchase the shrine at a reasonable price, but my offer was rejected, and we were ordered to leave the monument in the hollow in which we found it. I pointed out to the Director the danger of leaving this priceless object unprotected on the Island, but I could not find that he did anything to protect or remove it, and he would not let us have it. Whilst the Director and I were writing letters to each other about the shrine, I received a telegram from Sir E. Baring, asking if the British Museum would abandon all claim to the colossal statue of Rameses II, lying at Sakkarah, and take the shrine at Philse in place of it. I replied that I had no authority to make such an ex- change, which would be greatly to our disadvantage, and that in my opinion it ought not to be done. I reminded him that the statue had been given to the British Nation by Muhammad 'All, and that no one, not even the French, had raised any objection to our taking possession of it ; on the contrary, Mariette had always been anxious that the statue should be taken to England, where it would be preserved ; and I pointed out to him that General Sir Frederick Stephenson had already spent a considerable sum of British money on labour and tackle for raising it up out of the water-hole in which it had been lying for so many years. All this, however, had no effect. The Director of the Service of Antiquities told Sir E. Baring that public opinion in Cairo would be greatly affronted if the British took the statue out of Egypt, and promised him that if he would keep the statue in the country, he would direct his engineers to bring it into Cairo, and to set it up before the new Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, the building of which was under consideration. One moment's thought would 104 Clearance of Tombs at Aswan. have shown Sir E. Baring how impossible it was for the Director to fulfil his promise, for the Kasr an-Nil bridge would have broken down under the weight of the statue. But Sir E. Baring, for some reason or other, wished to placate the French Colony in Egypt, so he adopted the views of the Director, and it was reported in England that the removal of the statue would be very unpopular in Egypt. The result of the matter was that I was ordered to make arrangements for the transport of the shrine (of which the Director of the Service of Antiquities had no knowledge until I reported that we had found it) from Philse to London. Thus the British lost the statue, which still lies on the ground at Sakkarah, where Major Arthur Bagnold, R.E., left it in 1887, a testimony to the value of official promises. Meanwhile the clearing out of the tombs of the Vlth and Xllth dynasties went on regularly, but at an ever- increasing cost, because of the great distance to which we had to carry the sand, and we had nothing but baskets to carry it away in. The tombs yielded nothing of any size or importance, and Major Plunkett and I decided to make a few trial "excavations " in the neighbourhood. Among the places chosen for this purpose was the cemetery of the old Coptic Monastery of St. Simeon, which lay to the south of our tombs, and on the same side of the river. We opened the tombs of many monks, but we found nothing in them except pieces of calcareous stone, on which were cut the names by which the brethren had been known in the monastery during their lifetime. We found in one tomb, that of a bishop, an episcopal staff surmounted by an ornament in the form of the Cross, made of silver, and set in a copper mount. The staff was worm-eaten, and could not be removed, and the silver ornament was completely oxidized, and crumbled away whilst a rubbing of it was being made. The ornament was a combination of the old Egyptian crux ansata •¥-, and the rising sun on the horizon c^, and the very ancient amulet-symbols of Osiris. ^ and Isis ft. In my opinion it represented an attempt to unite the Abyssinian Crosses. 105 most sacred symbols of the Egyptian and Christian rehgions. The bishop probably used it, as the bishops in Abyssinia used their triple and quadruple crosses, to frighten the Devil from him when he appeared, and to drive away evil spirits. During our work we found that a good many things were stolen from us, especially small objects such as ushabtiu figures, and sold to tourists, but we could not catch the thieves. One day a rectangular slab of stone, with a Greek inscription on each side, was stolen from the boat, and we heard that a European in Aswan was systematically employing natives to steal from the boat which brought us from the tombs each evening. It was impossible to let the matter pass unnoticed. The stone was found in the ruins at Kom Ombo, and was given to me by Major Plunkett for the Museum. The jackals, I knew, were in the habit of stealing Macalister's skulls from my hut, but though they could eat almost anything, I never found that they tried to eat my stone things. I appealed to the Commandant, who said: " Stop the diggings until the stone is brought back ; when the diggers find there are no piastres at the end of the day, the stone will re-appear." We stopped the diggings, but the stone did not re-appear. The diggers said they were heart-broken because of my want of belief in their words, and they swore strange oaths by their eyes and their beards and their fathers, and said they were famished, but no stone came back. The Ma'amur, or Governor, was then asked if he could do nothing to help us, and he said that he thought he could, provided that he was allowed to manage the matter in his own way ; and we left it to him, and did not resume work in the hill. Some days passed, and the stone was still missing. One morning 'Abdallah, the ganger, brought me an invitation from the Ma'amur to come and drink a cup of coffee with him under the big tree, the one beautiful object in the town. I went, and found the Ma'amur and the Kadi and several notables seated on diwins, and the Ma'amur told me that they were going to try a case which would interest me as soon as we had finished lo6 Greek Inscription Stolen. our coffee. The case began. The accused, a man whose face was familiar to me, was brought forward, and an of&cial read out a document in which he was accused of steaUng a pig, and further with having sold the same to a neighbour. The accused denied the charge, and when the Kadi had commented on the moral iniquity of a man who could not only steal a defiled and defiling animal, but sell it to a neighbour, whereby he made him a partner in his own uncleanness, witnesses were called. One witness swore that he had seen the accused dragging the pig away by a rope. Another swore that he had seen him selling the pig to a man who had taken it to Daraw, and a third swore that the accused had just paid him a debt of 100 piastres which he had owed him for a long time, and could never have paid unless he had received money for the pig. Other witnesses followed, and their evidence was so circumstantial that I felt I was watching a trial in India, so complete was their testimony. Nothing that the accused could say was of avail, and he was con- demned to be beaten on the soles of the feet. He was quickly thrown upon the ground, and the beating began ; but as I was disgusted with the sight, I got up and left the assembly, wondering greatly why I had been invited. Early next morning 'Abdallah the ganger appeared with his face wreathed in smiles, and with him came two men carrying the stone which had been stolen ! I asked him many questions, which he refused to answer, but he told me that the Ma'amur, who was " like God " for his wisdom, was on his way to see me, and that he would explain everything to me. The Ma'amur arrived in a very happy frame of mind, and was much pleased with himself because he had managed to get the stone back, and he told me that the man who had been accused of stealing a pig was the thief. Said I, " How did you find this out ? Did you know that he had stolen the pig, and therefore suspected that he had stolen the stone ? " He said, "No. He is a very, very bad man, and a friend of all the bad men in Aswan. I did as I always do in such cases. I invented the charge against him. In this case I accused him of stealing a pig, and The Kadi's Court at Aswdn. 107 my wife's brothers always help me in such cases by becoming vvitnesses, and saying what I tell them to say. When the accused swore that he had stolen no pig he told the truth, for there is no pig in Aswan. But just after you left us, when his feet were beginning to cause him great pain, he confessed that he knew where the stone was, and we therefore suspended the beating of his feet until we could send and verify his statement. When we found that he had told the truth, and we had the stone in our hands, I remitted the remaining stripes, and ordered him to be kept in prison for three months. In truth he ought to be made to pay to each of the work- men five piastres for each day's work lost. But all the English are foolishly compassionate, and I beg your honour now to ask the Kadi to forgive that wicked man the three months' imprisonment which he ought to serve ; and further, I ask your honour to buy another stone from me, so that I may be enabled to give my servants a little bakhshish in return for all the trouble which they have taken for you. For my own work in the matter I ask nothing except the blessing of AUah, and that the English may be pleased to confirm me in my wazifah (of&ce, or appointment). But I am sick in my inside, and no medicine has ever done me so much good as that green syrup (in truth it is of the sap of the Lote Tree in Paradise), which your honour's friends gave me to drink on the day when the Italian Prince was here." Of course, the Ma'amur's conduct, viewed in the abstract, was disgraceful, but in this particular case I felt that the end certainly did justify the means. More- over, all the of&cials of his class, who were expected by the British to keep law and order in their districts, acted as he acted. On the whole, it seems to me from what I have seen in the East, that in the Kadi's Court, where cases are dealt with summarily, the decisions are based upon common sense, and justice is done substantially. In the case quoted above the Ma'amur knew that the man he accused was a bad man, and his suspicion that he was implicated in stealing the stone was correct. As for the few stripes that were laid on him, he deserved them and io8 Visit of Dr. Schliemann. more ; and no one suffered in any way, for even the accused received a useful gift from me, and I made an arrangement with the workmen whereby they were able to make up the time lost, and to receive pay for the same. I was most grateful to the Ma'amur for recovering the stone, and he left me with a beaming face, clasping under his stambMi coat a large bottle of " green medi- cine " {i.e., green Chartreuse, from the Mess). He had tasted this liqueur at a reception given by General de Montmorency a few weeks previously in honour of H.R.H. the Prince of Naples, who was visiting Upper Egypt, and he had not forgotten it. The Ma'amur was a very able man, and a most capable official, and when the British arrived in Aswan on the abortive expedition for the relief of Gordon, he rendered Sir Garnet Wolseley great assistance. He was recommended for special commendation, and for a gift which should be a sign visible to all men of the appreciation in which he was held by the British War Lords in Cairo {i.e., a gold watch and chain) . The authorities in Cairo sent him up a handsome gold watch in a gorgeous sUk-lined case, but there was no chain with it, and public opinion in AswS.n considered the Ma'amur was justified in telegraphing to Sir E. Baring, " Your Excellency has forgotten gold chain, please send." By the end of January we found that we were coming near the end of any work which we could hope to finish before the British soldiers moved on to Cairo, and we decided to close down on February 15th. Apart from that of expenses, there was also another good reason for stopping work : we were crowded out with visitors. The tourists came in the early morning, bringing their lunch with them from the steamers, and stayed there the whole day. The men wandered about everywhere, and the women dug in the sand for beads. Natives came over in the evening, and stayed the night there, and made themselves a nuisance. In January Dr. H. Schliemann, the distinguished archaeologist and excavator, visited Aswan in one of the old dhahabiyahs, which were so roomy and comfortable. As soon as he arrived his Charles Neufeld. 109 secretary, or companion, landed and sent some of the crew to announce to the native officials that his great master had arrived, but with what object he did this no one understood. The British military authorities had not been instructed from Cairo to give Dr. Schliemann a public reception, and they did nothing. Mr. Henry Wallis, the artist, who very kindly made for me many drawings of the Aswan tombs, was very anxious that some one should show civUity to Dr. Schliemann, and offer to act as guide for him over the tombs. Therefore he. Major Plunkett, and 1 were rowed over to the dhahabi- yah, and announced ourselves. The butler received us civUly, and led us into the large reception room in the stem of the vessel, and after the usual salutations and coffee and cigarettes. Major Plunkett acted as spokesman, and said that we had called to offer him our boat and crew if he wished to go over to the tombs, and that we were ready to accompany him at any time, and show him what we had done. Dr. Schliemann replied very stiffly, " It is very kind of you to be so amiable. I should like to place my archaeological science at your disposal by showing and explaining to you the tombs, but I have not the time as I am going up to Halfah." He then reached out one hand, and lifted up a paper- bound copy of the Greek text of Homer's " Iliad," in the Teubner Series, which he was holding in his hand when we entered (it was then lying face downwards on the cushion), and went on with his reading. Major Plunkett, lighting another cigarette, asked in a sweetly soft voice if we had his permission to withdraw, and we did so with as much dignity as was possible under the circumstances. Among the residents in Aswan who took great interest in the tombs was a man who has since that time become notorious, I mean Charles Neufeld. He kept a little shop in the southern end of the town, and did a certain amount of trade with the natives in gum, ostrich feathers, whips made of hippopotamus hide, etc. The military authorities were puzzled as to the sources of his supply of feathers, and at length it was discovered by them no Excavations at Aswan Closed. that he obtained his goods direct from friends and sympathizers with the Khalifah 'Abdallah, and that he gave in exchange for them saltpetre, copper for making caps for rifles, and materials for making ammunition. When this fact was discovered the British closed his shop, and kept him under supervision, but he managed to make his escape to Wadi Halfah in January. There he found the slaves of Salah Bey, a great enemy of the Khalifah, who had come to appeal to the Egyptian Government for help. The British gave them two hundred rifles, forty boxes of ammunition, and £200 in money. When they set out to return to Kordofan, Neufeld somehow managed to attach himself to them, saying that he wished to re-open trade in Sudani products with their country. When they arrived at the Oasis of Salimah, on the Arba'in Road,^ they found the wells occupied by Wad an-Najumi's men, who promptly shot most of them and made prisoners of the others, Neufeld being among them. All the prisoners were taken to Dongola, and all were beheaded except Neufeld, who was sent on to Omdurman (Umm-Durman), where he arrived on March 7th, 1887, and where for nearly twelve years he worked in the Khalifah' s powder manufactory. He was released by Kitchener on September ist, 1898. - We stopped the work of clearing the tombs about the middle of February, as arranged, and we left the site in such a state that work could be resumed on it at any moment. We had cleared out nearly two dozen tombs, and made paths to them, and a good road to the river from Sa-Renput's tomb. For some weeks I had been receiving letters from natives and Europeans, telling me that many important things had been recovered from the tombs at Thebes, and that they were waiting for my coming. Early in February, General de Montmorency took over all the antiquities which I had gathered together, and which various officers had committed to my charge for the British Museum, and when they were packed in ^ I.e., the " Forty Road," because the journey from Asyut in Egypt to Dir Fur occupied forty daj's. The Egyptian Service of Antiquities. iii cases he sent them down to Alexandria in a Government barge for shipment to England. The value of this unasked for and unexpected assistance was very great, and it made the obstruction of the official of the Bulak Museum of no effect. On my way down the river 1 went to Kom Ombo and Asni (or Esneh), and at each place I added to my collection. The objects which had been found at Edfu and Armant had been sent to Luxor to await my arrival. When I arrived in Luxor I found that the dealers had indeed collected many valuable things from the tombs at Western Thebes, and that the prices were, when compared with prices in England, very moderate. Antiquities were plentiful, but money was not. I had reported to the Principal Librarian and to my immediate chief in the Museum on the principal objects which had been offered to me for purchase on my way up the river, and had received instructions to secure them at reason- able prices ; but I had been so much troubled in Aswin by the official from Bulak, who protested against every acquisition which I had made there, that I determined to find out what views were held by the natives about the regulations for dealing in antiquities which had been promulgated by the Service of Antiquities. The facts which I elicited from them were as follows : The Egyptian Government, they said, claimed as of right every object of antiquity in Egypt, whether above or below ground ; and it was unlawful for any native to possess or to deal in antiquities. The natives treated the Government's claim to all antiquities in Egypt with contempt, for the simple reason that it could not be enforced, and no Government in Egypt had ever tried to enforce it. And no Govern- ment could prevent the natives possessing antiquities or dealing in them. Many natives in all parts of Egypt dealt openly in antiquities, and Mariette and his successor, Maspero, bought from them antiquities for the Bulak Museum, and paid for them with Government money. Some natives had been astute enough to get themselves made Consuls or Agents for European Powers, and they excavated tombs, and bought and sold their contents 112 The Egyptian Service of Antiquities. without let or hindrance ; and it was reported that some of these Consular Agents had expelled from their premises certain officials of the Service of Antiquities who attempted to control their business, and thus they were able to make the law as to the possession of and dealing in antiquities a dead letter. In 1887 the Service of Antiquities promulgated a rule which, on the face of it, was absurd. It ordered every native who was in possession of an antiquity to bring it to Cairo, and to submit it to the authorities at the Museum, so that they might decide whether its acquisi- tion for the National Collection was desirable or not ; and it went on to say that if the authorities decided to acquire any object they would make a valuation of it, and give the possessor one half of the sum at which it was valued, as an act of grace ! The natives were to under- stand clearly that the money thus given by the authori- ties must not be regarded as payment for any antiquity which the authorities might decide to keep, for every object of antiquity in Egypt was the property of the Government absolutely, but as payment for expenses incurred in bringing it to Cairo. The dealers were greatly exasperated by this new rule, and even a newcomer in the country like myself could see that it would not work. They pointed out that they had never had any difficulty with Mariette P§,sha or Maspero, and that when either of these Directors of Antiquities wished to take an object for the Egyptian Museum they always acted fairly in the matter, and sometimes even generously ; and I heard from the dealers stories of how the new rule was worked in Cairo. According to one of them, he and his friends obtained a genuine and valuable sepulchral statue from a tomb, and sent one of their " company " with it to Cairo, and told him to offer it for purchase to the Museum authorities. The statue was believed by them to be worth £100 in the open market, and before they sent it to the Museum they took the precaution of showing it to two or three European savants, who pronounced it genuine. When the statue was offered to the official in the Museum he declared it to be a forgery, but offered Mustafa Aghd and 'Abd ar-RasM. 113 to buy it from the dealer as a good specimen of a modem imitation ; as such it was worth, he said, £Ei2, and the sum due to the dealer was therefore £E6. The dealer protested, but in vain, and he was, according to his story, forced to take the £E6 and leave the office. A rumour was current subsequently that the statue had been sold by the Museum to an American traveller for a considerable sum of money. The natives believed that the officials of the Museum made collections of Eg5^tian antiquities, which they sold to American and European travellers, and so exploited sources of supply which should have been reserved for the National Collec- tion. Whether these statements were literally true or not I could not then tell, but the experience of later years has convinced me that on the whole the natives had just cause of complaint. I found in the house of Mustafa Agha, the British Consul at Luxor, many important objects, and he helped me in many ways. He was devoted to the British, and wanted to make the British Museum the " best in all the world." He sent across the river and brought over to his house many of the natives who had been associated with the Der al-Bahari " cache," and they gave me much useful information. I went over with them to Western Thebes, and stayed with them in their houses, and they took me to the house of the kinsmen of 'Abd ar-Rasul, who were the first to discover the hidden treasures of Der al-Bahari. They had still in their possession, though buried in carefully hidden pits, a large collection of rolls of hieroglyphic, hieratic, and other papyri, alabaster vessels bearing the names of the people in whose tombs they were placed, several of the beautiful blue glazed vases of Queen Nesi-Khensu, ivory objects, etc. The 'Abd ar-Rasul family hated the authorities with a bitter hatred, and one after another of them told me the story of how the confession of their uncles at Kana, as to the situation of the Der al-Bahari " cache," had been wrung from them by torture. All the men of the family, young and old, were dragged to Kana in 1880, and tied to posts and well beaten, but they refused to 114 The 'Abd ar-RasM Family Tortured. give the information which the authorities wanted, Maspero, Director of the Service of Antiquities, was, they said, present at the " examination " of these men. The men were then thrown down on the ground, and the soles of their feet beaten with pahn rods, and as they still refused to confess they were tied to seats, and heated iron pots were placed on their heads. One of the two brothers, 'Abd ar-Rasul, died under this torture, and the other, when I saw him, still bore the scars of the burns which he received from the heated pots on his forehead, face, and neck. I give this story from the notes which I made at the time, and Mustafa Agha, 'Ali Kamuri, Idris, and other natives, assured me that I had not been told one half of the tortures which the Mudir of Kan§. inflicted on the 'Abd ar-Rasul family. This man was of Sudani origin, and was actively concerned in many of the atrocities which the Khedive Isma'il perpetrated in the Sudan, and it is said that in order to make the brothers confess he employed tortures indescribable, which even in Central Africa are held to be outrageous. Apart from their personal hatred of the authorities, they detested the officials of the Service of Antiquities, for they were convinced that their one object was to get hold of their antiquities, not to preserve in the Museum in Cairo, but to sell on their own behalf. They were all most anxious to do business with the British Museum, but they were ready to deal with anyone who was not a servant of the Egyptian Government. It must not be imagined that they valued the antiquities of their country from an intellectual point of view, or that they wanted them to go to a place where they knew they would be carefully preserved : they certainly did not in 1887, and I doubt if they do so even now. They were, and still are, fully aware of the value of antiquities from a pecuniary point of view, or as commercial assets ; but the true Muslim regards them as accursed things, and as the works of " unbelievers," who, because of their sins and wickednesses, were overthrown by God ; and the man who digs them up is not always held to be free from sin. To face p. 115, vol. i. Waxen Book with Seven Tablets. 115 Among the objects I secured at Luxor were a gilded bronze figure of Set (Typhon), the god of Evil,i the first figure of the god ever found, and a circular ivory object, which was made for Seneb, a lady who flourished under the XVIIIth dynasty. On the latter were cut in outline figures of the double lion-headed Earth-god, Aker, and of many Typhonic deities and animals, and fabulous monsters — e.g., the winged, hawk-headed leopard, with a human head growing out of his back. This object is a kind of amulet, and was the first of its kind acquired by the British Museum.'' During the last few days of my stay at Luxor the natives of Kus discovered a rich tomb of the Roman period, and the principal con- tents were shown to me as a possible buyer on the evening of my departure — in fact, just as the steamer was about to leave. These included : (i) a very remarkable waxen book, with seven tablets and covers, and with inscrip- tions in, to me at least, an unknown character ; (2) a wooden board, painted white, and inscribed on both sides with thirteen lines from the " Iliad " (iii, 272-285) ; (3) a large handsomely written Demotic papyrus, with Greek dockets, and several smaller Demotic papyri. The waxen book was found immediately under the bandages of the stomach of the mummy, and the inscribed wooden board and the papyri lay in a box by his side. All these objects were obviously important, and I was anxious to secure them ; but to bargain for them then was impossible, as it was necessary for me to be in Cairo by a certain date. The owner solved the difficulty by making me take them with me, saying, " Send me the money from England when you like." When I arrived in Cairo I found awaiting me the cases which General de Montmorency had despatched from Aswan to Kasr an-Nil. I added to them the cases con- taining my recent acquisitions, which included a group of good Egyptian stelae from Akhmim, and the military ^ Brit. Mus., No. 18,191. ' For a drawing in black and white see Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archaology, vol. x, p. 570. H 2 ii6 Difficulty with the British Consul-General. authorities sent them all down to Alexandria via the Mahmudiyah Canal. A day or two before I left Cairo I received an intimation through the Sardar, whose gracious hospitality I was then enjoying, that Sir E. Baring disapproved of my operations in Egypt, and wished them to cease. In the interview which I had with him on the subject, he told me that he strongly objected to the exportation of antiquities from Egypt, whether to the British Museum or to any other place, and he ordered me not only to cease buying from native dealers, but to return to them everything which I had already acquired from them. I respectfully pointed out to him that I had been sent to Egypt at public expense to dig out tombs for the Sardar, and in return the Trustees expected me to take back to the British Museum the share of the results to which the Sardar was entitled, and which he was prepared to give them ; that unfortunately the tombs of the Ancient and Middle Empires which I had cleared out for the Sardar contained nothing that he could give to the Trustees in return for my services ; that not wishing to return to England empty-handed I had, according to general instructions received, taken the opportunity of purchasing a number of objects which we needed in London to fill up gaps in the National Collec- tion ;^ that I had also, with the consent of the Trustees, purchased a small collection of Egyptian antiquities for Cambridge University ; and that all these, together with the antiquities which had been handed over to' me by the British military authorities up the river, had already been despatched. Without heeding these remarks, Sir E. Baring then went on to say that he had heard only the day before that I had taken from a dealer a most valuable object. According to what his informant told him this object was a most precious thing, nothing less than a book formed of waxed wooden tablets, inscribed in Greek shorthand. He warmly protested against Egypt being " stripped " of such a valuable object, and ordered me 1 The collection that I acquired for the British Museum in 1886-87 contained 1,482 objects. To face p. iiy, vol. i. V\ -h'- V /■■■' r C \t O £ 'tt t« "^ o o Antiquity Dealers in Cairo. 117 to abandon the tablets, and to send them back to the man fi;om whom I bought them. In reply I pointed out to him that every Great Power (and many Little Powers) in Europe already had an agent in the country buying for its Central Museum, and that Great Britain had at least an equal right to have an agent collecting antiquities for it. Sir E. Baring's answer took the form of a peremptory order to me to return the waxed tablets to the dealer, and I felt obliged to remind him that I was not a member of his staff, and that I intended to carry out the in- structions of the Trustees, and to do my utmost to increase the collections in the British Museum. Here the interview ended abruptly. ^ The remainder of my time in Cairo I spent in the Bulak Museum, and made myself acquainted with the very fine collections of monuments of the Ancient Empire exhibited there. When once I knew the positions of the exhibits I found Maspero's " Guide " an excellent and instructive work. I made in the Museum the acquaintance of a native official, who, knowing the object of my visit to Egypt, introduced me to several dealers, and I went with him to Gizah, Rodah, Fustat (Old Cairo), and other places where they lived, and examined their collections. They had many valuable objects which I wished to acquire, and were ready to hand them over to me to take to London, but it was impossible, for many reasons, to open negotiations with ^ The following is the official description of the subject of this conversation : — " Add. 33,270. — A waxen book, consisting of seven wooden tablets, coated with black wax on both sides, and two covers, waxed on the inner sides. Inscribed with documents written with the stilus in tachygraphic symbols, with similar symbols written repeatedly, as if for practice ; and with a few memoranda in Greek, being a list of names and notes concerning works and the carriage of bran or chaff (o-xvpa) by water. In one of the covers a groove is hollowed for the reception of the writing implements. The leather thong with which the book was bound round and fragments of the leather laces which formed the hinges remain. Third century (?). 8j by 6| in." {Catalogue of Additions to the MSS. in the British Museum in the Years 1882-1887, London, 1889, p. 285.) ii8 Return to London. them that season. The last purchase I made in Cairo was the beautiful little green basalt statue of a king of the Xlllth dynasty/ which was believed by its owner, a high Egyptian official, to have come from Dongola. On the last day of February I left Cairo for Alexandria, where I enjoyed the hospitality of General de Mont- morency, who had just left Aswan, and had taken over command at Alexandria. Attached to his staff was a very capable Maltese, called Magro, who could read, write, and talk every language used in Alexandria, and who acted as his Oriental Secretary and interpreter. Unlike most " polyglot secretaries," he was a well-read man, and he knew the history of the city, both ancient and modern, exceedingly well. Under his guidance General de Montmorency and I explored the town and the catacombs, and visited several good collections of Alexandrian antiquities in the hands of private collectors. In this way I learned to know the general characteristics of late Ptolemaic and Roman sculpture, and sepulchral buildings, and the main features of funerary archaeology of the late period. My enjoyment of my visit to Alexandria was marred by the attempts made by the Service of Antiquities to prevent the export of my cases, and the British Consul-General's letters on the subject. But General de Montmorency declined to be moved either by wishes or threats, and one day he and I stood on the quay and watched my twenty-four cases leave the harbour under the care of a friendly officer from Aswan. Two days later I left Alexandria in a small merchant steamer, which called at Malta, several ports on the north coast of Africa, Valencia, Gibraltar, Lisbon, etc., and after a very rough passage in the Bay of Biscay I arrived in Liverpool in the last week in March. On April 2nd my immediate chief, the Keeper of the Depart- ment of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, submitted to the Trustees a report on my Mission. The Principal ^ Brit. Mus., No. 18,193 ; it is figured in Guide to the Egyptian Collections, p. ii2. The Trustees' Approval. 119 Librarian and Secretary was authorized to " convey to Mr. Budge the Trustees' approval of his successful conduct of the Mission to Egypt," and he did so in the following letter : British Museum, April 2nd, 1887. Dear Mr. Budge, It gives me great pleasure to have to report to you that on the statement of your purchases and proceedings in Egypt, the Trustees this morning passed a Minute expressing their warm approval of your intelligence and energy in carrying out the purpose of the Mission entrusted to you, and undertaken by you at so short notice. Very sincerely yours, (Signed) Edw. A. Bond. SECOND MISSION— EGYPT, BAGHDAD AND BABYLON, 1887-88. 123 SECOND MISSION. Egypt, Baghdad and Babylon, 1887-88. When I returned to my duties in the Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities, I found that the Principal Librarian, and the Keeper of the Department, and Rawlinson, as a Trustee of the British Museum, were engaged in discussing certain reports concerning the Trustees' excavations in Assyria and Babylonia. A few years after the death of George Smith (1876) the Trustees succeeded in obtaining a renewal of their old faramdn, or permit, to excavate at Nineveh, and a new permit which authorized them to excavate certain sites in Babylonia under extremely strict conditions. The Trustees sent out Mr. H. Rassam to excavate on their behalf, and in addition to reopening the old sites at Nineveh (Kuyunjik and Nabi Yunis) he attacked new sites near Van (Wan), and began to work at several mounds in Babylonia, between Baghdad and Hillah. His excavations on the mounds of Abu Habbah were on an extensive scale. When he abandoned his work in Assyria and Babylonia he appointed native watchmen to protect the sites untU he returned with a renewed permit to continue the excavations; he undertook that the salaries of these men were to be paid monthly, and arranged with them to report to him any attempt to dig that might be made by persons unauthorized there. In 1886 and 1887 reports were received by the British Museum in which the native watchmen of the Trustees' sites in Assyria and Babylonia were accused of laxity in the discharge of their duties, and of dishonesty ; in other words, they were accused of letting unauthorized people dig in the Trustees' sites, and of sharing with them the proceeds of the sale of the things found. In the winter of 1886-87 Professor W. Wright, of Cambridge, received letters from Dr. Sachau, the eminent 124 The Trustees' Excavations in Mesopotamia. Orientalist, who had himself travelled in Assyria, in which he stated that a party of German savants, all friends of his, had just returned from a tour in Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, and had visited Nineveh and Baghdad. These savants, he went on to say, had pur- chased a good collection of Assyrian antiquities from the watchmen at Nineveh, who were in the pay of the British Museum, and three hundred fine Babylonian " case-tablets " from the watchmen at Abu Habbah, and all these valuable things were then in the Berlin Museum. This report was communicated to Mr. H. Rassam, who appointed the watchmen, and, having made inquiries in the East, he informed the Trustees that it was quite true that the German travellers had purchased antiquities at Nineveh, but that they had bought them from the Trustees' watchmen was untrue, for they had bought them from the natives at Nabi Yunis, where the Trustees had never been allowed to excavate, and where, in consequence, they had no watchmen. It was also true that the German travellers had bought Babylonian tablets on their road to Babylon, but it was untrue to say they had bought them from the Trustees' watchmen. The Trustees must know that others than the British had obtained permits to make excavations, and that the natives everywhere were engaged in clandestine diggings, which it was impossible to control. Rawlinson and the Principal Librarian were much disturbed by the admis- sions in this report, which seemed to them to indicate that the watchmen were useless, and that the Trustees were not only wasting their grant in paying salaries to these men, but were also losing the tablets from their sites of excavation. Further information in connection with the abstrac- tion of tablets from the Trustees' sites was supplied to Rawlinson by Mr. W. St. Chad Boscawen, sometime Assistant to Birch in the Department of Oriental Anti- quities. This expert in cuneiform was well known for his work on the Egibi tablets in the British Museum, and for many years after he left the service of the Trustees he continued his labours on the commercial tablets. Plundering of the Sites by Natives. 125 loans, contracts, leases, etc., of the Babylonians. In 1887 he reported to Rawlinson that the Berlin Museum had recently acquired collections of Babylonian tablets which had passed through his hands, and that among them were many that could only have come from the sites which had been excavated, in whole or in part, by the Trustees' agent, Mr. H. Rassam. He based his opinion on the dating and contents of the tablets in Berlin to which he referred, on the similarity of the names of the contracting parties and witnesses that occurred on them, and on the fact that some of the tablets in Berlin were documents belonging to series of deeds drawn up in connection with ancient Babylonian lawsuits, and of which the complementary deeds were in the British Museum. He argued that the documents belonging to these lawsuits which were in the British Museum were obtained from sites excavated by the Trustees' agent, and therefore the complementary deeds then in Berlin must have come from the Trustees' sites also. Mr. Boscawen explained clearly how he had obtained his knowledge of the contents of the tablets acquired by the Berlin Museum. When he was an Assistant in the British Museum he became acquainted with most of the antiquity dealers in London, and those who dealt with the British Museum he knew very well. When the dealers began to receive consignments of tablets from their clients in the Persian Gulf and Baghdad, they went to him for information about their consignments and paid him a commission. When the British Museum refused to buy a collection of tablets, a London dealer offered it in turn to the Museums of Paris, Berlin, and New York, but the authorities of these Museums declined to consider the purchase unless a catalogue of the tablets in the collection was submitted with it. Dealers then paid Mr. Boscawen to make catalogues for them, and as museums in those days gave very high prices for objects of unusual interest, he examined tablets submitted to him for cataloguing purposes with considerable care, and made copious notes of their contents. Moreover, much 126 Boscawen on Clandestine Excavations. of the English correspondence between the dealers in London and their clients in Baghdad passed through his hands, and thus he learned the names of the natives of Baghdad who exported the tablets to London. He said also that he felt sure that some of these exporters were still employed by the Trustees as guardians of their sites, and were drawing salaries from the Museum for their services ; and it was evident that the native over- seers had not despatched to the British Museum all the tablets which had been found during the period of the Trustees' excavations ; and the large collections of tablets which were reaching London yearly proved that someone was in possession of tablets from these excavations, and that someone was actively engaged in carrying on excava- tions without regard to the Trustees' rights. Further, Mr. Boscawen quoted published official accounts which showed that in less than five years more than £3,000 of pubUc money had been spent in purchasing tablets sent from Baghdad, which he himself had examined, and he estimated that a similar sum would be needed to acquire the collections which were then awaiting purchase in this country. Rawlinson, having satisfied himself that Mr. Bos- cawen's information was correct, discussed the matter with the Principal Librarian and the Keeper of the Department, and they came to the conclusion that the leakage of tablets must be stopped, but how exactly this was to be done was not so clear. A suggestion came from one quarter that the Trustees should buy up every collection of tablets in the market, but their grant for the purchase of antiquities did not permit of this, and such action would have encouraged further exporta- tion of tablets from Baghdad. From another quarter came the suggestion that a renewal of the Trustees' permit to excavate should be obtained, but then the question arose. Which site is to be excavated ? The sites in Assyria and Babylonia on which excavations had been made for the Trustees were many, but not one of them had been completely excavated. No British excavator had yet laid bare the ruins of the buildings The Trustees Apply for a New Permit. 127 of any Assyrian or Babylonian town. The sole object of each explorer seems to have been the acquisition of spoil in the form of colossal lions and bulls, obelisks, bas-reliefs, stelge, etc.; and each explorer sank shafts and drove tunnels in dozens of places in a large mound with the hope that luck would give him what he was too impatient to work for systematically. Thus the excava- tion of the great mound of Kuyunjik, which marks the site of Nineveh, was unfinished, although it was well known that thousands of fragments of tablets were lying among the ruins of the palaces of the last Assyrian kings, and the excavation of the important ruins of Nimrud (Calah) and of Kal'at Sharkat^ (the city of Asshur) was unfinished. In Babylonia matters were even worse, for all the mounds of Niffar, Birs-i-Nimrud, Babil, Tall Ibrahim, Abu Habbah, etc., had been little more than " scratched." In the summer of 1887 the Trustees decided to apply to the Porte through the British Ambassador at Con- stantinople for a renewal of the faramdn, or permit, to reopen the excavations at Kuyunjik. This decision was arrived at in connection with their resolve to print a catalogue of the cuneiform tablets in the Kuyunjik Collection, of which students were in urgent need. It was not an easy matter to obtain a renewal of the faramdn, for the Porte had authorized the establishment of an Imperial Ottoman Museum of Antiquities in Constanti- nople, and the distinguished artist, O. Hamdi Bey, had already been named Director of it. The Porte also determined to carry out the excavation of important ancient sites, and prohibited the export of antiquities absolutely. The Trustees took steps to give effect to their decision concerning Kuyunjik, and then considered what means were to be taken to prevent the leakage of tablets from the sites in Babylonia which they had already partly excavated. As a restdt of their deliberations, the ^ Spelling doubtful ; some think the correct form of the name is " Kal'at Sharghat." 128 My First Mission to Baghdad. Principal Librarian proposed to me to go to Baghdad during the coming winter to make inquiries on the spot concerning the leakage of tablets, and I asked for time to consider the matter. In an interview which I had with Rawlinson soon after this proposal was made, he told me that as I had been trained to become an Assyri- ologist he thought it was my duty to undertake the work. His words decided the matter, and with a good deal of misgiving I accepted the Mission. The work of arranging the details of this Mission was committed to Rawlinson, whose knowledge of the coun- tries of Assyria and Babylonia, both in ancient and modern times, was unrivalled. He invited me to his house from time to time, and went over his own private maps with me, and he allowed me to make extracts from his itineraries and notebooks, and gave me most valuable practical hints as to routes, etc. He was particularly anxious that before I started I should gain some practical knowledge of the Arabic which is spoken at Baghdad, and advised me to read as much as possible of the Arabic text of Macnaghten's edition of the " Thousand Nights and a Night " (Arabian Nights), and the " Hundred Little Stories " published by the Dominicans at Berut. He recommended me to read and to talk Arabic with Mr. J. M. Shemtob, a dealer in Oriental antiquities in London, whose father had held a position of some impor- tance in the Khusnah, or Treasury, of Baghdad, and I, of course, followed his advice. Rawlinson gave me the names of some friends of his who were stiU living in BaghdS,d, where he had acted as British Consul-General for twelve years, and subsequently supplied me with letters of introduction to them. Whilst the official arrangements for my Mission to Baghdad were being made, I received information from a native in Egypt that some very important discoveries at Thebes had been made. He told me that a tomb had been found on the western bank of the Nile, which was, from the dealer's point of view, the best he had ever seen, and that there were in it several rolls of papyrus. He went on to say that a native woman had discovered at Cuneiform Tablets Discovered in Egypt. 129 Tall al-'AmS,rnah, by accident, a large box full of pieces of clay, with what he thought was writing on both sides of each piece. He and his friends had secured a great many of them, and some dealers said that the pieces of clay were like the little blocks of clay which had been brought to Cairo from Baghdad a few years ago, and that the marks on back and front were kitba mismdri, " nail- writing," i.e., cuneiform writing. The writer urged me to come to Egypt without delay, and to take possession of all these things before the " Mudir of Anticas " could seize them, and cast their owners into prison. I read this letter to the Principal Librarian and to my chief, and they decided that I must visit Upper Egypt on my way to Baghdad. They drafted a report in which they suggested that I should disembark at Alexandria, proceed to Luxor and secure the papyri, etc., and then return to the coast, and continue my journey to Baghdad; the Trustees approved the proposal, and ordered application to be made to the Treasury for the necessary money. I left London on December 7th, supplied with letters of introduction from Lord Salisbury, Sir E. Bradford, Rawlinson, Mr. S. Lynch (to the firm of Lynch Brothers, Baghdad), Mr. H. Rassam (to the native overseers and watchmen of the sites of excavations), and Mr. Shemtob (to certain Jewish Rabbis at Baghdad). I went to Marseilles and embarked there in the steamship " Niemen " (Messageries Maritimes) on the 8th, and arrived at Alexandria eight days later. The " Niemen " was a slow boat, and we met with bad weather, but we should have kept our time in Alexandria had it not been for a piece of bad luck. We saw the P. & O. boat, which was carrying the Indian Mail from Brindisi to Alexandria, in front of us all the afternoon of the 14th, and as she had a pUot on board to take her over the bar at Alexandria, and we had none, our captain made every effort to overtake her, so that we might cross the bar in her wake. The P. & O. boat steamed much faster than we did, and we saw her cross the bar at 4.15, but when we arrived an hour or so later such a high sea was running before a strong wind, which had suddenly sprung 130 A Find of Papyri at Thebes. up, that he was afraid to attempt to enter the harbour in fast-failing light. He whistled over and over again for a pilot, but the sea was so rough that no pilot would come out, and he was obliged to turn and put to sea again, and steam about until the gale abated and the sea went down. For about forty hours he steamed about with the sea dashing over both sides of the ship, and we did not reach the harbour until Friday the i6th at noon. The captain was a gallant little gentleman and quite imperturbable, and he stayed on his bridge during those forty most unpleasant hours. On the quay I found my friend Mr. Magro waiting for me, and in a very short time I was again under the hospitable roof of General de Montmorency. The delay in landing caused by the storm was specially exasperating because it made it impossible for me to reach Luxor that week, and as no steamer left Asyut until the following Wednesday I decided to stay with the General until Monday and improve my acquaintance with Alexandria. In the course of the next three days I met many of the prominent members of the British community. Among these was Mr. (later Sir) Charles Cookson, H.B.M.'s Consul at Alexandria, who acted with great bravery during the riots which followed the bombardment of the forts by the British in 1882. He told me that he had been informed officially from Cairo that an important " find " of papyri and other things had been made in Upper Egypt, and that the British Museum had despatched an official to try to acquire the same. He went on to say that if I happened to be that official he felt it to be his duty, in obedience to the instructions which he had received from the Consul-General, to warn me that he would in no way assist me to export antiquities from Egypt. Speaking, he said, as " an old official," and also as one who was ready to assist any friend of General de Mont- morency, he advised me to make my trip to the places to which I had been despatched, and to enjoy the country and the climate as much as possible, and to desist wholly from attempting to buy and export Benjamin Smith, Director of Telegraphs. 131 antiquities, which was strictly forbidden by the laws of Egypt. He warned me that I must not expect any assistance from him, and that he would oppose, by every means in his power, the exportation of antiquities, which ought to be carefully preserved in Egypt " to proclaim to the modern Egyptians the past glory of their country." When the General heard of the fatherly advice which Mr. Cookson had given me, he said to me, " Go and do the job your employers have sent you to do, and if I can help you come to me " ; truly he was a " strong tower " to me. I met also Mr. J. R. Moss, Director of the " Moss Line " of steamers, and his confidential clerk Mr. Kneen ; from both these gentlemen I received much help and kindness. Closely associated with them in business matters was Mr. J. C. Chapman, the P. & O. agent in Alexandria, a magnificent figure of a rhan, some inches over six feet in height, with a huge brown beard which reached nearly to his waist and would have done credit to a patriarch. Another most interesting man was Mr. Benjamin Smith, Director of Eastern Telegraphs in Alexandria. He had spent many years in the Far East, and in India and the Persian Gulf, and his position of confidence in the Company's service enabled him to acquire a mass of information of a rare character. He was a great authority on quadruplex submarine tele- graphy, and had invented or perfected, I forget which, an instrument for detecting the exact position of a " fault " or leakage in deep sea cables, and had thereby saved the Company very much time, trouble, and expense. When the British fleet began to bombard Alexandria in 1882 all his staff promptly bolted and took with them everything portable, and he was left alone to " carry on." He kept his syphon-recorder instruments working under strong covers, and charged his batteries without help, and so maintained commu- nication with Malta, Port Said and India. Meanwhile houses were tumbling down near his office, and an Alexandrian mob was rushing through the streets, setting fire to everything that would burn, and enjoying I 2 132 Resignation of Maspero. an orgy of pillage and destruction. At length a boat -load of British sailors fought their way to his office, and carried him and his precious instruments off to their ship. Through his kindness I was able to communicate frequently with the Museum, my telegrams being considered by him as " service messages." I also met in Mr. B. Smith's house Mr. Moberly Bell, who afterwards attained a most important position on the staff of The Times. On the 19th of December I accompanied General de Montmorency to Cairo, and we were met by Colonel HoUed Smith (see p. loi) and Henry Wallis the artist, who had made some excellent coloured drawings of the Aswan tombs. ^ At the hotel I found several dealers who had managed to find out the day and hour of my arrival in Cairo, and from them I learned the position of affairs in their world. I heard with very great regret that Maspero had resigned his position as Director of the Service of Antiquities on account of ill-health, and that he had already left Egypt. This was a very serious matter for Egyptology, at least in Egypt, and more especially for the Bulak Museum, for there was no one available in France who could adequately fill his place. He was not only an accomplished Egyptologist, but he possessed all the traditions of his great predecessor Mariette. He understood the natives very well, and he could talk colloquial Arabic as well as a donkey-boy, and used tact and sympathy in dealing with them, except on a few occasions — e.g., the torturing of the natives at Kana — ^when I think his kindly nature must have been overruled by the Mudir. Maspero wished Professor E. Naville to succeed him in the Museum in Egypt, and his appointment would have given general satisfac- tion. But Naville was a Swiss, and politics demanded that a Frenchman should control the destinies of Egyptian antiquities in Egypt, and thus it came to pass that a pupil of Maspero, Monsieur E. Grebaut, was appointed to be his successor. M. Grebaut had published one very ^ Reproduced in monochrome in Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archceology, vol. x (1888), p. i ff. Appointment of Grebaut. 133 good book on a Hymn to Amen (written in hieratic), and as he was a student before everything, he would un- doubtedly have done very good work had he been allowed to continue his studies. But by nature, and disposition, and training, he was unsuited for the post into which he was thrust, and all those who had at heart the progress of Egyptology, and the welfare of the National Collection in Egypt, regretted the appointment. Before I had been in Cairo many hours I found that everybody was talking about the discoveries which had been made in Upper Egypt, and the most extraordinary stories were afloat. Rumours of the " finds " had reached all the great cities of Europe, and there were representatives of several Continental Museums in Cairo, each doing his best, as was right, to secure the lion's share. The British officials with whom I came in contact thought, or said they thought, that whatever the objects might be which had been discovered, they ought to go to the Bulak Museum, and that any attempt made to obtain any part of them for the British Museum must be promptly crushed. The Egyptian officials of the Service of Antiquities behaved according to their well- known manner. No official of the Bulak Museum knew where the " finds " had been made, or what they con- sisted of, and M. Grebaut and his assistants went about the town with entreaties and threats to every native who was supposed to possess any information about them. Instead of recognizing the fact that, rightly or wrongly, the " finds " were at that moment in the hands of native dealers, and trying to make arrangements to secure them by purchase, they went about declaring that the Govern- ment intended to seize them, and to put in prison all those who were in any way mixed up in the matter. M. Grebaut was unwise enough to hint publicly that the tortures which were sanctioned at Kan§. might be revived, but the tortures and persecution of 1880 had taught the natives how little Government officials were to be trusted, and one and all refused to give him any information. Every move which he made was met by a counter move by the natives, and they were always successful. 134 The Antica Dealers and Meanwhile very definite rumours about the " finds " in Upper Egypt drifted down the river to Cairo, and some members of the Government insisted that M. Grebaut should take active steps to secure some of the treasures which had been found, and they ordered him to make a journey to Upper Egypt, and find out for himself what was taking place there. They placed one of Isma'il Pasha's old pleasure-steamers at his disposal, and ordered an adequate force of police to accompany him. Before he left for the South he called upon me at the Royal Hotel, and although he threatened me with arrest and legal prosecution afterwards, if I attempted to deal with the natives, I found him a very agreeable and enlightened man, and we had a pleasant conversation. He told me that his great ambition was to be regarded as a worthy successor of Maspero, and that there was one mark of public recognition which I could help him to obtain. The Trustees of the British Museum, he reminded me, had presented a set of their magnificent Egyptological publications to Maspero, which was a very distinguished mark of honour, and a public acknowledgment of his scholarly eminence, and he hoped that the Trustees would honour him in the same way. I told him that I thought he might do a great deal towards getting that honour by adopting a liberal policy in dealing with their representative in Egypt, and that in any case I would duly report the conversation to the Principal Librarian. That same evening I learned that he had told off some of his police to watch the hotel in which I was staying, and that he had ordered them to report to him my goings out and comings in, and the names of all antiquity dealers who had speech with me. I left Cairo that night for Asyut, and soon after leaving Bulak ad-Dakrur station I was joined in the train by a Frenchman and a Maltese, who told me that they were " interested " in anticas, and that there were police in the train who had been ordered to watch both them and me. At Der Mawas, the station for Hajji Kandil, or Tall al-'Am§.rnah, the Frenchman left the train, and set out to try to buy some of the tablets the Tall al-'Amdrnah Tablets. 135 said to have been found at Tall al-'Amarnah, and as he left the station some of the police from the train fol- lowed him. At Asyut the Maltese and myself embarked on the steamer, and the remainder of the police followed us. As the steamer tied up for the night at Akhmim and Kan^ I had plenty of time at each place to examine the antiquities which the dealers had in their houses, and to bargain for those I wanted. At Akhmim I found a very fine collection in the hands of a Frenchman who owned a flour-mill in Cairo, and he caused the police to be entertained at supper whilst he and I conducted our deal for Coptic manuscripts. He told me that it was he who had sold to Maspero all the Coptic papyri and manuscripts which the Louvre had acquired during the last few years, and then went on to say that if he had known that Maspero intended to dispose of these things he would not have let him have them at such a low price. Thus I learned at first hand that the Director of the Service of Antiquities had bought and disposed of^ antiquities, and exported them, which the British authori- ties in Cairo declared to be contrary to the law of the land. As there was work for me to do in Aswan, I decided to make no stay in Luxor on my way up the river, but during the few hours which the steamer stopped there I learned from some of the dealers, and from my friend, the Rev. Chauncey Murch of the American Mission, some details of the " finds " which had been made. I took the opportunity of sending a couple of natives across the river to fetch me skulls for Professor Macalister, who wanted more and more specimens. During one of the visits which I made to Western Thebes the previous year I was taken into a huge cave at the back of the second row of hills towards the desert, which had been used by the ancient Egyptians as a cemetery. There I saw liter- ally thousands of poorly-made mummies and " dried bodies," some leaning against the sloping sides of the ^ He was, probably, purchasing these things on behalf of the Louvre. 136 Changes at Aswan. cave, and others piled up in heaps of different sizes. I had no means of carrying away skulls when I first saw the cave, or I should certainly have made a selection then. There was little to be had at Armant, but I saw at Jabalen, which marks the site of Crocodilopolis, a number of pots of unusual shape and make, and many flints. On arriving at Aswan I was met by Captain W. H. Drage (now Colonel Drage Pashi) and Doone Bey, who gave me much assistance in packing up the remainder of the Kufi grave-stones, which I had been obliged to leave there earlier in the year. My friend, the Ma'amur, produced a further supply of skulls from the pit in the hill across the rivfer, and I learned incidentally that the natives had nicknamed me " Abu ar-Ra'wus," or " father of skulls." The general condition of the town had changed astonish- ingly, for the British soldiers had departed to the north, their camps and barracks were deserted and as silent as the grave, and Aswan was just a rather large sleepy Nile village. And the change across the river was great. The paths which we had made with such diffi- culty were blocked with sand, and the great stone stairway and the ledge above it were filled with sand and stones which had slid down from the top of the hill, and the tombs were practically inaccessible. Soon after my return to Luxor I set out with some natives one evening for the place on the western bank where the " finds " of papyri had been made. Here I found a rich store of fine and rare objects, and among them the largest roll of papyrus I had ever seen. The roll was tied round with a thick band of papyrus cord, and was in a perfect state of preservation, and the clay seal which kept together the ends of the cord was un- broken. The roll lay in a rectangular niche in the north wall of the sarcophagus chamber, among a few hard stone amulets. It seemed like sacrilege to break the seal and untie the cord, but when I had copied the name on the seal, I did so, for otherwise it would have been impos- sible to find out the contents of the papyrus. We unrolled a few feet of the papyrus an inch or so at a time, for it To face p. 136, vol. i. Painted limestone stele of Sebek-hetep, scribe o£ the royal wine cellar. XVIIIth dynasty. Brit. Mils., No. 1368. To face p. 137, vol. i. '^.:-,-«--> ;tr^nT^«(-riji*g^ Vignette and text of the " Chapter of making the transformation into a hawlc of gold," from the Papyrus of Nu. Early XVIIIth dynasty. Brit. Mus., No. 10477. The Papyrus of Ani, the Scribe. 137 Wcis very brittle, and I was amazed at the beauty and freshness of the colours of the humaii figures and animals, which, in the dim light of the candles and the heated air of the tomb, seemed to be alive. A glimpse of the Judgment Scene showed that the roll was a large and complete Codex of the Per-em-hru, or " Book of the Dead," and scores of lines repeated the name of the man for whom this magnificent roll had been written and painted, viz., " Ani, the real^ royal scribe, the registrary of the offerings of all the Gods, overseer of the granaries of the Lords of Abydos, and scribe of the offerings of the Lords of Thebes." When the papyrus was unrolled in London the inscribed portion of it was found to be 78 feet long, and at each end was a section of blank papyrus about 2 feet long. In another place, also l5dng in a niche in the wall, was another papyrus Codex of the Book of the Dead, which, though lacking the beautiful vignettes of the Papyrus of Ani, was obviously much older, and presumably of greater importance philologically. The name of the scribe for whom it was written was Nu, and the names of his kinsfolk suggested that he flourished under one of the early kings of the XVIIIth dynasty. In other places we found other papyri, among them the Papyrus of the priestess Anhai, in its origiucil painted wooden case, which was in the form of the triune god of the resurrection, Ptah-Seker-Asar, and a leather roll containing Chapters of the Book of the Dead, with beautifully painted vignettes, and various other objects of the highest interest and importance. I took possession of all these papyri, etc., and we returned to Luxor at daybreak. Having had some idea of the things which I was going to get, I had taken care to set a tin- smith to work at making cylindrical tin boxes, and when we returned from our all-night expedition I found them ready waiting for me. We then rolled each papyrus in layers of cotton, and placed it in its box, and tied the box up in gumdsh, or coarse linen cloth, and when all the papyri and other objects were packed up we deposited ^ As opposed to honorary. 138 Acquisition of Egyptian Papyri. the boxes in a safe place. This done we all adjourned a little after sunrise to a house (since demolished) belong- ing to Muhammad Muhassib,^ which stood on the river front, and went up on the roof to enjoy the marvellous freshness of the early morning in Egypt, and to drink coffee. Whilst we were seated there discussing the events of the past night, a little son of the house, called Mursi, came up on the roof, and, going up to his father, told him that some soldiers and police had come to the house, and were then below in the courtyard. We looked over the low wall of the roof, and we saw several of the police in the courtyard, and some soldiers posted outside as sentries. We went downstairs, and the officer in charge of the police told us that the Chief of the Police of Luxor had received orders during the night from M. Grebaut, the Director of the Service of Antiquities, to take posses- sion of every house containing antiquities in Luxor, and to arrest their owners and myself, if found holding communication with them. I asked to see the warrants for the arrests, and he told me that M. Grebaut would produce them later on in the day. I asked him where M. Grebaut was, and he told me at Nakadah, a village about twelve miles to the north of Luxor, and went on to say that M. Grebaut had sent a runner from that place with instructions to the Chief of the Police at Luxor to do what they were then doing — that is, to take possession of the houses of all dealers and to arrest us. He then told Muhammad and myself that we were arrested. At this moment the runner who had been sent by Grebaut joined our assembly in the casual way that Orientals have, and asked for bakhsMsh, thinking that he had done a meritorious thing in coming to Luxor so quickly. We gave him good bakhsMsh, and then began to question him. We learned that M. Grebaut had failed to reach Luxor the day before because the ra'h, or captain of his steamer, had managed to run the steamer on to a sand- bank a little to the north of Nakadah, where it remained ^ Now Al-Hajj Muhammad Muhassib Bey. GrSbaut's Raid on Antica Dealers. 139 for two dkys. It then came out that the captain had made all arrangements to celebrate the marriage of his daughter, and had invited many friends to witness the ceremony and assist at the subsequent feast, which was to take place at Nakadah on the very day on which M. Grebaut was timed to arrive at Luxor. As the captain felt obliged to be present at his daughter's marriage, and the crew wanted to take part in the wed- ding festivities, naturally none of the attenipts which they made to re-float the steamer were successful. Our informant, who knew quite well that the dealers in Luxor were not pining for a visit from M. Grebaut, further told us that he thought the steamer could not arrive that day or the day after. According to him, M. Grebaut deter- mined to leave his steamer, and to ride to Luxor, and his crew agreed that it was the best thing to do under the circumstances. But when he sent for a donkey it was found that there was not a donkey in the whole village, and it transpired that as soon as the villagers heard of his decision to ride to Luxor, they drove their donkeys out into the fields and neighbouring villages, so that they might not be hired for M. Grebaut's use. The runner's information was of great use to us, for we saw that we were not likely to be troubled by M. Grebaut that day, and as we had much to do we wanted the whole day clear of interruptions. Meanwhile, we all needed breakfast, and Muhammad Muhassib had a very satisfying meal prepared, and invited the police and the soldiers to share it with us. This they gladly agreed to do, and as we ate we arranged with them that we were to be free to go about our business all day, and as I had no reason for going away from Luxor that day, I told the police officer that I would not leave the town until the steamer arrived from Aswan, when I should embark in her and proceed to Cairo. When we had finished our meal the police officer took possession of the house, and posted watchmen on the roof and a sentry at each corner of the building. He then went to the houses of the other dealers, and sealed them, and set guards over them. In the course of the day a man arrived from Hajji 140 Discovery of the Tall al-'Amdrnah Tablets. Kandil, bringing with him some half-dozen of the clay tablets which had been found accidentally by a woman at Tall al-'Amarnah, and he asked me to look at them, and to tell him if they were kadim, i.e., " old " or j'adid, i.e., " new " — that is to say, whether they were genuine or forgeries. The woman who found them thought they were bits of " old clay," and useless, and sold the whole " find " of over 300^ tablets to a neighbour for 10 piastres (2s.) ! The purchaser took them into the village of- yajji Kandil, and they changed hands for ;£Eio. But those who bought them knew nothing about what they were buying, and when they had bought them they sent a man to Cairo with a few of them to show the dealers, both native and European. Some of the Euro- pean dealers thought they were " old," and some thought they were " new," and they agreed together to declare- the tablets forgeries so that they might buy them at their own price as " specimens of modern imitations." The dealers in Upper Egypt believed them to be genuine, and refused to sell, and, having heard that I had some knowledge of cuneiform, they sent to me the man men- tioned above, and asked me to say whether they were forgeries or not ; and they offered to pay me for my information. When I examined the tablets I found that the matter was not as simple as it looked. In shape and form, and colour and material, the tablets were unlike any I had ever seen in London or Paris, and the writing on all of them was of a most unusual character and puzzled me for hours. By degrees I came to the conclusion that the tablets were certainly not forgeries, and that they were neither royal annals nor historical inscriptions in the ordinary sense of the word, nor business or commercial documents. Whilst I was examining the half-dozen tablets brought to me a second man from Hajji Kandil arrived with seventy-six more of the tablets, some of them quite large. On the largest and best written of the second lot of tablets I was able to make / ^ The actual number of tablets transliterated and translated by Knudtzon {Die el Amarna-Tafeln, Leipzig, 1907 ff) is 359. To face p. 140, vol. : Letter from Tushratta, King of Mitani, to Amen-hetep III, King of Egypt. Brit. Mus., No. 29791. Cuneiform Despatches to Kings of Egypt. 141 out the words " A-na Ni-ib-mu-a-ri-ya/'^ i.e., "To Nib-muariya," and on another the words " [AJ-na Ni-im- mu-ri-ya shar matu Mi-is-ri/" i.e., " to Nimmuriya, king of the land of Egypt." These two tablets were certainly letters addressed to a king of Egypt called " Nib-muariya," or "Nimmuriya." On another tablet I made out clearly the opening words "A-na Ni-ip-khu- ur-ri-ri-ya shar matu [Misri],"' i.e., "To Nibkhur- ririya, king of the land of [Egypt,"] and there was no doubt that this tablet was a letter addressed to another king of Egypt. The opening words of nearly all the tablets proved them to be letters or despatches, and I felt certain that the tablets were both genuine and of very great historical importance. Up to the moment when I arrived at that conclusion neither of the men from Hajji Kandil had offered the tablets to me for purchase, and I suspected that they were simply waiting for my decision as to their genuine- ness to take them away and ask a very high price for them, a price beyond anything I had the power to give. Therefore, before telling the dealers my opinion about the tablets, I arranged with them to make no charge for my examination of them, and to be allowed to take possession of the eighty-two tablets forthwith. They asked me to fix the price which I was prepared to pay for the tablets, and I did so, and though they had to wait a whole year for their money they made no attempt to demand more than the sum which they agreed with me to accept. I then tried to make arrangements with the men from HaJji Kandil to get the remainder of the tablets from Tall al-'Amarnah into my possession, but they told me that they belonged to dealers who were in treaty with an agent of the Berlin Museum in Cairo. Among the tablets was a very large one, about 20 inches long and broad in proportion. We now know that it contained a list MI -^T T .^ HI -^ T]f -TM m^- Ml -^n .^. IdCf -Tl m -IH -TM ^n %^ ^^ 142 Contents of the Tall al- Amdrnah Tablets. of the dowry of a Mesopotamian princess who was going to marry a king of Egypt. The man who was taking this to Cairo hid it between his inner garments, and covered himself with his great cloak. As he stepped up into the railway coach this tablet slipped from his clothes and fell on the bed of the railway, and broke in pieces. Many natives in the train and on the platform witnessed the accident and talked freely about it, and thus the news of the discovery of the tablets reached the ears of the Director of Antiquities. He at once telegraphed to the Mudir of Asyut, and ordered him to arrest and put in prison everyone who was found to be in possession of tablets, and, as we have seen, he himself set out for Upper Egypt to seize all the tablets he could find. Mean- while, a gentleman in Cairo who had obtained four of the smaller tablets and paid £Eioo for them, showed them to an English professor, who promptly wrote an article upon them, ajid published it in an English newspaper.^ He post-dated the tablets by nearly goo years, and entirely misunderstood the nature of their contents. The only effect of his article was to increase the import- ance of the tablets in the eyes of the dealers, and, in consequence, to raise their prices, and to make the ■■ He stated that the writing was a neo-Babylonian style of cunei- form script, and that it belonged to the period extending from the age of Assur-bani-pal (b.c. 668-626) to that of Darius. See Academy, February i8th, 1888. Later he wrote : " Most of the tablets contain copies of despatches sent to the Babylonian king by his officers in Upper Egypt ; and as one of them speaks of ' the conquest of Amasis ' {kasad Amasi), whilst another seems to mention the name of Apries, the king in question must have been Nebuchadnezzar. The conquest of Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar, so long doubted, is now therefore become a fact of history. In other tablets the Babylonian monarch is called the ' Sun-god,' like the native Pharaohs of Egypt. Mention is also made of ' the country of Nuqu ' or Necho." — Academy, April 7th, 1888. As a matter of fact, no king called Amasis is mentioned on any of the tablets, and the despatches are addressed neither to Nebuchadnezzar nor to any other king of Babylon, but to Amen-hetep III and Amen-hetep IV, who lived at least 900 years before Nebuchadnezzar, and were kings of Egypt. (See my paper " On the Cuneiform Tablets from Tell el-Amarna," Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch., vol. X, p. 540.) Gribaut's Attack on the Dealers. 143 acquisition of the rest of the " find " more difficult for everyone. In the afternoon of that day another runner sent by M. Grebaut arrived, and he reported that the Director of Antiquities had managed to get his steamer off the sand-bank, and that he expected to arrive in Luxor sometime the following day. The runner brought further orders to the Chief of the Police to keep strict watch over the houses which had been sealed, and especially to be careful that the two dealers, Muhammad Muhassib and 'Abd al-Majid, did not leave the town. With myself he said he would deal personally on his arrival. Now, among the houses that were sealed and guarded was a small one that abutted on the wall of the garden of the old Luxor Hotel. This house was a source of considerable anxiety to me, for in it I had stored the tins containing the papyri, several cases of anticas, some boxes of skulls for Professor Macalister, and a fine coffin and mummy from Akhmim, which the Sardar had asked me to buy for him to present to the Swansea Museum. Besides these objects there were several cases of things which belonged to dealers in the town, who used the house as a safe place of storage. This house had good thick mud walls, and a sort of sarddb, or basement, where many anticas were stored. As its end wall was built up against the garden wall of the Luxor Hotel, which was at least two feet thick, the house was regarded as one of the safest " magazines " in Luxor. When the Luxor dealers, and other men who had possessions in the house saw it sealed up, and guards posted about it, and heard that it would be one of the first houses to be opened and its contents confiscated as soon as Grebaut arrived, they first invited the guards to drink cognac with them, and then tried to bribe them to go away for an hour; but the guards stoutly refused to drink and to leave their posts. The dealers commended the fidelity of the guards, and paid them high compliments, and then, making a virtue of necessity, went away and left them. But they did not forget that the house abutted on the garden wall, and they went and had an interview with the resident 144 '^he Service of Antiquities Outwitted. manager of the hotel, and told him of their difficulty, and of their imminent loss. The result of their conversation was that about sunset a number of sturdy gardeners and workmen appeared with their digging tools and baskets, and they dug under that part of the garden wall which was next to the house and right through into the sarddb of the house. They made scarcely any noise, and they cut through the soft, unbaked mud bricks without difficulty. Whilst they were digging out the mud other men brought pieces of stout latazdnah planks, and they shored up the top and sides of their opening, which was about 2 feet square, to prevent any fall of bricks from the garden wall. As I watched the work with the manager it seemed to me that the gardeners were particularly skilled house-breakers, and that they must have had much practice. It appears incredible, but the whole of the digging was carried out without the knowledge of the watchmen on the roof of the house and the sentries outside it. But it seemed unwise to rely overmuch on the silence of our operations, and we therefore arranged to give the police and the soldiers a meal, for they were both hungry and thirsty. M. Pagnon, the proprietor of the hotel, had a substantial supper prepared for them, i.e., half a sheep boiled, with several pounds of rice, and served up in pieces with sliced lemons and raisins on a huge brass tray. When all were squatting round the tray on the ground, a large bowl of boiling mutton fat was poured over the rice, and the hungry fell to and scooped up the savoury mess with their hands. Whilst they were eating happily, man after man went into the sarddb of the house, and brought out, piece by piece and box by box, every- thing which was of the slightest value commercially, with the exception of the mummy and coffin which I had pur- chased at the Sardar's request. I thought it well to leave these to be confiscated by M. Grebaut, so that the British authorities in Cairo might have experience of his tactics. In this way we saved the Papyrus of Ani, and all the rest of my acquisitions from the officials of the Service of Antiquities, and all Luxor rejoiced. Native Dealers Arrested. 145 The following day M. Grebaut arrived in his steamer, and tied up off Karnak, and it was reported that he was unwell ; at all events he shut himself up in his cabin, and did not leave the steamer. He had collected a great many coffins, funerary statues, boxes, alabaster pots, etc., on his way up the river, and all these were under the charge of a junior official of the Bulak Museum, who lived with him on the steamer as secretary, and was supposed to keep a register of everything which he took from the natives. The secretary knew the Luxor dealers very well, and it seemed to me that he must be associated with them in their business, for he landed at Karnak, and drank coffee and smoked with some of the most notorious of them, and joked about his chief's zeal and simplicity. A few hours later some very interesting objects from Akhmim were offered to me for purchase at a very reasonable figure. When I had secured them I found that the dealer had gone in a boat to M. Grebaut's steamer, and bought the things from M. Grebaut's confi- dential servant, who handed them down to him from one end of the steamer whilst his employer was dining at the other ! In the evening news was received in Luxor that the steamer for Asyut had left Aswan, and would prob- ably arrive about midnight. Soon after this the police officials arrested Muhammad Muhassib and 'Abd al- Majid, and put them under guard, and it was arranged that they were to be fettered like criminals, and sent down the river to Kana, to be tried in the Mudir's court there. I urged the two dealers to demand a sight of the warrants under which they were arrested, but they refused absolutely, and from a remark which one let fall to the other, I gathered that they had taken in all the possibilities of the situation, and might be depended upon to know exactly what they were doing. The police officer then directed his attention to me, and told me that I was under arrest, but when I asked to see the warrant under which I was arrested he had nothing to produce. A little explanation sufficed to show him that M. Gr6baut's orders were ludicrous, and, warning me that I might hear more of the matter in Cairo, he departed. K 146 The Papyri and Tablets Saved When the steamer arrived from Aswan at midnight, I took with me the tin boxes containing the precious papyri, and the box containing the eighty-two tablets from Hajji Kandil, and went on board, leaving the larger cases to come on to Cairo by a later boat. We did not leave Luxor until daybreak, and during the night Muham- mad Muhassib and 'Abd al-Majid were taken on board the steamer in irons and given seats upon deck. When I saw them seated there in the morning I joined them, and they and the police and I breakfasted and smoked comfortably together until we reached Kana, about noon. Here the police handed over the two dealers to the Kan^ police, who promptly marched them up to the Markaz^ for examination and punishment. The Luxor police and I parted on the best of terms, and they returned to Luxor and I continued my journey to Cairo. M. Grebaut's police reappeared at Asyut and jour- neyed in the train to Bulak ad-Dakriir, which was the Cairo terminus of the line in those days. We arrived very early in the morning instead of very late at night, for the train was several hours late, and there were neither carriages nor donkeys there to convey passengers from the station into the town. I could not carry my personal baggage and the tin boxes of papyri and the box of tablets, and I saw no way of getting to the town quickly, which I felt to be necessary. I got my possessions outside the station, and then sat down to wait until a carriage should arrive bringing a passenger for the morning train to Upper Egypt, which started at eight o'clock. As I sat there, practically on the roadside, two British officers out, for an early morning ride passed by, and as they did so one of them hailed me in a cheery voice, and asked me why I was sitting there at that time of the morning. I recognized the voice as that of an officer of whom I had seen a great deal the year before in Aswan, and I quickly told him why I was there, and about the contents of my bags and boxes, and my wish to get into the town as soon as possible. After a short talk with his ^ The chief office of the Mudir of the district. from the Service of Antiquities. 147 brother officer, whom I had met at General Sir Frederick Stephenson's house in Cairo, my friend dismounted and went to the poUce, whom I had pointed out to him, and told them to carry my bags and boxes into Cairo for me. They said that they could do no more in respect of me without further instructions, and that they were quite ready to do as he wished. Thereupon they shouldered my possessions, the officer remounted, and we all set out for the barracks at Kasr an-Nil. When we arrived at the great Kasr an-Nil bridge over the Nile, the douaniers inspected us closely, but seeing the two British officers with the police and their loads, they saluted them with great respect, and asked no questions as to the contents of the boxes, as they should have done. The douaniers on the other side of the bridge, assuming that the police were carrying into the town goods belonging to the British Government, as indeed they were ! also saluted the officers, and thus the difficulty of bringing my boxes across the bridge was overcome. As we walked from Bulik ad-Dakrur the elder police- man amused us by describing his adventures up the Nile with Grebaut. He knew all about the " find " of tablets made at Hajji Kandil, and told us how Grebaut had gone there breathing threats against every dealer in j;he place, and how they had hoodwinked him. At Akhmim a native servant of a Greek went to Grebaut' s steamer, and on his master's behalf offered him some antiquities for purchase. Without asking a question Griebaut told his secretary to seize the things, and ordered the police- man to arrest the man and put him into prison, and he did so. When the Greek heard of what had happened to his servant, he went to Grebaut, and demanded the release of his servant and the restoration of his antiqui- ties. Thereupon Grebaut told the Greek that he was a thief, and had him arrested and cast into prison forth- with. The Greek applied to his Minister in Cairo, and as soon as he was released from prison brought an action against Grebaut for sending him to prison wrongfully. When the Greek applied to Grebaut for the restoration of the goods which had been taken from his servant, it was K 2 148 Major Hepper, R.E. found that they had been stolen from Grebaut's steamer. Thereupon the Greek brought a second action against Gr^baut, and the Court awarded him a great deal more than his goods were worth. The policeman went on to tell us that this kind of thing was taking place wherever Grebaut went, and I heard later that he only abandoned his practice of arresting people, and putting them in prison, when the Egyptian Government told him that he would have to pay the costs of all the actions which followed the arrests out of his own pocket. Such talk brought us to the barracks, where the policemen left us, calling down on our heads the blessings of Allah for our generosity to them. In the Royal Engineers' Mess In the barracks I found Major Hepper, R.E., who had helped me so much when I was clearing out the Aswan tombs the previous winter. He listened to the story of my recent Luxor experiences with great interest, and then asked me to tell him where the papyri and Tall al-'Amarnah tablets were to go, and for whom I had bought them. I told him I had bought them for the British Museum, and that they would be paid for by the British Treasury with public money, and that I was most anxious to get them sent off to the British Museum before I started for Baghdad. In answer he said, " I think I can help you, and I will. As you have bought these things which you say are so valuable for the British Museum, and they are to be paid for with public money, they are clearly the property of the British Government, and they must be put into a place of safety as soon as possible." He went on to say that he had been appointed to the Guernsey Command, and that he was leaving for Alexandria that afternoon to take up his new duties, and that he would take all the tin boxes containing the papyri with him, and send them to the Principal Librarian of the British Museum when opportunity offered. He and I then opened the tin boxes, took out the papyri, and repacked them in water- proof clbth, and then he had the tin boxes packed in cases, which were marked and numbered in sequence with some cases of Government property which had to To face p. 148, vol.-> PPortrait figure of Hevua. with the gold crown mask, headdress, and other < ornamentl. which were placed on it on days of ^-tiv^. ,^_XXth d^ynasty^ The Papyri safe in the British Museum. 149 go with him. The box of tablets was too large and heavy for him to take overland, but the fact that the papyri were in safe hands filled me with gladness. I could not find words to express my gratitude to Major Hepper for his prompt and effective help. Before I left Cairo for Baghdad I learned that the papyri had been received at the British Museum. This anxious piece of business settled, I lost no time in reporting to the Sardar that I had chosen a mummy and cof6n for him to present to Swansea, and had left them in a house at Luxor, which had been seized by the police, under Grebaut's instructions, and sealed up. He said he had no authority over Grebaut, that the proceed- ings of Grebaut were high-handed and fooUsh, and that I had better report the matter at once to Sir Colin Scott Moncrieff, who was then Minister of Public Works. I did so, and Sir Colin gave me a patient but resigned hearing. The story of the seizure of antiquities by Grebaut and his men, and the sealing of the houses, etc., left him cold, and the few remarks which he made only showed that he cared nothing about Egyptian antiqui- ties, and that he considered both Grebaut and myself as nuisances, which in some way ought to be abated. He was, however, a just and fair-minded maji, and when I described to him the arrest of the two dealers, and their transport to Kana in irons, the matter seemed to him to be serious, and he was considerably disturbed in mind. He bade me stay whilst he sent one messenger to find out by whose authority the dealers had been arrested and taken to Kana, and another to take to the telegraph office an official message to the Mudir of KanS., ordering him to take no steps against the dealers without special authority from himself. In a short time the first mes- senger returned with the information that the police had issued no warrants for the arrest of the dealers, and that the Mudir of Kana had telegraphed to the Police Office in Cairo for instructions. Sir Colin at once despatched a telegram to the Mudir of Kana, ordering him to set free the dealers, and to send them back to Luxor at the expense of the Government, and told me what he had 150 The Antica Dealers Released. done. He also despatched a telegram to Grebaut, but its contents he did not reveal to me. When I left him I telegraphed to Mr. George Howard (afterwards Earl of Carlisle), and told him what Sir Colin had done, and I did so because I knew that the contents of my telegram would leak out during transmission to Luxor, and that it would be impossible for Grebaut to play further tricks on the natives, at least for a time.^ Meanwhile, the days were passing, and it was time for me to set out for Baghdad. General de Montmorency had arranged to go with me to Baghdad, and we proposed to make up a little caravan, and to travel via Berut, Damascus, Palmyra and Der, and to share expenses. At the last moment, however, some military question arose in Alexandria which made it impossible for him to be absent from his Command for two or three months, and he had to abandon his plan. The estimated cost of travelling overland to Baghdad was between £300 and £350, exclusive of the presents which would have to be given to the various tribes for leave to pass through their territories — in other words, I was told by those who made ^ A few days later I received an account of what had happened after my departure from Luxor. The two dealers were released at Kana immediately after the receipt by the Mudir of Sir Cohn's telegram, and two days later they were back in Luxor. During their absence Grebaut arrived, and at once proceeded to examine the con- tents of their houses, which had been sealed by his order and strictly watched. He first went to 'Abd al-Majid's house and entered it, and went through room after room, but found no antiquities of any kind. He then went on to Muhammad's house, broke the seals, and entered, and went through all the rooms but found no antiquities. He next went to the little house close by the garden wall of the Luxor Hotel, broke the seals and entered, and went through the rooms and found nothing, for since my departure the mummy and cofSn which I left there had been removed. He then lost his temper, accused the watch- men and poUcemen of having helped the dealers to defeat him, and ordered the chief police officer of the town to put several of them in prison. This the officer refused to do without further authority. The following day the two dealers entered actions against Grebaut for wrongful imprisonment and damage to their business, and for forcible entry into their houses without a warrant. The local tri- bunals naturally supported the Luxor dealers, and they won their cases. Visit to Ancient Sites on the Suez Canal. 151 arrangements for travellers to visit Baghdad that the journey there and back would probably cost about £500. Besides this, Mesopotamia was said to be in a very disturbed state, and no agent would guarantee either to get me to Baghdad, or to bring me back. I therefore decided to travel by sea to Bombay or Karachi, thence by the British-India Mail Steamer to Basrah, and by Messrs. Lynch's river steamer to Baghdad. I booked a passage in the " Navarino," of the British-India Line, and, having deposited my large cases of antiquities in safe hands in Cairo, I took the box of Tall al-' Amarnah tablets with me, and went to Suez, hoping to be able to embark immediately in the " Navarino," which I was told would be lying there. When I arrived at Suez I learned that the " Navarino " was actually at Malta, where, owijig to some accident to her engines, she had been delayed for several days, and there was no possibility of her reaching Suez for five or six days. This was a very vexatious delay, but I determined to take the opportunity of paying a brief visit to certain sites in the Eastern Desert. In the hotel I found my old friend, the Rev. W. J. Loftie (see p. 76), who was paying his annual visit to Suez, and was occu- pying himself with marrying couples, and baptizing the babies of the European community. He was friend and confidant to the whole British community, and knew everybody, and he introduced me to De Wilton Bey, the Chief of Customs in the Port, and to many English shippers and merchants and officials of the Eastern Telegraphs Company. Through his agency I was for- tunate enough to obtain the use of a swift steam launch, and I spent some very active days in visiting Moses' Wells, and all the sites where antiquities had been found when the bed of the Suez Canal was being cut between the Bitter Lakes and Suez. I was also able to travel over a part of the desert east of the Bitter Lakes, where, accord- ing to some authorities, the Israelites began their forty years' wanderings. At the Serapeum I saw in the possession of a native the head of a colossal statue of Psammetichus II, and I agreed to buy it from him if he would have it taken to Cairo, where I could have it 152 Red Sea, Perim, Bdb al-Mandab. packed. He was unable to do this at that time, and I did not actually get possession of it until nearly twenty years later. It is one of the most important objects ever found on the route of the Canal. ^ One evening, January 12th, 1888, the " Navarino " arrived quite unexpectedly, and I hoped she would have stayed for a couple of days, which would have enabled me to make a little trip into the Western Desert to the birthplace (according to ancient tradition) of Mar Awgin,* the pearl-fisher of Clysma, and founder of asceticism in Mesopotamia. But this was not to be, and I had to hurry on board, taking my precious box of Tall al- 'Amarnah tablets with me, and as soon as the canal rudder of the " Navarino " was unshipped she sailed at once. She was carrying stores for the garrison at Aden, and in obedience to urgent Admiralty instructions to " hurry up " she stayed at Suez barely an hour. The " Nava- rino " was a fine old boat, with large comfortable cabins upholstered in maple and gold, and she had all over her the signs of a ship which belonged to the times before the Suez Canal, when Anglo-Indians enjoyed a leisurely voy- age from Bombay to London via the Cape of Good Hope. In her best days she could steam ten knots, but old age had reduced her speed to nine, and at that rate we steamed down the Gulf of Suez and the Red Sea. Among the stores she was carrying were four hundred hogsheads of beer for Aden, and whenever the sea was inclined to get up the captain slowed down, fearing lest the hogsheads, which he said had been badly stowed under the floor of the saloon, should " get adrift," and burst up the floor. Thus we had plenty of time to see some of the Red Sea ports, and the Shadwan^ Rocks, and Perim, and the Straits of B^b al-Mandab. We stayed at Aden* three ^ I purchased it in 1906 ; it is now in the Southern Egyptian Gallery No. 803. ^ He died a.d. 362. ^ More correctly" Shadawan." ' The 'Adan of the Arab geographers. The authorities quoted by Yakut (iii, p. 621) refer to the want of water and vegetation in the town, and say that among its inhabitants were the descendants of Aaron or Abraham. Aden. 153 days, but this long stop was not according to schedule, being the result of the high sea and stiff north-easterly gale which we met as soon as we left the Red Sea. The " Navarino " rolled heavily and wallowed in the seas, and what the captain feared actually happened. The wedges which held the hogsheads in position in the lower hold slipped, and the barrels " got adrift," and rolled about below, with a noise like thunder, from side to side, with every roll of the ship. When the hatches were opened at Aden, it was found that many of the barrels were smashed in pieces, and the hold was ankle deep in beer. An attempt was made to pump the beer into barrels which were brought down from the camps, but for some reason it was not successful. A large number of Aden coolies were then sent down into the hold with buckets, in which to bring up the beer and pour it into the barrels, but many of them drank the beer in such quantities that they became drunk, and sat down in the beer at the bottom of the hold, and went on drinking. The bringing up of these drunken men to the surface by means of tackle worked by the donkey engine was a most amusing sight, and both the passengers and the crew thoroughly enjoyed it. The soldiers who had come down to tally the barrels and take them away increased the merriment of everyone by their caustic remarks on the coolies, and their comments on this ludicrous exhibi- tion. A dispute between the captain and the military authorities delayed the ship, and meanwhile we had plenty of time to see the sights of Aden, and to visit the " tanks," and even to go, under escort, a few miles into the desert. I was introduced to some of the British officers stationed there, and found that they were well acquainted with the researches which Captain Prideaux had made at San'a,i and were ready to help anyone who would continue the excavations which he had begun. But they told me that just then it was impossible to travel safely in the ^ A good summary of the ancient history of the town will be found in Yakut, vol. iii, p. 440 ff. 154 Storm at Gwddar. Hadramaut because all the tribes were in revolt against Turkey. On returning one evening from the camp we heard that the dispute between the captain of the " Navarino " and the military authorities had been " arranged," and that all parties took the view that the loss of the beer through the breaking loose of the barrels was due to the " act of God." We sailed for Karachi the same night, and though the sky was heavily overclouded, we steamed during the next five days, to our great content, on an even keel. We arrived off Manorah Point, Karachi, on the morning of the 24th, but owing to low tide did not enter the harbour until the afternoon. There I found the British-India Steamer "Assyria," which had arrived from Bombay that morning with the mails for the Persian Gulf and Baghdad. The captain of the "Navarino" took me on board, and introduced me to the ship's officers, one of whom was called " Sargon," a name singularly appropriate for an officer on a ship called the "Assyria," and we sailed that evening at 9 p.m. The only other European passenger on board was Captain Anstruther Thompson, who was bound for Bushire, where he proposed to land and set out on his ride through Persia. Our first port of call was Gwadar, which we reached the next evening, but a high sea was running, and it was blowing so hard that no boat could come out from the little town. After waiting some hours the mail ofiicer got the maU bags into a boat, and pushed off from the ship without disaster, but when he approached the land, as he afterwards reported, the wind and waves together hurled his boat on to the rocks, and broke it in pieces. He fortunately managed to get ashore almost unhurt, but several of his crew who clung to the rocks, when taken off two days later, were found to be badly knocked about. Nothing more could be done that night, so the captain steamed to the lee side of a projecting reef, and lay there till the following afternoon. About four o'clock the captain ordered an attempt to be made to bring off the mail of&cer and his crew, and the first officer managed to lower a boat and set off for the shore. Whilst Muscat. 155 we were watching the progress of the boat over the com- paratively smooth water, we suddenly saw the boat begin to come backwards, though the six men of the crew were rowing steadily. Then we saw that the sea was retreating from the land as if it were being sucked away by some mighty power, and our ship tugged hard at her anchor and began to drag it seawards. Then, after what seemed to me to be an interminable time, we saw a wave rise up from the sea and begin to roll towards the land. As it came towards us it grew higher, and it came on with greater speed, and I felt sure our Uttle ship (she was only goo tons) mu^t be swallowed up by it. The wave dashed upon us, and carried us with it, and dropped us on a sandy bottom, and we saw it rush on and over- whelm the boat containing the first officer and his crew. It was a horrible sight, and the captain and everyone else gave up all hope of ever seeing any of them again. The captain rang to the engine-room for the engines to be set going, but they could not move the ship either ahead or astern, for we were aground ; and we remained fast where we were until the next day, when a very high tide floated us off the shoal. In the course of the morning the captain steamed round the reef, and there observed signals being made to him from the shore. Very soon after two or three decrepit boats came off to the ship, bringing both of the ship's of&cers and the crews of the two smashed boats. It seems that although the tidal wave engulfed the first ofiicer and his crew, they managed to scramble on to the rocks, and to drag themselves to the telegraph house, four miles distant, where they arrived in a fearfully exhausted state. When the crews of the two boats came on board they were all but naked, and were terribly battered and bruised. In the after- noon the sun shone brilliantly, and we could see the broken remains of all the native craft in the bay heaped up in piles on the beach, and far inland. The next port we called at was Maskat, or Muscat,^ or, ^ For description of the town by the older travellers see Niebuhr, Reisebeschreibung, ii, 83 ff. ; D'Ovington, V(^age, ii, 127 ; Hamilton, East Indies, i, 58 ; Wellsted, Travels, i, 50 ff. 156 Muscat Cove. as old writers call it, " Muscat Cove." We were steaming along apparently without any definite object in view, when suddenly the bows of the ship turned to port, and in a few minutes we passed from the open sea into a sort of circular lake, lying among bleak, bare rocks, which rose ' up in a slope all round it. The water was intensely clear and blue, and fish of many kinds could be seen swimming about in its depths : the brilliant sunlight made all the forts and buildings on the tops of the rocks^ look like fairy palaces. The town, which is built on the slope opposite the entrance from the sea, appeared to be an enchanted abode. The port was full of native craft from Africa, Aden, Ceylon, India, and the Persian Gulf, etc., and almost before the anchor was down merchants boarded the ship and offered for sale pearls, rubies, emeralds, 'itr al-ward (attar of roses), silks, etc. Muscat is the gate of the Persian Gulf, and has usurped all the importance of Sehar,^ the capital of 'Umman (Oman) in Arabia. With the suburb Matrah, which lies over the hill to the west, it monopolizes all the trade of that part of the world. Its slave market was very famous, and women of almost every Oriental nationality were to be bought there. In spring and summer the heat is very great, for the nights are never cool,* and the rocks throw out during the night the heat which they collect during the day like furnaces. We paid a visit of ceremony to H.M.S. "Sphinx" (Captain Morrison), and were kindly received, but we did not call at the Residency, for the Resident, Colonel Miles, was on leave. The British- India Company's Agent took us to his house, and showed us with the greatest pride his lawn-tennis court, the only one in all Arabia. Some of the i>arty stayed and played a game with him, but others and myself went into the town to see the sights. ^ The two forts at the entrance are called " Mirani " (right) and " JaMM " (left). ■^ See Abu'l-Fida's Geography (ed. Reinaud and de Slane), p. 99, and Yakut, iv., p. 529. ' See Pietro della Valle's remarks on the heat of Muscat (Lettera IX, vol. ii, p. 802) ; and Wellsted, Travels, i, 56. Portuguese Cathedral. ' 157 The ruins of the old Portuguese church, or cathedral, of the sixteenth century were of considerable interest, as was also the Governor's house, but with the exception of the palace of the Im§.m,i and a couple of minarets, there was nothing old worth looking at. We were intro- duced to a shekh who presented us to the Wazir of the Sultan of Muscat, and we were allowed to see his splendid Persian lion, a truly wonderful beast, which, it was said, he played with like a dog. We walked through the bazars, which were poor and dirty, and all the native houses seemed to be on the point of tumbling down. Even at that time the heat in the town was most oppres- sive, and in summer it must be insupportable. The town was crowded with men of many nations — Indians, Persians, Jews, Arabs, Egyptians, Sudani folk, etc. Water is still drawn from the wells that are mentioned by Mas'udi in his " Maruj adh-Dhahab."^ I was amazed to see in the market heaps of grain, and piles of fruit, dates, figs, plantains, pomegranates, etc., and fish and meat in abundance, and I was told that the grain and fruit were all brought into Muscat from the interior, where the natives pasture great herds of sheep and cattle. Some of the fish were brilliantly coloured, and some were extraordinarily large, and all had been caught in the harbour. From Muscat we went to Jask,* or Jashak, a small town enjoying a moderate amount of trade in textile ' The title of the Sultan of Muscat is "Imim of 'Umman." ^ Ed. B. de Meynard, i, 331. Little of the early history of Muscat is known, for Yakut (ed. Wiistenfeld, iv, p. 531) besides mentioning its position, says nothing about it. ' Wellsted relates (Travels, i, 60) that after his ship, the "Shatt al-Farat," had safely passed into the Persian Gulf, the sailors offered up fervent prayers. "A miniature boat, fashioned from the shell of a cocoa-nut, with a small sail, and fancifully decorated with ribbons, had previously been prepared, and was now laden with a few grains of rice, and some dried flowers, and launched with loud cheers of ' Salamat.' The same form is observed at the entrance of the Red Sea. It is a custom of great antiquity, and most probably a remnant of that uni- versal superstition in which our pagan ancestors, together with the greater part of the world, were once enthralled, originating in a desire 158 Sennacherib's Offering to the Sea. fabrics and cereals. A high sea was running, and getting out the cargo which had to be landed was difficult. In fine weather the merchants at Jask sent out several lighters for their goods, but on this occasion they only sent one lighter, and much time was wasted in stowing the goods in it. There was, in reality, plenty of time to have gone ashore and looked at the town, but the captain's temper had worn so thin over the single lighter, and his language was so vivid, that when he told us we could not go ashore we made no remonstrance. Jask is very important as a submarine cable relay station, but it is a dreary looking place, and the European portion of it, as seen from the ship, seemed to consist of four houses and three trees. The mail-steamer used to send ashore to the eight telegraph officials who lived there a bag of loaves of white bread once a week. Passing Kuh-i-Mubarak, our course lay almost due north, and we passed the Island of Ormuz^ (Hormizd) on our right, and the Islands of Larak^ and Kishm' on our left. The Island of Ormuz is about four miles in diameter, and is nearly circular, and is inhabited by servants of the Sultan of Muscat, who collect rock salt to propitiate, by offerings of value, the agency of the evil spirits of the deep. Indeed, my companions told me that the present was addressed to the Evil Spirit." An interesting and ancient parallel to the above is supplied by the Bull Inscription of Sennacherib, King of Assyria, B.C. 705-681. When the soldiers of this king sailed down the Tigris to attack the people of Nagitu and other districts at the head of the Persian Gulf, before they began their voyage across the sea the king offered up holy victims to Ea, lord of the ocean, and cast into the sea ||f ^ -'\'\^, and an alluttu* (whatever that may be) t^ ty|^ ^] of gold <^\ ►yy.^ (Smith, Sennacherib, p. 95, Bull Inscription, lines 79 and 80). The king no doubt did what sailors in that part of the world did before they attempted to cross the Persian Gulf. ^ See the long description by Pietro della Vajle (Lettera XVIII vol. ii, p. 463 ff.). ^ Now uninhabited. 3 See Pietro della Valle (Lettera XVIII, vol. ii, p. 473 ff.;. * The alluttu was probably a model or figure of some actual fish or fabulous sea-monster; the word is still a puzzle to Assyrian lexicographers. Bandar 'Abbas. 159 there. The remains of the old fort and its lighthouse stand on a small headland close to the Island, and parts of the old buildings are still visible. The old Kingdom of Ormuz was situated on the mainland opposite the Island, and was a fabulously rich trading centre as long as the Portuguese were predominant in the Persian Gulf. The Island of Kishm is about 50 miles long and 20 broad, and is inhabited chiefly by a seafaring population of about 7,000. The agricultural section of the popula- tion grows wheat, barley, vegetables, grapes, and dates, and rears cattle and poultry, and weaves a kind of cloth. The principal towns on the Island are Kishm, Basiduh, and Luft. Continuing on our course northwards, we arrived in a few hours at Bandar 'Abbas, or the " Port of 'Abbas," which was known before the days of Shah 'Abbas as "Gombrun."^ Until the reign of this king Gombrun was a little town of no importance except for the fact that it was the coast terminus of an old caravan road from central Persia to the sea. When the power of the Portuguese was broken in 1622, the Island of Ormuz declined in importance as a trading centre, and Gombrun, hence- forth called Bandar 'Abbas, occupied its place, and became the seaport of Persia. The English, French and Dutch all established factories there, and remains of those built by the English and the Dutch exist to this day. Fifty years later the dissensions in Persia destroyed the security of the trade-route from the sea to central Persia, and ships ^ The Gumbrown, Gomrow, Gamrou, Gomroon, Cximmeroon, Gom- beroon, Combru, Comorao, of mediaeval writers ; all these are corruptions of the name of the little town of GamrI^n which Shah 'Abb^ made into a port. Some say that Gombroon means " Custom House," and derive the word from the Greek Kov/itepKi (Latin commer- cium) through the Arabic ^^i kummk. (See de Sacy, Chrestomaihie, iii. P- 339) On the other hand, Hamilton {A New Account, vol. i, p. 92) says that " Gombroon " is derived from kamrUn, the Persian word for " shrimp," because prawns and shrimps were caught there in abundance. As for the heat of Gombroon, Dr. John Fryer (A New Account, London 1698, p. 224) quoting certain sailors says. " There was but an inch-deal betwixt Gomberoon and Hell." i6o Linjah and Bakrin. from Africa and India made Bushire their port of call. The trade of Bandar 'Abbas began to decline, and when the English abandoned the town in favour of Bushire its doom was sealed. The town is close to the sea, but is a poor and dirty place ; its inhabitants are chiefly Persians anji Kurds, and there is a small floating population from countries on the western frontier of Persia. The trade was said to be increasing, but the Persian Government seemed to have a faculty for destroying rather than fostering commerce. We saw, but had not time to go and examine, the famous tanks which the Portuguese hewed out of the solid rock, and two of them seemed to be about 500 yards long. The heat was great, even in January, and the moisture in the air soaked through khaki jackets long before breakfast time. A few hours' steaming brought us to Linjah, where we sent ashore a comparatively large amount of rice, etc. Caravans start for Bushire from Linjah, and a considerable trade is done with them. The general view of the town stretching out along the coast is very picturesque. From Linjah our course lay almost due west to Bahren, a large island which lies in a deep bay north of Cape Rekkan. The name Bahren, which means the " two seas," belongs, strictly speaking, to a part of the main- land, and Yakut (i, 506) says that it represents the collection of towns on the shore of the Sea of India between Al-Basrah and 'Umman.^ From time imme- morial the harbour at Manama, its capital,* has marked the end of the voyage of ships from India and Africa, and the starting point of ships for Basrah and Baghdad. The district was well known to the Assyrians, who called it " (mitu) Di-il-mu " \^ ^ ^it^n >^,« and to the Baby- lonians also. The Island of Bahren is about 27 miles ^ The Marasid (ed. JuynboU, i, 130) takes the same view, and says that this land is fifteen days' journey from Basrah and a month's journey from 'Umman ; see also Al-Bakri (ed. Wiistenfeld), p. 140 ; and Abu'1-Fida (ed. de Slane), p. 99. ^ Population about 35,000 in 1915. ' Smith, Sennacherib (Taylor Cylinder, iv, 78). Pearl Fishery at Bakrin. i6i long and lo wide, and along the greater part of it there is a range of low hills. It is well populated, and contains many villages, and its people are keen and intelligent traders, who unite in themselves the best commercial instincts of the Arabs, Persians, and local seafaring folk. Bahren is one of the two chief centres of the pearl trade,^ and during the few hours we stopped there many mer- chants came on board with collections of pearls for sale. The black pearls in the possession of one man were the largest and most beautiful I had ever seen, and they ranged in price from £50 to £100. The views which the Arabs held about the origin of the pearl are set forth by Mas'udi (i, 328-330). He says that the pearl-fishers live on fish and dates. They spht the lower part of their ears to facilitate respiration, and stop their nostrils with tortoise-shell, and their ears with wool steeped in oil ; at the bottom of the sea they squeeze out some of this oil, and it serves them for a light. They smear their feet and their legs with some dark substance which makes the sea monsters take to flight, and they communicate with each other at the bottom of the sea by means of cries which resemble the barking of dogs. Many writers have held the opinion that Bahren was the original home of the Phoenicians, but whether this be so or not, it is certain that the objects which have been found there suggest that some highly civilized race lived there in very early times, perhaps even in Babylonian times. Colonel Sir E. C. Ross, British Resident in the ^ When the pearling boat is anchored at a suitable place " the crew is divided into two portions ; one remains in the boat to receive the oysters and haul up the divers, the others strip naked and jump into the sea. A small basket, capable of holding from eight to ten oysters, is then handed to them, and suspended to their left arm. The nostrils are then closed with a piece of elastic horn, the diver places his foot on a stone attached to a cord, inhales a long breath, and upon raising his right arm as a signal, the rope is immediately let go, and he sinks to the bottom. After collecting as many as are within his reach, he jerks the line, and is drawn at once to the surface. Forty seconds is the average, and one minute and thirty-five seconds the ultimatum which they can remain below." — Wellsted, Travels, i, 121. i62 Excavations at Bahrin. Persian Gulf from 1872 to 1891, examined the Island on several occasions, and believed that systematic excava- tions would throw great light on its early history. Before his retirement he tried to get the British Government to make trial excavations, but the scheme failed because no one suitable could be found to undertake the work. In 1889 Mr. J. T. Bent visited the Bahren group of islands, and excavated some tombs, ^ but difficulties arose between himself and the natives, and as he did not feel able to cope with them successfully he abandoned the work. He was fully convinced by his excavations that Bahren was the primitive home of the Phoenician race. Sir E. C. Ross, whose knowledge of the history of 'Umman and of the tribes of Arabia and the MakriLn coast was unrivalled, assigned to the earliest inhabitants of Bahren an antiquity greater than that of the Phoeni- cians. Eight hoars' steaming brought us to Abu Shahar, or Bushire,^ the " Port of Shiraz," as it is well named. It is almost surrounded by the sea, but large ships are obliged to lie about two miles from the town. Its in- habitants are actively engaged in commerce, and its imports and exports are considerable. Much of its importance is due to the fact that the Indo-European Telegraph Company have a large station here. A few miles from the town are the ruins of an Elamite city, and large numbers of bricks with cuneiform inscriptions on their edges are found there. As the Resident, Colonel Sir E. C. Ross, was absent, I could not present Rawlinson's letter to him, and as without his help I could not success- fully visit the ruins of the old town, I abandoned the idea of doing so, and hoped for better luck later on. As the pirates of the Makran coast had been giving a good deal of trouble, and plundering and sinking native craft, the British men-of-war, the " Ranger," the " Osprey " and ^ See his paper, The Bahrein Islands in the Persian Gulf, " Proc. Roy. Geog. Soc", New Ser., xii, i. (London, 1890.) ' See Niebuhr, Reisebeschreibung, ii, 93 ; and Wellsted, Travels, i, 130. Fdw and the Shatt al-Arab. 163 the " Sphinx," were lying off the town, and their captains very kindly offered to help me in any way they could. The town is dirty and uninviting, but in looking at it from a distance the air-towers are impressive. Some of them are very lofty, and are of considerable size, and they are so constructed that they catch every wind that blows and drive it downward into the houses, which are much cooler than those of other towns in the Persian Gulf. Our stay at Bushire was much curtailed because the captain wished to catch the tide on the bar at Faw, but he made some miscalculation and failed to do so. We left Bushire at 5 p.m., and arrived at the bar about six the next morning. The wind blew the water off the bar, and after churning sand and water for three hours we stuck fast, and had to wait for the next tide to float us off. Ten hours later we were able to move, and we steamed on to the entrance of the Shatt al-'Arab, which is about 70 miles from Basrah. At Faw we landed a very nice dog for one of the telegraph officials, and the whole ship's company regretted the absence of this most amiable and companionable fellow-passenger. We steamed slowly up the Shatt al-'Arab, and I greatly enjoyed the change in the scenery, which reminded me strongly of that of Egypt. The vegetation came down to the water's edge, and on each side of the river, as far as the eye could see, were green fields and gardens filled with fruit trees. The palms were beautiful, and they formed a wall of living green on each side of the river. The pahn groves were fUled with birds of many kinds, and their songs of praise sounded incredibly sweet. We seemed to be steaming through a never-ending garden, and the silence was broken only by the creaking of the machines which watered the gardens and the groves of palms. As the sun set the light tipped the palms with red and gold, and turned the gardens on the east bank into many-coloured paradises. It was easy to see whence Persian and Arab •writers obtained the material for their descriptions of enchanted gardens and bowers. When the sun had set the frogs began to croak, and when it became dark their croaking developed into a continuous roar on both sides L 2 164 Fumigation at Basrah. of the river, down-stream and up-stream ; there must have been myriads of them. We anchored for the night at a place about eight mUes from Basrah, and proceeded the next morning in a heavy white fog to the quarantine station. At Muhammarah we fired a salute in honour of the Shekh of that Port, and his gunner must have been waiting with the lanyard in his hand, for the return of the salute was fired immediately after ours. The period for quarantine was then seven days, but after a friendly chat in the captain's cabin the doctor and the other official agreed to haul down the yellow flag, provided that the mail-bags and the passengers' baggage were fumi- gated. These were at once transferred to a lighter, and a piece of ground on the bank having been fenced off, the bags and baggage were landed there. The police kept intruders off with rifles, to which bayonets were fixed. An official set in position a small brazier with a stand over it, and another ofiicial poured a little powdered sulphur into the latter, but had to appeal to us for a match with which to light it. None of us had any matches, but a little bakhshish caused the officer of fumigation to say that it was unnecessary to burn the sulphur. All the same, each box or trunk was solemnly lifted on the stand and as solemnly lifted off, and with the politeness, of which only a Turk of the " old school " is the true possessor, the quarantine official declared that we might remove our baggage. The other official care- fully poured the sulphur back into his box, and the ceremony of fumigation was complete. Al-Basrah, also known as Basra, Bassora, Bassorah, Balsora, Balsorah, Bulsorah, Busra, Busrah (in Syria Basra or Busra) is a small but important town which stands on the west bank of the Shatt al-'Arab, and is about 70 miles from FS,w, 38 miles from Kumah (the point where the Tigris and Euphrates join) and 300 miles from Baghdad as the crow flies, but 520 miles by river. Basrah derives its name from the whitish grey pebbles which are, or were, so abundant in its neighbourhood. According to Mas'udi (iv, 225), the city was founded by 'Otba, the son of 'Azwan, who was sent to the country of To face p. 164, vol. i. Founding of Al-Basrah. 165 Basrah by 'Omar, a.h. 14 ( = a.d. 635), but some say that it was not founded until a.h. 16 ( = a.d. 637), after the expedition to Takrit. When 'Otba arrived in the country of Basrah it was called the " Land of India," and it was covered with whitish grey stones. He began to build at a place called " Al-Khurebah," i.e., the " Little Ruin/' a fact which suggests that 'Otba only rebuilt some ancient city in the interest of the Arabs. He probably refounded Basrah just as Sa'ad, the son of Wakkas, refounded Kufah, on the Euphrates, about the same time. The Arabs must have met with great opposi- tion from the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, for at the Battle of the Camel (a.h. 35 = a.d. 656) he lost 13,000 men, and Talhah and Zuber, Companions of the Prophet, were slain. The old town of Basrah, or the " town of Zuber " as it was called, stood about ten miles from the Shatt al-'Arab, and had a canal on each side of it. The entrance to the canal on its north side was at Ma'kil, and the entrance to that on its south side was at UbuUah, where, in fact, the modem town now stands. The form of the town was, roughly, rectangular. Between the time of its founding and the fifteenth century Basrah was attacked by enemies on several occasions, and many parts of it were burnt or otherwise destroyed.^ In the tenth century it possessed a public library, which was provided with endowments for poor students, and for the pajnnent of scribes who copied books for the library. In the thirteenth century Basrah, or Perlith Maishan, as ecclesiastical writers call it, was the seat of a bishop, and in 1222 the see was held by one Solomon, a native of Akhiat or Khilat, in Armenia, whose " Book of the Bee " I edited in 1886.2 When Pietro della Valle visited Basrah the Christians of Saint John had a settlement there. ^ ^ See G. le Strange, The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate, p. 45. ^ See also Assemani, B. 0., t. iii, p. i, p. 309. ' Their correct name is " Mandaeans." The name " Christians of Saint John " (Christiani S. Joannis) was brought into Europe by the Portuguese monks early in the seventeenth century. A number of Mandaans who had joined the Roman Catholic Church visited Rome i66 The Blight of the Turk on Basrah. When I first visited Basrah it was a town of great commercial activity, and the place was considered suffi- ciently important to justify the presence of the broken- backed Turkish man-of-war which lay in the river near the south-east end of the town. There was a weekly mail to and from India, and a weekly mail to and from Baghdad. Basrah and Ma'kil were usually crowded with small native craft, and in the date season many large steamers from England and India were to be seen there. Several European firms had branch houses there, but many of their most disinterested efforts to increase the trade of the Port were frustrated by the stupid regula- tions of the Turkish officials. Here is a case in point. There was at one time a considerable export trade in horses from Basrah. The Indian horse-dealers used to go up to Baghdad, and then on to Takrit, and buy up horses and take them down the river to Basrah, where they were embarked on the British-India steamers for Bombay. The trade was profitable for all concerned, but suddenly the Turks prohibited the export of horses. However, it did not take the horse-dealers long to find a way to overcome the difficulty. They marched their horses down the Tigris, on the east bank of the river, to Muhammarah, the Persian port on the Karun, about ten miles down-stream of Basrah, and shipped them by between 1650 and 1660, and they told Abraham Echellensis that their people in Mesopotamia called themselves " NasdrayS dhe Yahyi," i.e., " Christians of Yahya," i.e., " Christians of John." Yahya is the name by which John the Baptist is mentioned in the Kur'an (Surah III, 34-41). The history, religion and literature of this remarkable Semitic people are fully described by Chwolsohn, Die Ssabierunddas Ssabismus, Petersburg, 1856 ; Pietro della Valle, Lettera X, vol. ii, p. 819 &. ; Ignatius a Jesu, Narratio Originis, Rituum, et Errorum Christianorum Sancti Joannis, Rome, 1652 ; Boullaye Le Gouz, Voyage, Paris, 1652 ; Thevenot, Suite du Voyage, Paris, 1674 ; Petermann, Reisen, Leipzig, i860, vol. ii, p. 83 ff., 447 ff. ; Siouffi, Etudes sur la religion des Soubbas ou Sabeens, Paris, 1880 ; Brandt, Die mandaische Religion, Leipzig, 1889 ; Mandaische Schriften, Gottingen, 1893 ; Lidzbarski, Das Johannesbuch der Mandaer, vol. i, Giessen, 1905 ; Petermann, Thesaurus sive Liber Magnus, Leipzig, 1867 ; Euting, Qalasta, Stuttgart, 1867 ; the Einleitmig to Noldeke's Mandaische Grammatik, Halle, 1875, etc. The Gates of Basrah. 167 the British-India steamers just the same, and almost in sight of the Turkish officials. The modern town of Basrah is said to be six miles long and four broad, and it has five gates, viz., the Gate of Rubat, the Gate of Baghdad, the Gate of Zuber, the Gate of Saraji, and the Gate of Majmu'a. The business quarter of the town is reached by boats via " Basrah Creek," parts of which pass through pretty gardens and green fields ; in fact the gardens seem to be the chief feature of the town The old factory of the East India Company still stands, some parts of it being used as Government offices. The town itself is a miserable place, and every purely native part of it suffers from the " blight of the Turk." The Turks have been in posses- sion of Basrah for about 250 years, and they have done nothing to increase the business or wealth of the town. They have been content literally to " sit at the receipt of custom." On arriving in Basrah I heard that the steamer for Baghdad would leave in the evening, and I therefore removed my baggage to the Euphrates and Tigris Steam Navigation Company's steamer " Medjidiah," and made the acquaintance of her commander. Captain E. Cowley, and secured my berth. I then went to present letters to the British Consul, Mr. Robertson, who was living in a house with a beautiful garden on the river bank. He received me kindly, and discussed the object of my Mission at great length, and made many valuable sugges- tions. He told me that a considerable trade had sprung up in antiquities, and that there were several houses both in Basrah and Baghdad which regularly exported tablets, cylinders, etc., to their London agents, and that the cases which contained the antiquities were brought to Basrah by the Turkish Government steamers, which ran between Baghdad and Basrah. I found that Mr. Robertson was personally interested in the history and antiquities of the region where he was stationed, and that he had ridden about the coimtry and visited many of the , ancient sites in Lower Mesopotamia. He said that when he was at Tall Loh, on the Shatt al-Hayy, he saw many i68 Tall Loh and Susa. headless statues of early Babylonian kings standing there, and he asked why the British Museum Agent had failed to get a permit to excavate the site.^ He had also explored the ruins of " Shushan the Palace^ (Susa)," which are near Shushtar,^ on the Karun,* and had seen the massive bronze bull capitals of the pillars of the palace there in situ, and he urged me to write to the Principal Librarian and get funds to excavate Susa without delay. I wrote, in accordance with his suggestion, but the Trustees decided that it would be better to clear out Nineveh completely before beginning a new site. Three years later I again raised the question, and the Trustees were disposed to attack Susa, but the Treasury declined to find the neces- sary money, and the bull capitals and all else went to the Louvre. Before we finished our conversation, which was taking place in the garden, it began to rain suddenly and heavily, and Mr. Robertson hurried me into his boat and sent me to the steamer, but before I reached it the rowers and myself were wet through. In a very few minutes a violent storm, with thunder and lightning, was raging, and it went on for hours. So violent a wind was blowing that the captain decided not to leave Basrah that night, and, having taken down all awnings and unshipped all movable gear, he sat down and waited for the morning. It was the worst land storm I had ever experienced, and for the first time I understood how it was that the " Tigris " was wrecked on the Euphrates in the Chesney Expedition.' The waves on the river were five feet high at least, and they dashed over the banks and flooded the town. The rain fell violently and steadily all night, and there were frequent storms of thunder and lightning. In ^ See Mr. Rassam's account of the reasons why he failed to obtain a permit to dig at Tall Loh in Trans. Soc. Bibl. Arch., vol. viii, pp. 193, 194- ^ See Esther i, 5, Nehemiah i, i, Daniel viii, 2. Shushan, i.e., Susan, is also called 'Aruj and Jabalak. See le Strange, The Lands, p. 245. ' Or, Shustar. The Arabs call the town " Tustar." * The Dujayl of Arab writers. ' See Ainsworth, W. F., Personal Narrative, vol. i, 1888, p. 387 ff. Kurnah and the Shaft at- Arab. 169 the morning the Shatt al-'Arab was a raging sea, and Captain Cowley decided to remain another day in Basrah. We left the following morning at seven o'clock, but though the tide was in our favour we did not arrive at Kurnah until two o'clock — in other words it took us seven hours to cover thirty -eight miles. The little town of Kurnah stands on a point of land, and the Tigris^ flows on the east side and the Euphrates^ on the west, and immediately to the south of it the two great rivers mingle their waters. Of its history nothing is known, for none of the Arab geographers mentions it,' but several European travellers in Mesopotamia in the sixteenth century knew the town by its present name, as their words leave no doubt that they are referring to one and the same place. Thus Master Cesar Frederick, who went to the East Indies via Baghdad and Basrah in 1563, says: "A daye's journey before you come to " Basorayou shall have a little castle or fort, which is set " on that point of land where the rivers of Euphrates and "Tigris meet together, and the castle is called 'Como.' "* Gasparo Balbi, a Venetian jeweller, who set out for the East from Aleppo on December 13th, 1579, relates that they " entred Como, and a little beyond encountred a "piece of Euphrates joyning with Tigris, where abide " many souldiers with a Saniak^ to prevent theeves, which ^ The Babylonians and Assyrians called the Tigris " I-di-ik-lat," t^ f ,^1^ ^ = t$ {^^ -y