92 buildings of artistic or archaeological interest datings be,tw,n'the Arab Conquest and the reign of Mohammed Ali Pasha, and specifically includes Coptic ecctesiastical buildings, and the Rdman fortress of Kasr-esh-Sham in Old Cairo. It is evident that when the actual list of selected buildings is published, and their owners see limitations imposed upon the disposal of their property, the Committee will be served with claims for indemnities which will very seriously arain their slender resources.

During the past six years the committee, working on a town-planning scheme elaborated in conjunction with the Cairo City Service of the Ministry of Public Works, has carried out a series of expropriations designed to disengage twelve important buildings.

The committee has spent in the same period £E. 40,000, on the preservation of some ninety monuments and on a large number of minor repairs. The most important work has been the restoration of the famous mosque of Ibn Tuliin (A.D. 879) which is still in progress, and an account of which may be found in the “ Burlington Magazine ” for November 1919. The clearance and restoration of the Mash’had of As-Sayyida Rukayya (A.D. 1133) brought to light a wooden cenotaph of remarkable beauty and a Kune inscription and early decorations of archaeological importance.

The late Sultan was particularly interested, in the restoration of the mausoleum of Sultana Shagarat-ad-Durr (A.D. 1250), and.the dilapidated modern oratory which adjoined it has been replaced by a small mosque, which is designed in the style of the fourteenth century, and is an elegant achievement. Other important works have been in progress at the mosques of As-Saleh Talaya (A.D. 1160); Az-Zahir Baibars A1 Bundukdari (A.D. 1269), which was used as a slaughter-house by the army of Bonaparte, and recently by the British army of occupation, and where the suggestion of Mr. Stanley Lane Fooie, contained in Annex No. 5 to Lord Cromer’s report for 1895, that the great court should be turned into a public garden, has at last been put into execution; Sultan Kalaun; Emir A1 Malik Jawkandar; A1 Moayyad; Kadi Yehia Zein ad-Din; and at the mausoleum of Zein ad-Din Yusuf.

Operations at the Kasr-esh-Sham, which had been suspended since 1904, were renewed in 1915, and import.ant excavations have been made inside the great gate of the fortress. The Accaaemia dei Lincei has proposed to undertake the illustration of this monument, but it is doubtful whether the committee will be able to continue its expensive excavations in default of a special subsidy. Excavations are also being carried out at the remarkable group of tomb-mosques of Sultan A1 Ashraf Inal (A.D. 1450) and Emir Kwkumas (A.D. 1507).

Assisted by the advice of his Excellency Marcus Simaika Pasha and Mr. Somers Clarke, the committee lias been engaged in important works of restoration in the Coptic churches of Amba Shenuda, Abu Sarga, Sitt Burbara, Kasriat-ar-Rihan, and A1 Hadra, and has enlarged the Coptic Museum in Old Cairo. It is hoped to undertake the repair of a number of Coptic churches and convents of archeological interest throughout the country, if the resources of the committee are sufficient.

Among works of special historical interest I may mention that the committee, aided by a grant from the private Wakfs of his Highness the Sultan, has been able to save from destruction, and to restore, the Mussafii’TKhanaPalace. This palace, built in 1789, was purchased early in the nineteenth century by the family of Mohammed Ali Pasha, and was used for the entertainment of foreign Ambassadors and missions; it was the birth-place of the Khedive Ismail. The eighteenth-century house of Khatkhuda Ibrahim as-Sipnari was occupied by the Commission des Arts et des Sciences of the French expedition .of Bonaparte. In 1916 M. Gaillardot Bey proposed to the committee that this house should be used as .a museuni and library for the period of the French occupation of Egypt and Syria, and offered as a nucleus for the museum a valuable collection of objects and documents' which he had formed in the course of forty years. The proposition was accepted, and the houte has been adapted to its new purpose.

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