PREFACE In the summer of 1897, by arrangement with the Sirdar, Sir H.

Kitchener, the Trustees of the British Museum sent me on an Archaeological Mission to the Sudan. By the end of the year I had examined the Pyramid-fields at Niiri, Kurru, Zuma, and Tankasi, had opened one of the Pyramids at Gebel Barkal, and had dug through portions of the ruined temples on this site.

In the winter of 1898-99 I was again sent to the Sudan, and was permitted to examine the four groups of Pyramids which stand near the site of the ancient city of Meroe, with a view of excavating the most important of them when an opportunity offered. In the winter of 1900-01 it was proposed to carry on excavations on the Island of Meroe, but as, owing to the lack of population, no labour was forthcoming, the project had to be abandoned. In the spring of 1902, Sir Reginald Wingate, who had succeeded Lord Kitchener as Sirdar, made arrangements for excavating the group of the largest pyramids at Meroe, and I was sent to the Sudan to conduct the archaeological portion of the work. As a result of the excavations made at this time it was found that the chambers in which the dead were placed were beneath the pyramids, as in Egypt, and not in the pyramids as some had supposed ; that the bodies of the native kings and queens were not mummified; and that the chambers of the dead were not filled with funerary furniture, as is usually the case in Egypt.

Beneath several of the smaller pyramids large jars half filled with sand and ashes of human bones were found in small vaulted chambers, a fact which proved that the bodies of several members of the ruling class at Meroe were burned. Thus the expectation that the pyramids of Meroe would yield a rich harvest of sepulchral antiquities was not fulfilled.

In the spring of 1905 I was sent to the SMIn to assist Sir Reginald Wingate in collecting antiquities for the newly established vii