THE GEBEL BARKAL STELAE temple. This was done for a double purpose, i.e., to compare the variations between the ground plans published by Hoskins and Lepsius, so far as possible with the actual site, and to find out if any more inscribed stelae were to be found lying face downwards among the ruins. It will be remembered that about the year i860 the eminent French archaeologist Mariette asked Sa'id Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, to give him permission to make excavations in the Sudan, and the reason he gave for doing so was that antiquity dealers from Egypt went into the SMan from time to time and brought away with them sufficient loot to pay their expenses, and to make it worth their while to return for more. Natives at places like Gebel Barkal and Sulb welcomed such visitors, for they gave them gold for, to them, useless stones. The first to teach the people of Meroe that antiquities were valuable things was " Al-Nimsawi " (i.e., the German) Lepsius, who carried off some boat-loads from the Sudan, and, be it said to his credit, paid the natives well for their trouble. One day he bought a headless statue of King Amather, or Amtel, which had been found in the village of Merawi, and from that time onwards the villagers lost no opportunity of exploring the ruins, and of carrying off anything that was at all portable to their houses. Any monument which was too large to remove they re-buried in the sand.

In 1862 an official of the Egyptian Government was obliged to pass some days in the neighbourhood of Gebel Barkal, and whilst he was wandering about among the ruins some of the natives showed him, it is said, in one of the courts of the temple of Piankhi, a group of five inscribed stelae. He understood enough of Egyptian antiquities to know that cartouches contained royal names, and as he felt that he had made an important discovery, which was indeed true, he copied the hieroglyphic text on the largest of the stelae and sent it to Mariette. His ' The king's names read S;y](\>liS].-he styles himself " Beloved of Amen-Ra Heru-khuti " (J aaawa C\ n .

A picture of the statue is given by Lepsius in Denkmdler, Abth. V. Bl. 15, and it is described on p. 312 in the official Verzeichniss, "pnhWslaed at Berlin in 1894.

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