PVRAMIDS AT GEBEL BARKAL that we had reached the mouth of a pit, or shaft, or " well " [btr) as the natives called it. We had no tackle with which to move this stone, and it was decided to break it piecemeal ; whilst doing this one of our two large iron spike crowbars broke in half, and several days were consumed in the removal of the stone. The natives declared that there was no stone of the kind to be found in the country nearer than Omdurman ; it turned out to be ironstone, heavily charged with ore, and a piece of it is in the British Museum.'

Beneath the stone was a layer of solid lime plaster about one foot thick, and the removal of this caused great difficulty, for it would only come away in white dust which was unpleasant in the mouth and actually dangerous when it got into the eyes. Beneath this layer was another very thick one formed of a kind of rough concrete, and very hard, and under this was a thick block of sandstone which completely filled the opening of the shaft. Then came more concrete, and another block of stone, and after this there followed a bed of rubble some feet thick. When we had cleared .

all this out we saw that notches had been cut in the sides of the shaft in ancient days whereby the workmen had ascended and descended, and we found them very convenient. At the bottom of the rubble we came upon a very large flat slab of stone, which we proceeded to break with hammers and a crowbar in the same way that we had broken the others. This stone, however, gave out a hollow sound when struck, and before long cracks appeared in it, and a piece disappeared into a chamber below. We then saw that the stone was one of three that had been placed in a row to form the roof of a rectangular funeral chapel, hewn out of the living rock, about sixty feet below the level at which we had begun to dig.

The chamber is rectangular and its roof was supported by two square pillars. A narrow passage on the south-east side of it leads into another rectangular chamber, which also has square pillars ; there is no inscription of any sort or kind on the faces of the pillars or the walls of the chambers. The chamber nearest the pyramid was about half full of fine yellow sand, and the narrow passage and the outer chamber were filled with it to within a few Nos. 42,150, 42,154.

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