MERAWI IN 1897 The superstition which existed in the minds of the people of Barkal, of which mention has already been made, showed itself in many ways, and sometimes in a most inconvenient manner. The smallest incident which happened out of the usual course, in connection with the excavations that were being made, was sufficient to make them declare that the " Satans " were abroad, and were bent on doing mischief to the workmen, because they were intruding on the privacy of the spirits of the " shekhs " who had built the pyramids. Shekh Muhammad told me that so long as he could remember, no villager would go up the hill to the pyramids by night, and that even by day the men who were working in the fields near the pyramids would keep as far away from them as possible. The villagers had seen the figures of the kings and gods which were sculptured on the sides of the rockhewn chambers of the temples at Barkal, and their fathers had told them that similar figures had existed on the walls of the chapels which had stood before the pyramids. These simple folk believed that each sculptured figure was the abode of some spirit, whether of a god, or a devil, or a human being, and that at night such spirits left the stones, and came out and talked with each other, and wandered about and looked at the places familiar to them. They thought, moreover, that the only way to rid themselves of the attentions of such spirits was to smash the stones in which they dwelt by day, and it is probable that this belief is partly responsible for the wholesale destruction of chapels which went on during the last century.

This belief is not confined to the Sudan, and I met with it in a very unpleasant form near Mosul (Nineveh) in Northern Mesopotamia. Whilst excavating there for the Trustees of the British Museum in 1888 and 1889, I went to Baibukh, a few miles from Nineveh, to examine the site of the great palace of Sargon, king of Assyria (b.c. 721-705). One door of the palace was still standing, and on one side of it there still remained one of the colossal bulls that guarded the entrance. It was a grand object, and in a good state of preservation, and was quite as fine as either of the bulls which the late Sir Henry Rawlinson obtained for the British Museum. On my return to England I tried to get the archaeological authorities at Constantinople to arrange for its 227