FERLINl AND STEFANI was, of course, an altar belonging to the ancient temple of Wad Ba Nagaa, probably that which is now preserved in the Royal Museum at Berlin. Finding it impossible to carry off the altar on account of its weight, Ferlini tried to break off the lower portion of it, so that he might be able to remove the upper inscribed part, but all he could do was in vain, and he only succeeded in detaching a large fragment. He next tried to saw it in half, but this attempt was more hopeless still, and finally he was obliged to commit the care of the '* superbe pilastre," as he calls the object, to the care of the shekh of Wad Ba Nagaa, telling him not to give it up to any person without his orders. When he arrived subsequently in Cairo, he presented the altar to the French Consul, M. Mimaut. Ferlini being dissatisfied with the results of his excavations on this site, struck his camp and travelled northwards until he came to the group of villages which at that time appear to have been known by the general name of ** Bagrawiya," or as he writes the name, " Begaraviah." In Cailliaud's time these villages were As-Sur, Dankel and Tenedhbai, and they were situated on the edge of the cultivated land, close to the desert ; their sites were about forty-five miles from the Atbara river.

On their arrival at Bagrawiya Ferlini and Stefani pitched their tents near the village, at no great distance from the river, and having set some of their men to make leather baskets out of cowhides, and the remainder to keep watch over the camels, they went to look at the pyramids. They passed over the site of the old city of Meroe, which was then, even as it is now, buried in sand, and all the ancient things they saw were the black basalt sphinxes which are still in situ, and are hardly worth removal. They passed on to the east and saw the ruined pyramids which are close to the modern Berber road, and continuing in an easterly direction they came to the hills where the two most important groups of the Pyramids of Meroe are situated. Ferlini counted the groups, and declared the larger contained twenty-one pyramids, only one being nearly intact, and the smaller eight. Here he wished to begin to dig, but, as Stefani insisted on his making a beginning on the site of the ancient city near the sphinxes, he did so. The first See Lepsius, Denkmaler, Abth. V. Bl. 55.

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