CHAPTER IX.

THIRD MISSION, 1903.

EXCAVATIONS AT THE PYRAMIDS OF MERGE.

During the first two or three days of our stay at the pyramids we were occupied in setthng ourselves, and in making arrangements for the well-being of the artillerymen who were to do the digging. This seems a simple affair when soldiers are in question, but as a matter of fact, much thought and care had to be expended, and much time was consumed, before we could begin work and hope to continue it uninterruptedly. We were some three miles from the Nile, and every drop of water and every meal for men and horses had to be brought from the camp to the hill. There were no villages or towns near in which necessaries could be bought as in Egypt, and the nearest town where stores could be obtained was Shendi, forty miles distant. Whilst Captains Lewin and Drake were occupied in establishing the camp, I spent my time in examining the pyramid chapels, and in sketching out a plan of work on the lines which Sir F. R. Wingate, the Governor-General of the Sudan, had discussed with me in the previous year. He was anxious to make the pyramids yield up their secrets, and especially to find out definitively whether the dead were buried in chambers built in the masonry of the pyramids, or in chambers or pits beneath them. It was very important to settle this question, for so long as the natives believed that there was treasure hidden in chambers in the pyramids, so long would attempts be made to reach it by pulling down their tops, or otherwise destroying them. When I arrived at the pyramids in 1903, I found that much damage had been done to some of the most northerly of them since I first went there in the winter of 1898-99, and also that an attempt had been made to dig down through the mass of fallen stones which covered the shrine VOL. I. y z