EXCAVATIONS AT MERGE desert road, and he could work all night without fear of being disturbed, and hide himself during the day in one of the chapels, or among the stones of a half- ruined pyramid. The only difficulty he had to contend with was the water supply, but this was not hard to overcome, for he could easily arrange with a partner to bring out water to him by night. I heard subsequently that diggings had been carried on by two or three Egyptians, assisted by Sudani men from a village near Bagrawiya, but their labour yielded no antiquities, and when they returned to Egypt they loudly denounced the pyramids as useless. They brought a few scarabs from the Sudan, which they said they had found whilst digging, but it is far more likely that they bought them from the natives.

One very sad result of Ferlini's excavations, and of his alleged discovery of treasure in a chamber in the pyramid of the " great Queen," has been the total destruction of several pyramids on each of the great pyramid fields of the Sudan. Very few natives really believe the statements of the Europeans when they say that they excavate ancient sites for the love of science, and because of a desire to learn the ancient history of the country, and in their heart of hearts they think that the foreigners have learned from old, native books where treasure is buried, and that they have come to dig it up. The traditions about Ferlini's " find," which are still extant in the Sudan, have confirmed them in this view, which is often held by educated Egyptian officers quartered in the country, who ought to know better. Lepsius tells us in one of his Letters (English ed., p. 197) that on April 8th, 1844, he was surprised to receive a visit from Osman Bey, who was returning with an army of five thousand men from Taka (Kasala), where he had been employed in putting down a rebellion with a strong hand.

In the course of conversation Osman Bey told Lepsius that he wished to turn his men into treasure- diggers, and that he was about to order some of his battalions to come and pull down the pyramids in order to find the treasure which rumour said still existed in them. The people in Khartum, both Europeans and natives, believed there was treasure in them, because Ferlini had found some. Lepsius says : " I constantly endeavoured to prove to " them all, that the discovery of Ferlini was pure chance, that he 339