EXCAVATIONS AT MERGE generally, we had found nothing except unmummified human bodies, ashes of human bodies which had been burned, a small bronze pot, several earthenv*are jars, bones of animals, human skulls, and fragments of green glazed earthenware. Of the twelve pyramids which we had opened, six of them, at least, were royal, but still they contained in the way of funerary paraphernalia nothing but a few jars, and it seemed to me quite clear that we were no longer justified in expecting the Pyramids of Meroe to yield large numbers of coffins, biers, boxes, alabaster jars, &c., which they were at one time thought to contain. The passages and sepulchral chambers which our hard-working Egyptian soldiers had laid bare proved that the workmen of the old Meroitic kingdom were not able to hew in the solid rock passages and chambers like those which the Egyptians made under the Xllth, XVIIIth, XlXth, and XXth Dynasties, and that having once cut a hollow under the pyramid wherein to lay the dead, it concerned them not whether or no it possessed regular proportions. The hills near the Pyramids of Meroe which contain the quarries whence came the stone for building the casings of the pyramids and their chapels were most suitable for rock-hewn tombs, yet the tomb-builders of Meroe made no use of them for this purpose. The architects of the great queens of Meroe devoted their energies rather to the decoration of the chapels than to the building of the pyramids against which they stood. There is a great deal of good work in some of the pyramids of Meroe, but it lacks the solidity, durability, finish, and simplicity of the work of the best builders and architects of ancient Egypt. And in both pyramids and chapels may be observed the effeminacy and ostentation which are noticeable in the temples at Masawwarat an-Nagaa, and at Masawwarat as-Sufra. The people of Meroe copied ancient Egyptian funerary customs in nearly everything so far as outward show is concerned, but they lacked the ability to construct tombs comparable even to the pyramids of Gebel Barkal. Perhaps the most interesting characteristic of the pyramids of Meroe is the reliefs on the walls of the chapels, and, as they are important in illustrating the survival of ancient Egyptian religious ideas and beliefs in the Island of Meroe in the early centuries of the Christian era, some description of them must here be given. In the 355