THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN the " order of the Government " to get stone. In spite of this, however, it is impossible to blame the Sudan Government for such an act of vandalism, for it was committed without the knowledge of any responsible official. The overseer of works told his men to get stone, meaning of course that they were to go to the quarries in the hills, but it was far easier for them to go to the ruins of the temple and break up the blocks there, especially as the stones lay near the river, and this they did with the result already described. One could not help feeling sorry that such a thing should be done under British rule in the Sudan, and done too at the very time when Sir Reginald Wingate and his officials were making every effort possible to preserve ancient monuments and buildings all over the country As the result of the examination which we made of the ruins we decided to make a few trial excavations on the site, and we therefore took steps to provide ourselves and our servants with a place to live in. The natives of the village a mile or so distant went and fetched trunks, and branches of small trees, and a number of mats, and in about an hour they had constructed a rectangular tiikl, with a sort of inner room, and had roofed it over with palmleaf matting which was tied to the tops of the tree trunks which formed the framework. This tiikl gave us shade by day, but it did not keep out the cold by night, nor the sand which was driven against it by a strong north wind that blew almost continuously for three days. There were a number of good mudhuts near the river which were uninhabited, but they were in such a filthy state that it was better to live in our palm-matting tiikl. When our beds and baggage had been taken into our abode the Inspector and I went over the ruins a second time, and we examined the second court carefully. Some of the sculptured work was extremely good, and the ornamentation of the bases of the pillars, which is still well-preserved, was interesting. Here we saw a series of turreted ovals (above which are human heads and torsos), each containing the name of some city, or district, or country, which had been conquered by Amen-hetep III., the builder of the temple. The arms of each captive are tightly tied behind his back, above the elbows, and as the face and features of each are different it seems tolerably certain that the 448