THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN several pieces had broken off the edges. An attempt appears to have been made to destroy it by fire, for the front was embedded in a layer of black, greasy soot, which remained like a mould of the figures in the sand below. In the sand near the slab a stone figure of a hawk was discovered. There is no niche in the west wall of the chapel in which it could have stood, and it must therefore have rested upon a small stone shelf above the figures of the Osirian triad. The finding of these objects was quite unexpected, for Lepsius could not have made the excellent drawings of the reliefs on the north and south walls without clearing out the sand and stones from the chapel. How his men came to overlook these objects is inexplicable, but it was fortunate for us that they did.

The next question to be considered was the preservation of the reliefs on the north and south walls. In 1903 I urged Sir Reginald Wingate to remove the whole chapel to Khartum and to rebuild it in some sheltered spot in the gardens of the Palace. I did this, first, because the reliefs are the finest monuments of the kind which exist on the Island of Meroe, and illustrate in a remarkable manner the high pitch of perfection to which the Meroitic sculptors attained in the early centuries of the Christian era. The fundamental design in the reliefs is, of course, Egyptian, but the details of its treatment are so essentially Meroitic, that these sculptures form a class of monuments which stands by itself, and represents a most instructive phase of funerary art. Secondly, it needed a very brief examination to see that the reliefs had suffered a good deal from weathering and from abrasions, caused by the sand and stones which had fallen into the chapel from the core of the Pyramid since 1844, when Lepsius had drawings of them made. The preservation of these valuable reliefs could be effected in three ways:— i. By filling up the chapel to the top of the walls with sand, but if this were done they would be seen and enjoyed by no one. 2. By erecting a building over the chapel withglas.s sides and a roof sufficiently strong to keep out the wind, drift-sand, ana falling stones. The objection to this proposition was a serious one, namel}', the cost of the work, and the necessity of keeping a guardian always on the spot. 3. By removing the reliefs to some well-sheltered spot or museum. Sir 500 i