w every other ruin whose foundations are below the future
high-water level has been repaired and safeguarded.

In 1906 and 1907 the present writer was dispatched to the threatened
territory to make a full report on the condition of the monuments
there;[1] and a very large sum of money was then voted for the work. Sir
Gaston Maspero took the matter up in the spirit which is associated with
his name; Monsieur Barsanti was sent to repair and underpin the temples;
French, German, and English scholars were engaged to make copies of the
endangered inscriptions and reliefs; and Dr Reisner, Mr C. Firth, and
others, under the direction of Captain Lyons, were entrusted with the
complete and exhaustive excavation of all the cemeteries and remains
between the dam and the southern extremity of the reservoir. As a result
of this work, not one scrap of information of any kind will be lost by
the flooding of the country.

[Footnote 1: Weigall: 'A Report on the Antiquities of Lower Nubia.'
(Department of Antiquities, Cairo, 1907.)]

As was to be expected, the building and raising of the dam caused
consternation amongst the archaeologically interested visitors to Egypt,
and very considerably troubled the Egyptologists. Philae, one of the
most picturesque ruins on the Nile, was to be destroyed, said the more
hysterical, and numerous other buildings were to meet with the same
fate. A very great deal of nonsense was written as to the vandalism of
the English; and the minds of certain people were so much inflamed by
the controversy that many regrettable words were spoken. The Department
of Antiquities was much criticised for having approved the scheme,
though it was more generally declared that the wishes of that Department
had not been consulted, which was wholly untrue. These strictures are
pronounced on all sides at the present day, in spite of the very
significant silence and imperturbation (not to say supination) of
Egyptologists, and it may therefore be as well to put the matter plainly
before the reader, since the opinion of the person who is in charge of
the ruins in question, has, whether right or wrong, a sort of interest
attached to it.

In dealing with a question of this kind one has to clear from the brain
the fumes of unbalanced thought and to behold all things with a level
head. Strong wine is one of the lesser causes of insobriety, and there
is often more damage done by intemperance of thought in matte