ind of mystery surrounds the science. The layman
supposes the antiquarian to be a very profound and erudite person, who
has pored over his books since a baby, and has shunned those games and
sports which generally make for a healthy constitution. The study of
Egyptology is thought to require a depth of knowledge that places its
students outside the limits of normal learning, and presupposes in them
an unhealthy amount of schooling. This, of course, is absurd.

Nobody would expect an engineer who built bridges and dams, or a great
military commander, to be a seedy individual with longish hair, pale
face, and weak eyesight; and yet probably he has twice the brain
capacity of the average archaeologist. It is because the life of the
antiquarian is, or is generally thought to be, unhealthy and sluggish
that he is so universally regarded as a worm.

Some attempt should be made to rid the science of this forbidding
aspect; and for this end students ought to do their best to make it
possible for them to be regarded as ordinary, normal, healthy men. Let
them discourage the popular belief that they are prodigies, freaks of
mental expansion. Let their first desire be to show themselves good,
useful, hardy, serviceable citizens or subjects, and they will do much
to remove the stigma from their profession. Let them be acquainted with
the feeling of a bat or racket in the hands, or a saddle between the
knees; let them know the rough path over the mountains, or the
diving-pool amongst the rocks, and their mentality will not be found to
suffer. A winter's "roughing it" in the Theban necropolis or elsewhere
would do much to banish the desire for perpetual residence at home in
the west; and a season in Egypt would alter the point of view of the
student more considerably than he could imagine. Moreover, the
appearance of the scholar prancing about upon his fiery steed (even
though it be but an Egyptian donkey) will help to dispel the current
belief that he is incapable of physical exertion; and his reddened face
rising, like the morning sun, above the rocks on some steep pathway over
the Theban hills will give the passer-by cause to alter his opinion of
those who profess and call themselves Egyptologists.

As a second argument a subject must be introduced which will be
distasteful to a large number of archaeologists. I refer to the
narrow-minded policy of the curators of certain European and American
museums, whose desire it is at all c