working upon archaeological subjects in the shadow of the
actual monuments. Only the person who is familiar with Egypt can know
the cost of supplying the stay-at-home scholar with exhibits for his
museums. Only one who has resided in Egypt can understand the fact that
Egypt itself is the true museum for Egyptian antiquities. He alone can
appreciate the work of the Egyptian Government in preserving the remains
of ancient days.

The resident in Egypt, interested in archaeology, comes to look with a
kind of horror upon museums, and to feel extraordinary hostility to what
may be called the museum spirit. He sees with his own eyes the
half-destroyed tombs, which to the museum curator are things far off and
not visualised. While the curator is blandly saying to his visitor:
"See, I will now show you a beautiful fragment of sculpture from a
distant and little-known Theban tomb," the white resident in Egypt, with
black murder in his heart, is saying: "See, I will show you a beautiful
tomb of which the best part of one wall is utterly destroyed that a
fragment might be hacked out for a distant and little-known European
museum."

To a resident in Europe, Egypt seems to be a strange and barbaric land,
far, far away beyond the hills and seas; and her monuments are thought
to be at the mercy of wild Bedwin Arabs. In the less recent travel books
there is not a published drawing of a temple in the Nile valley but has
its complement of Arab figures grouped in picturesque attitudes. Here a
fire is being lit at the base of a column, and the black smoke curls
upwards to destroy the paintings thereon; here a group of children sport
upon the lap of a colossal statue; and here an Arab tethers his camel at
the steps of the high altar. It is felt, thus, that the objects
exhibited in European museums have been _rescued_ from Egypt and
recovered from a distant land. This is not so. They have been snatched
from Egypt and lost to the country of their origin.

He who is well acquainted with Egypt knows that hundreds of watchmen,
and a small army of inspectors, engineers, draughtsmen, surveyors, and
other officials now guard these monuments, that strong iron gates bar
the doorways against unauthorised visitors, that hourly patrols pass
from monument to monument, and that any damage done is punished by long
terms of imprisonment; he knows that the Egyptian Government spends
hundreds of thousands of pounds upon safeguarding the ancient remains;
he