d laid in one
day having been attained. On the 26th of December 1897 the Italian
troops handed over Kassala to Colonel Parsons, R.A. On the 8th of
April 1898 a British division, with the Egyptian army, destroyed the
Dervish force under the amir Mahmud Ahmed, on the Atbara river. On the
2nd of September the khalifa attacked the British-Egyptian troops at
Kerreri (near Omdurman), and being routed, his men dispersed; Khartum
was occupied, and on the 19th of September the Egyptian flag was
rehoisted at Fashoda. On the 22nd of September 1898 Gedaref was taken
from the amir Ahmed Fedil by Colonel Parsons, and on the 26th of
December the army of Ahmed Fedil was finally defeated and dispersed
near Roseires. The khalifa's army, reduced to an insignificant number,
after several unsuccessful engagements withdrew to the west of the
Nile, where it was attacked, on the 24th of November 1899, after a
forced march by Colonel Wingate, and annihilated. The khalifa himself
was killed; while the victor, who had joined the Egyptian army in 1883
as aide-de-camp to the first sirdar, in December 1899 became the
fourth sirdar, as Major-General Sir F. R. Wingate, K.C.B., K.C.M.G.,
D.S.O., &c. (E. Wo.)

II. ANCIENT EGYPT

A. _Exploration and Research._--Owing to its early development of a high
civilization with written records, its wealth, and its preservative
climate, Egypt is the country which most amply repays archaeological
research. It is especially those long ages during which Egypt was an
independent centre of culture and government, before its absorption in
the Persian empire in the 6th century B.C., that make the most powerful
appeal to the imagination and can often justify this appeal by the
splendour of the monuments representing them. Later, however, the
history of Hellenism, the provincial history of the Roman empire, the
rise of Christianity and the triumph of Islam successively receive
brilliant illustration in Egypt.

As early as the 17th century travellers began to bring home specimens of
ancient Egyptian handiwork: a valuable stele from Sakkara of the
beginning of the Old Kingdom was presented to the Ashmolean Museum at
Oxford in 1683. In the following century the Englishman R. Pococke
(1704-1765), the Dane F. L. Norden (1708-1742), both travelling in 1737,
and others later, planned, described or figured Egyptian ruins in a
primitive way and identified many of the sites with cities na