Among this assembly were men and women burned to an even blue-black tint—­civilised people with bleached hair and sparkling eyes.  They explained themselves as ’diggers’—­just diggers—­and opened me a new world.  Granted that all Egypt is one big undertaker’s emporium, what could be more fascinating than to get Government leave to rummage in a corner of it, to form a little company and spend the cold weather trying to pay dividends in the shape of amethyst necklaces, lapis-lazuli scarabs, pots of pure gold, and priceless bits of statuary?  Or, if one is rich, what better fun than to grub-stake an expedition on the supposed site of a dead city and see what turns up?  There was a big-game hunter who had used most of the Continent, quite carried away by this sport.

’I’m going to take shares in a city next year, and watch the digging myself,’ he said.  ’It beats elephants to pieces.  In this game you’re digging up dead things and making them alive.  Aren’t you going to have a flutter?’

He showed me a seductive little prospectus.  Myself, I would sooner not lay hands on a dead man’s kit or equipment, especially when he has gone to his grave in the belief that the trinkets guarantee salvation.  Of course, there is the other argument, put forward by sceptics, that the Egyptian was a blatant self-advertiser, and that nothing would please him more than the thought that he was being looked at and admired after all these years.  Still, one might rob some shrinking soul who didn’t see it in that light.

At the end of spring the diggers flock back out of the Desert and exchange chaff and flews in the gorgeous verandahs.  For example, A’s company has made a find of priceless stuff, Heaven knows how old, and is—­not too meek about it.  Company B, less fortunate, hints that if only A knew to what extent their native diggers had been stealing and disposing of the thefts, under their very archaeological noses, they would not be so happy.

‘Nonsense,’ says Company A.  ’Our diggers are above suspicion.  Besides, we watched ’em.’

‘Are they?’ is the reply.  ’Well, next time you are in Berlin, go to the Museum and you’ll see what the Germans have got hold of.  It must have come out of your ground.  The Dynasty proves it.’  So A’s cup is poisoned—­till next year.

No collector or curator of a museum should have any moral scruples whatever; and I have never met one who had; though I have been informed by deeply-shocked informants of four nationalities that the Germans are the most flagrant pirates of all.

The business of exploration is about as romantic as earth-work on Indian railways.  There are the same narrow-gauge trams and donkeys, the same shining gangs in the borrow-pits and the same skirling dark-blue crowds of women and children with the little earth-baskets.  But the hoes are not driven in, nor the clods jerked aside at random, and when the work fringes along the base of some mighty wall, men use their hands carefully.  A white man—­or he was white at breakfast-time—­patrols through the continually renewed dust-haze.  Weeks may pass without a single bead, but anything may turn up at any moment, and it is his to answer the shout of discovery.