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 matters of criticism than there is by actions committed under the influence of other forms of immoderation.  We are agreed that it is a sad spectacle which is to be observed in the Old Kent Road on a Saturday night, when the legs of half the pedestrians appear to have lost their cunning.  We say in disgust that these people are intoxicated.  What, then, have we to say regarding those persons whose brains are unbalanced by immoderate habits of thought, who are suffering from that primary kind of intoxication which the dictionary tells us is simply a condition of the mind wherein clear judgment is obscured?  There is sometimes