In his arrogant manner the Egyptologist will remark that modern politics are of too fleeting a nature to interest him.  In answer, I would tell him that if he sits studying his papyri and his mummies without regard for the fact that he is dealing with a nation still alive, still contributing its strength to spin the wheel of the world around, then are his labours worthless and his brains misused.  I would tell him that if his work is paid for, then is he a robber if he gives no return in information which will be of practical service to Egypt in some way or another.  The Egyptian Government spends enormous sums each year upon the preservation of the magnificent relics of bygone ages—­relics for which, I regret to say, the Egyptians themselves care extremely little.  Is this money spent, then, to amuse the tourist in the land, or simply to fulfil obligations to ethical susceptibilities?  No; there is but one justification for this very necessary expenditure of public money—­namely, that these relics are regarded, so to speak, as the school-books of the nation, which range over a series of subjects from pottery-making to politics, from stone-cutting to statecraft.  The future of Egypt may be read upon the walls of her ancient temples and tombs.  Let the Egyptologist never forget, in the interest and excitement of his discoveries, what is the real object of his work.

CHAPTER III.

THE NECESSITY OF ARCHAEOLOGY TO THE GAIETY OF THE WORLD.

When a great man puts a period to his existence upon earth by dying, he is carefully buried in a tomb, and a monument is set up to his glory in the neighbouring church.  He may then be said to begin his second life, his life in the memory of the chronicler and historian.  After the lapse of an aeon or two the works of the historian, and perchance the tomb itself, are rediscovered; and the great man begins his third life, now as a subject of discussion and controversy amongst archaeologists in the pages of a scientific journal.  It may be supposed that the spirit of the great man, not a little pleased with its second life, has an extreme distaste for his third.  There is a dead atmosphere about it which sets him yawning as only his grave yawned before.  The charm has been taken from his deeds; there is no longer any spring in them.  He must feel towards the archaeologist much as a young man feels towards his cold-blooded parent by whom his love affair has just been found out.  The public, too, if by chance it comes upon this archaeological journal, finds the discussion nothing more than a mental gymnastic, which, as the reader drops off to sleep, gives him the impression that the writer is a man of profound brain capacity, but, like the remains of the great man of olden times, as dry as dust.