volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

His Collection of Greek Coins. 153
Aswan I was " taken over " and sent up to Marawi,
where I spent some months in excavating.^
The following morning Kitchener sent me a message
to the effect that he wished to go with me to the
Egyptian Museum at Gizah, which had recently been
opened to the public. We drove out early in the day
and spent a long morning there, and I found that he was
chiefly interested in the objects which illustrated the
decorative powers of the Egyptians, and that he admired
the bas-rehefs, etc., of the fourth dynasty far more
than the sculpture of the eighteenth dynasty. He much
regretted that the unstable condition of the old Bulak
buildings made it necessary to remove the Egyptian
collections from it to the palace at Gizah, for a more
incongruous place for them could hardly have been
found. The massive sculptures of the Ancient Empire
and the mummies of Rameses II and other great kings
looked sadly out of place in rooms with waUs painted
blue, and mouldings of salmon-pink picked out in gold,
and ceilings decorated with panels, on which were
painted Cupids, Venuses, etc. In the afternoon I
took Kitchener out to Gizah village to see some antiquities,
and then on to the Pyramids, in the neighbourhood
of which Uved various dealers, and they showed
him their collections. On our return to Cairo we
visited several shops where Greek coins were to be seen,
and he purchased several examples at what seemed to
me to be high prices. He was much interested in
Greek coins, which he admired greatly, and in 1899 I
saw two cabinets full of them in his house in Cairo.
In the evening he took me to dine at the Khedivial
Club with Dr. Sandwith, General Dormer, Tigrane
PashS, and the German Consul-General.
I left for Upper Egypt on the morning of the 7th,
and began making enquiries among the natives who
busied themselves with antiquities for the missing
columns of the Aristotle papyrus. After many fruitless
* An account of my missions to the Sudan will be found in my
Egyptian SUddn 2 vols., London, 1907.