volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

35^ My Missions to the Egyptian SMdn.
Kitchener and General Sir F. R. Wingate, Siardr and
Governor-General of the Sudan, in 1897, 1898, 1900,
1902 and 1905. I have described my travels and work
in the Sudan in my " History of the Egyptian Sudan,"
two volumes, London, 1907, and all I need say about
it here is that, thanks to the above-mentioned gentlemen,
I was enabled to visit all the ancient sites in Nubia
and the ancient Egyptian Sudan, including the Island
of Meroe. With the effective assistance of General Sir
F. R. Wingate I dug out several of the pyramids at
Jabal Barkal and Meroe, and examined all the pyramid
fields in the Sudan. As I passed up and down the Nile
to WMi Halfah and further south I took the opportunity
of inspecting the collections of antiquities which the
dealers had got together, and I was able to secure many
valuable objects for the British Museum.^
In 1896 the Trustees decided to increase their collection
of scarabs, and I was instructed to attempt to fill up the
gaps in it and to acquire good and characteristic supplementary
specimens whenever it was possible to do so. A
year or so before de Morgan left Egypt (1897) he excavated
the pyramids of Dahshur and discovered much beautiful
jewellery and many scarabs of the period of the Xllth
dynasty. After he stopped the wotks some natives founds
an unopened tomb of a princess of that dynasty, near the
foundations of one of the pyramids, and I contributed
to the cost of clearing it out. From this tomb I acquired
a string of sixty-four scarabs,' made of agate, onyx, cornelian,
lapis-lazuli, etc., all set in gold frames decorated with
gold " bead work " of very fine workmanship, and they
formed a valuable addition to the collection of Egyptian
' Between 1891 and 1913 I visited Egypt on the business of the
January and
Trustees thirteen times, viz., October to December, 1892 ;
February, 1895 ; November and December, 189% August, 1897 to
January, 1898 ; December, 1898 and January, 1899 ; December, 1900
and January, 1901 ; December, 1902, to February, 1903 ; December,
1904, to April, 1905 ; March, 1906 ; March and April, 1907 ; March
; February and March, 1911 ; and November and
and April, 1909
December, 1913.
• See Guide to the Third, and Fourth Egyptian Rooms, p. 220 (No. 382).