volume 2 - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian History Workshop

Disappearance of the Boat of Amen-hetep II. 367
tent returned to the boat, and all the members of the
party left the tent to look at it before they returned to
Luxor. When they came to the place where they had
seen the boat in the afternoon there was no boat visible,
and from that day to this the authorities have never
been able to find out what became of it. The truth
of the matter is that whilst the of&cials were dining, and
their attendants and the police were having supper, a
gang of strong men came from the neighbourhood,
and took the boat to pieces and carried off the planks and
hid them untU the official searchers had finished their
work ajid departed. The watchmen who were paid by
the Service of Antiquities probably knew well who
the thieves were, but if they did they made no sign.
One thing is quite certain : all the people in the neighbourhood
were interested in the success of the theft of
the boat, or it could never have been committed. The
fact that a boat 20 feet long could be taken to pieces and
carried away whUst the Director and several of his principal
of&cials were eating their dinner a few hundred feet
distant, did not increase the respect of the natives for
the Service of Antiquities.
But to retvirn to the Egyptian Gazette and its editor's
remarks concerning myself. In the third paragraph of
his article he wrote :
" With regard to Dr. Budge's alleged theft we have
no doubt that Mr. Insinger is very well informed. In
fact. Dr. Budge is well known as a somewhat unscrupulous
collector of antiquities for his Museum ....
and we have little doubt that Mr. Insinger would be the
best authority from whom to obtain all the very fuUest
particulars of the way in which the stolen stele was conveyed
out of this country. In view of Mr. Insinger's
pecuUar position in Luxor, we can also understand that
an active and energetic inspector like Mr. Carter is a
considerable thorn in the flesh to him, and that such
accusations as are brought against the latter, are
prompted by a whole-souled desire to see the last of
him. . . The larger question of the preservation of
Egypt's antiquities is, and has been for years past, a