t Oxford, could not
easily be imagined. The disgusting antiquarian of a past generation,
with his matted locks and stained clothing, could but be ill at ease in
such surroundings, and could claim no brotherhood with the majority of
the present-day archaeologists. Cobwebs are now taboo; and the misguided
old man who dwelt amongst them is seldom to be found outside of
caricature, save in the more remote corners of the land.

[Illustration: PL. XXVI. A relief representing Queen Tiy, from the tomb
of Userhat at Thebes. This relief was stolen
from the tomb, and found its way to the
Brussels Museum, where it is shown in the
damaged condition seen in Plate xxvii.]

[_Photo by H. Carter._

The archaeologist in these days, then, is not often confined permanently
to his museum, though in many cases he remains there as much as
possible; and still less often is he a person of objectionable
appearance. The science is generally represented by two classes of
scholar: the man who sits in the museum or library for the greater part
of his life, and lives as though he would be worthy of the
furniture-polish, and the man who works in the field for a part of the
year and then lives as though he regarded the clean airs of heaven in
even higher estimation. Thus, in arguing the case for the field-worker,
as I propose here to do, there is no longer the easy target of the dusty
antiquarian at which to hurl the javelin. One cannot merely urge a musty
individual to come out into the open air: that would make an easy
argument. One has to take aim at the less vulnerable person of the
scholar who chooses to spend the greater part of his time in a smart
gallery of exhibits or in a well-ordered and spotless library, and whose
only fault is that he is too fond of those places. One may no longer
tease him about his dusty surroundings; but I think it is possible to
accuse him of setting a very bad example by his affection for "home
comforts," and of causing indirectly no end of mischief. It is a fact
that there are many Greek scholars who are so accustomed to read their
texts in printed books that they could not make head nor tail of an
original document written in a cursive Greek hand; and there are not a
few students of Egyptian archaeology who do not know the conditions and
phenomena of the country sufficiently to prevent t