carried over the Atbara by means of an iron bridge of six spans of 200 feet each, the piers of which are built upon the rock, which was reached at a depth of about 30 feet below the bed of the river. The Battle of the Atbara was fought on April 8, 1898, at a place called Nakhila, about 37 miles from the junction of the river with the Nile, on the right bank. The Dervish force numbered about 14,000 men, and of these about 3,000 were killed and wounded, and 2,000 were made prisoners. The AngloEgyptian loss was 5 officers and 78 men killed, and 475 officers and men wounded; large numbers of swords, spears, rifles, 100 banners, and 10 guns, fell into the victors' hands, and Mahmûd, the Dervish general, was captured.

Having crossed the Atbara the traveller now enters the country which Strabo (xvii. 2. § 2) calls the Island of Meroë; the name 'island' was probably given to it because it is, generally speaking, bounded by the Atbara, the Nile, and the Blue Nile. Strabo says that its shape is that of a shield, and goes on to mention that it is "very mountainous and contains great forests"; but from this statement and the fact that he speaks of the "mines of copper, iron, gold, and various kinds of precious stones," we may conclude that he is referring to the country south of Khartûm. Of the early history of the country nothing is known, and the statements made by Greek writers about its peoples and their manners and customs must have been derived from the garbled traditions left by ancient Egyptian officials who travelled to the south, and perhaps from merchants who were not well informed, and soldiers who were quartered in Nubia. The name given to the chief city of the Island by the Egyptians is Marȧuat

! Ing whence the name Meroë clearly is

derived. The last determinative indicates that the town

was built in a mountainous district, and lends support to Lepsius' derivation of the name from a Berber word mérua, or méraui, 'white rocks,' 'white stones.' If this derivation be correct, it would rather point to Napata opposite Gebel Barkal as the original city of Meroë.

A little above the mouth of the Atbara, on the right bank, are the ruins of the once flourishing little town of AdDâmar, which was famous, like Marawî near Gebel Barkal, as a seat of Muḥammadan learning. The modern town has a railway station, and is 392 miles from Halfa. It is now the capital of the Berber Province. From this place to Shendî the east bank is flat and covered with a thick growth of scrub, thorn bushes and halfah grass, which has swallowed up everything, and the strip of cultivable ground is of considerable width; on the west bank the ground is also flat, and the strip is less wide. Here and there ravines, or 'khors,' run back from the river, and in flood time these must be filled with water. The whole district bears emphatic testimony to the results of the misgovernment of the Turkish Governors-General, and the rule of the Dervishes, which was, of course, the only possible result of such misgovernment of fanatical, superstitious, and warlike Muḥammadans. When the writer first visited the neighbourhood in 1897-98 there were hardly any people to be seen, no cattle existed, only here and there was a water wheel at work, and only here and there were a few sheep or goats to be seen; the gazelles in the desert were almost as numerous as the sheep. Not a donkey could be obtained for many miles, and the very dogs had been exterminated by the Dervishes. Scores of houses in each village were empty and desolate, and at the sight of them the traveller might wonder what would have been the fate of Egypt at the hands of the Dervishes, whom some described as "brave men fighting for their independence."

The next stations on the line are Zêdâb (404 miles),

'Alîâb (416 miles), Muḥmiyah or Mutmir (429 miles), and Kabushiyah (448 miles).

At a distance of about 40 miles from the mouth of the Atbara the district of Bagrawiyah* is reached, and from this point a visit may be made to four groups of pyramids, commonly called the Pyramids of Meroë, the most distant of which lie about two and a half miles from the river. These pyramids are the tombs of the kings and royal

The Pyramids at Meroë, Group D.
(Drawn from the plan of Lepsius.)

personages who reigned over the Island of Meroë in the capital city, which seems to have stood near the modern town of Shendî, and are also called the Pyramids of As-sûr. The general arrangement of the largest group (D), which is in the plain, about 13 miles from the river, is illustrated by the above plan; nearly all are in ruins, for the stone casings have been gradually removed by generations of

natives.

At no great distance from these pyramids are the ruins of a temple and the remains of an artificial depression, which seems to mark the site of the sacred lake of the temple. Two other groups of pyramids (A and B) are situated further to the east, and are built on low hills, the smaller group lying to the south-east of the larger; and some of their pyramids are quite in ruins. The most interesting group is that which is built on a comparatively high hill, and which at the beginning of the XIXth century was in a good

state of preservation, as the plates which illustrate Cailliaud's Voyage prove. The 43 pyramids of this group vary in size at the base from 20 feet to 63 feet. In front of each pyramid was a chapel which consisted of one or more chambers, the walls of which were decorated with reliefs, in which kings and queens were depicted worshipping the local gods and making offerings to them. There is little. doubt that the sites of these groups of pyramids were used as burial grounds from an extremely early period, but the inscriptions of the pyramids now standing there show that

and A.D. 250.

they belong to a period which lies between about B.C. 400 Both reliefs and inscriptions prove that the Nubians, or Ethiopians as they are often called, were borrowers from, and not the originators of, the Egyptian civilization, with its gods and religion, and system of writing, as some, following Diodorus, have thought. The royal names found in some of the chapels are those of the builders of the great temples at Nagaa, and others are those which are known from buildings at Dakkah and Gebel Barkal. In them also are inscriptions in the character called Meroïtic, which, in some respects, resembles the Demotic, and Lepsius had no doubt that they were contemporaneous. It is not at present possible to arrange the royal names of the Nubian or Meroïtic kings in chronological order, especially as many of them seem to be peculiar to certain parts of the old kingdom of Meroë, and it is possible that many of their owners were contemporary. It is, however, evident that when this kingdom was in its most flourishing state, the rule of its kings extended from the Blue Nile to Aswân.

In 1834 an Italian doctor called Ferlini selected one of the largest pyramids on the crest of the hill at Bagrâwiyah (ie., the one marked F in Cailliaud's plan, and the most westerly of the group), and began to pull it down. In the course of the work an entrance to a chamber was accidentally discovered, wherein, Ferlini declared, were found a bier and a large quantity of jewellery, boxes, etc., of a most interesting character.* This treasure was not

* His account of the discovery is so interesting, that an extract from the French version of it is here given :

"Monté au sommet de la pyramide, avec quatre ouvriers, pour mettre la main à l'ouvrage, je reconnus au premier coup-d'œil que la démolition pouvait se faire fort facilement, vu que le monument tombait déjà de vétusté ; les premières pierres enlevées, je relevais mes ouvriers. Pendant qu'on jetait par terre les pierres des gradins, ne