“Forced to struggle for more than three years,” says Maspero in his vivid sketch of his predecessor, “against the jealousy of the dealers of the time and the sharp practices of the Egyptian officials, he was not long in learning and putting into practice all the dodges which the natives employed to track out their rivals or to cheat the treasury. No one knew better than he how to conceal a quest, to pack up the product of it in secret, and to dispatch it without arousing the suspicion of anyone.” Curious qualifications for the head of a great Government department; yet they served him well in what was really a lifelong battle against the rivalry of men of science, who, instead of encouraging him in his efforts to set Egyptology on a firm foundation in its native land, did their worst to rob him of the fruits of his labours; and against the apathy and indifference of his master, who regarded the antiquities which his untiring servant unearthed as valuable only because he could gratify a globe-trotting potentate by the gift of some of them, or in the last resort might raise a loan on the precious treasures of his Museum. Mariette’s appointment as head of the Service of Antiquities was due, indeed, to a piece of skilful wire-pulling in which de Lesseps and Prince Napoleon, afterwards Napoleon III, were concerned; and Said Pasha gave him the post, not because he cared for his royal predecessors, but because, as Maspero caustically puts it, “he came to the conclusion that he would be more acceptable to the Emperor if he made some show of taking pity on the Pharaohs.” An appointment due to no higher inspiration than self-interest on the part of the giver obviously depended largely on how long self-interest coincided with the interests of the new post; and perhaps the most arduous part of Mariette’s task consisted in trying to make his thoroughly Oriental master see that it was his interest to maintain what he had begun, and in overcoming the whims and caprices, and the secret intrigues which continually threatened to undermine his position and destroy the structure which he was so painfully rearing. He never could get a permanent grant for the work of his department from the Egyptian Government. When money was needed he had always to ask it direct from the Khedive, who granted a subsidy or refused it according to the mood in which he happened to be at the moment. Again and again Mariette had to close down his excavations because he had unfortunately approached Said when the Khedive was in a bad temper; but though the continuance of work under such conditions might have driven the most phlegmatic of men, let alone a mercurial Frenchman, to despair, he never for a moment lost sight of his end. Repulsed once, he only waited a more favourable opportunity to return to the charge, and in the end he was almost invariably successful.