With regard to the latter point, however, we must remember that the knowledge of the infinite importance of the small game of the archæologist is a thing of modern growth, and that it is scarcely fair to blame Mariette for not being a quarter of a century in advance of his time; and also that the difficulties of his position obliged him to lay stress on the big and imposing monument, even at the cost of neglecting what was really of more value to the serious student. Broken potsherds may mean far more for the reconstruction of history than intact colossi; but to the men in authority on whom depended the continuance of the excavator’s work, they were just-broken potsherds. [Illustration: 4. TEMPLE OF RAMSES III, MEDINET HABU.] Spite of all the defects of his methods, we owe him an infinite debt, both for what he accomplished and for what he hindered others from destroying. The chief fruit of his toil, apart from the work at the Serapeum and in the necropolis at Saqqara, was the unveiling at Abydos of the noble temple of Sety I, with its exquisite reliefs, which will always rank among the very finest work of the artists of the New Empire. Besides the excavation of the temple, he did an immense amount of work, very imperfectly recorded, alas, in the great necropolis of Abydos, where he unearthed over 15,000 monuments of one kind or another. It ought not to be forgotten either, though it often has been, and though it has been stated that in his work at Abydos he had no idea of the existence there of any remains of the early dynasties, that it was Mariette who prophesied both the discovery of Ist Dynasty tombs and that of the great subterranean “Pool of Osiris,” which is the latest fruit of M. Naville’s work there. Scarcely less important was his work at Thebes, where he for the first time made some approach to establishing the architectural history of the great temple of Karnak from its foundation under the Middle Kingdom down to the close of building under the Ptolemies. To him, also, we owe the excavation of the great temple of Ramses III at Medinet Habu, and the first beginnings of that huge piece of work which M. Naville and his assistants at Der el-Bahri only completed, after thirteen years’ hard labour, in 1908. How many of the visitors to Hatshepsut’s beautiful memorial temple, who wonder at the patience which unearthed this most exquisite of Egyptian buildings, remember that it was Mariette who first gave to the world the most interesting part of the whole building with its reliefs of the royal expedition to the Land of Punt?