It follows from the fact that the modern excavator is called to deal with such a multitude of matters, each in itself perhaps comparatively insignificant, but each of importance, as an additional stroke in the picture of the past which is being slowly built up on the canvas, that far more extensive qualifications are exacted of him than sufficed for his predecessor. “Our explorer in Egypt,” says Miss Amelia Edwards, “is only called upon to be an ‘all-round’ archæologist within the field of the national history: namely, from the time of Mena, the prototype of Egyptian royalty, who probably reigned about five thousand years before Christ, down to the time of the Emperor Theodosius, Anno Domini 379. Yet even within that limit, he has to know about a vast number of things. He must be familiar with all the styles and periods of Egyptian architecture, sculpture and decoration; with the forms, patterns and glazes of Egyptian pottery; with the distinctive characteristics of the mummy-cases, sarcophagi, methods of embalmment and styles of bandaging peculiar to interments of various epochs; and with all phases of the art of writing, hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic. Nor is this all. He must know by the measurement of a mud brick, by the colour of a glass bead, by the modelling of a porcelain statuette, by the pattern of an earring, to what period each should be assigned. He must be conversant with all the types of all the gods; and last, not least, he must be able to recognise a forgery at first sight. After this, it must, I think, be admitted that the explorer, like the poet, is ‘born, not made’! The wonder perhaps is that he should ever be born at all.” It seems, no doubt, a sufficiently formidable catalogue of qualifications; but to Miss Edwards’ list others would now have to be added. For the progress of investigation of the inter-relation of the nations of the ancient east has broken down the limitation which she imposed upon the knowledge of her imaginary explorer, and the Egyptian excavator of the present day must be familiar, not only with all that has been mentioned, but with the related work of Mesopotamia and Babylonia, with the art of the brilliant Minoan craftsman, with all that is known of the enigmatic Hittite civilisation, and with the art, both archaic and mature, of Greece, together with a score of other related matters!