Belzoni’s original object in going to Egypt was simply to get “The Bashaw” to adopt a hydraulic machine for irrigation work--a project in which it is almost needless to say that he failed; his knowledge of the precious material with which he was soon dealing was nothing at the beginning, and not much more at the end of his “Researches and Operations”; he had a positive gift for quarrelling with everybody with whom he came into contact, Egyptian or European, and a mania for imputing the vilest motives to anyone who coveted any piece of antiquity on which he had set his own heart; but with it all he had the _flair_ of the true explorer for a promising site, and could foresee hidden treasures where his rivals dreamed of nothing, and with all his petulance he had a patience which was almost inexhaustible. It was these qualities which have made him the only explorer of those unhappy days whose name is really remembered, or deserves to be remembered, in connection with our knowledge of ancient Egypt. As to his methods, these, of course, were unspeakable, and the mere mention of them is enough to turn a modern excavator’s hair white. He finds the entrance of a royal tomb in the Western Valley of the Kings, and proceeds to open it--with a battering-ram made of two palm-logs! As to his reverence for the mighty dead of the past one sentence may suffice: “Every step I took I crushed a mummy in some part or other.” Again he describes his journey through a tomb-gallery which the modern excavator would have given his ears to see as Belzoni saw it. “It was choked with mummies, and I could not pass without putting my face in contact with that of some decayed Egyptian; but as the passage inclined downwards my own weight helped me on; however, I could not avoid being covered with bones, legs, arms, and heads rolling from above.” The object of these ghoulish journeys was simply to plunder the coffins of their papyri, which, of course, were marketable, though as yet no one could read them; and there can be little doubt that far more was destroyed than was preserved by methods which were only a little above those of the Ramesside tomb-robbers who stripped the mummies of King Sebek-em-saf and Queen Nub-khas of their jewels, and then burned them. Such was Egyptian excavation in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, and in the hands of one of its most distinguished practitioners, for Belzoni was an angel of light compared with some of his rivals, native or foreign.