GENUINE lapis lazuli figures are extremely rare, and generally small, the most valuable ones in the museums being only a few inches high. It was thought at first that it would be impossible to make imitations which would pass for the real stone, but on the demand arising it has been met. I was riding from Deir-el-Bahari down to the river one day when a youth rose up from the side of the road, and shuffled forward to speak to me. “You buy antīcas?” he said in a whisper, casting a sidelong glance of apprehension at a mounted policeman who was following at about seventy yards distance. I told him to show me what he had, whereupon he produced a blue bowl of earthenware with a pattern of the lotus flower on it. Porcelain, he called it, “and very fine work, sir. I dig in the tombs, sir.” Now if there was one thing that this youthful Ananias did not do, it was to dig in the tombs. It is one of the worst offences in Egypt to dig and take away antiquities without permission. This constitutes a crime not to be expiated without years of imprisonment in the Tourah stone quarries. The price of the blue bowl was £3. This at once betrayed it, for no one knows better than these sellers of antiquities the value of the genuine article. £20 or more would not have bought it, had he really dug it up out of a tomb. When I declined to buy the bowl, he produced various fragments of alabaster vessels which were genuine enough, and then some odd Ushebti figures, genuine but very poor in make and colour, and not worth the trouble of taking home. When these were declined, he still ran alongside of my donkey for perhaps half a mile, from time to time casting hunted looks at the mounted policeman not very far away. Presently he cast an agonised look at me and made a sound indicative of silence; then he produced a statue bound up in old rags, thrust it on my saddle in front of me, and with exceedingly well-acted fright, implored me not to let the policeman see it. Our conversation was carried on in Arabic, so that he knew well that I lived in the country, and yet he looked me straight in the face, and with his hand on his heart, lied.