The subsisting law against the exportation of antiquities was set aside in favor of Lepsius, compulsory labor was not yet abolished, and Muhamed ‘Ali, who governed in his viceroyalty with the irresponsible power of an absolute despot, wished to extend every assistance to the expedition. He caused a firman to be issued for Lepsius, which gave him unconditional permission to make any excavations which he might consider desirable. All the local authorities were charged to assist him in his undertakings, and Lepsius said that by means of the kavasses who had been assigned to him by the government, and on the strength of the firman, they obtained from the sheiks of the nearest villages and the mudirs of the provinces all the workmen and appliances needed for making and transporting his collection of antiquities. The necessary payments had of course to be made, but they never met with a refusal. At Fayoum, for instance, he employed a hundred and eight workmen in the excavation of the building which he considered to be the Labyrinth. Each man received two copper piasters a day (about twenty pfennige) and each child ten pfennige, or, if it was very industrious, fifteen pfennige, a day. Besides this some bread was given them. Under such conditions great things may be accomplished with comparatively small means. Nowadays it is only under exceptional circumstances, and within carefully prescribed limits, that a European is permitted to make excavations. The laborers ask quite a high price,--in Thebes I had to pay each man six full piasters (one mark, twenty pfennige)--and, if one disinters any monuments, even under the most favorable circumstances, only such single specimens are permitted to leave the country as the vice-regal museum is already rich in. Lepsius was more fortunately situated. The monuments which he found in Ethiopia and wished to add to his collection were brought from Mount Barcal to Alexandria on government vessels, and to these were also added three tombs, from the neighborhood of the pyramids of Ghizeh, which had been carefully taken to pieces with the help of four workmen sent expressly for the purpose from Berlin. On his departure from Egypt he received a special written permit for the removal of the collection, and the objects obtained were themselves presented to King Frederick William IV. of Prussia, by Muhamed ‘Ali.