In stating the answer of the archæologist we must return to the subject of illegal excavation, and must point out that scientific excavation prevents the desecration of the tombs by the inevitable plunderer, and the violent smashing up of the mummies in the crazy search for gold. I have come upon whole cemeteries ransacked by native thieves, the bodies broken and tossed about in all directions. I have seen mummies sticking up out of the sand like the “Aunt Sallies” of a country fair to act as a target for the stone-throwing of Egyptian boys. In the Middle Ages mummies were dragged from their tombs and exported to Europe to be used in the preparation of medicines. “The Egyptian mummies,” says Sir Thomas Browne in _Urn Burial_, “which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams.” There is some reason, also, to suppose that Pharaoh was sold for common manure. The scientific excavator anticipates the robber whenever it is possible to do so; and if, in the cause of science, the mummies, like the bodies of paupers in the dissecting-room, are sometimes exposed to what may appear to be indignities, these are surely not so great as the insults which they might suffer at the hands of the modern Egyptians, who, in this regard, care not a snap of the fingers for sentiment. Nevertheless, I am of opinion that the ancient dead should be treated with very great respect, and that they should be left in their tombs whenever it is consistent with scientific work to do so. Though the religious point of view may not be accepted, it is usually undesirable to act without regard to inherited sentiment; and as regards the dead, there is a very distinct feeling at the back of all our minds against any form of desecration. It is, no doubt, a survival which cannot be defended, but it should not be lightly dismissed on that account. Certain mummies of necessity must be examined and dissected, and for this purpose it is often necessary to remove them to scientific institutions; others, in certain cases, require to be available for public examination in museums. But there is no reason why the bones of one of the Pharaohs, for example, should now lie jumbled in a dusty old box under the table of a certain museum workroom; nor does there seem to be any particular object served in exposing other bodies, which do not happen to have the protective dignity of the mummies of Rameses the Second and Sethos the First, to the jibes and jests of the vulgar.