PREFACE.
 

In 1907 I published a work entitled " The Egyptian
Sudan," in which I gave some account of the history of
that country in ancient and modern times, and a descrip¬
tion of the excavations which 1 had made on the pyramid-
fields of Napata and the Island of Meroe, during the
years 1899-1905, for the Trustees of the British Museum.
After the publication of that work, I decided to put on
record, when circumstances should permit, a narrative
of my three Missions to Mesopotamia in 1887, 1888
and 1890, and of my many Missions to Egypt to excavate
and to acquire antiquities for the Trustees of the British
Museum, and the present volume is the result of this
decision. At the suggestion of friends I have prefaced
my narrative by some notes on the influences and
circumstances which led me to study the ancient
languages of Western Asia, Egypt, and Ethiopia, and
determined the work of my life in the Department of
Oriental Antiquities,^ in the British Museum.

In the present volume, as in my work on the Egyptian
Sudan, the narrative is based on series of letters written
to my wife. With one exception, these letters all
reached home, thanks to the arrangements that I made
personally with the Tattariyin, or Turkish postal
couriers; and my note-books furnish the main facts
in the period covered by the missing letter.

In the course of my narrative, I have often given the
names of people who have helped me in my work abroad.
But there are many others whom I have not named,

^ The title of the Department was changed by the Trustees in 1886
to ** Department of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities."