Chapter I: Preface

Some of the chapters in this book have appeared as articles in ‘Blackwood’s Magazine.’ The various journeys here recorded have been made in the ordinary course of the work of inspection, and have been reported in the usual official manner. These less technical descriptions have been written in leisure hours, and the illustrations here published are selected from a large number of photographs and drawings rapidly made by the wayside. The journey to Wady Hammamât and Kossair was made in the company of three painters, Mr Charles Whymper, Mr Walter Tyndale, and Mr Erskine Nicol, to whom my thanks are due, as also they are to Mr John Wells, with whom I travelled to Gebel Dukhân. I am indebted to Prof. Sayce and Mr Seymour de Ricci for several notes on the Greek inscriptions at Wady Abâd. On some of the journeys I was accompanied by Mahmoud Effendi Rushdy and Mahmoud Effendi Muhammed, Inspectors of the Department of Antiquities, whose assistance was valuable.

ARTHUR E. P. WEIGALL.

LUXOR,
UPPER EGYPT.

CONTENTS.
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PAGE
I. THE EASTERN DESERT AND ITS INTERESTS 1
II. TO THE QUARRIES OF WADY HAMMAMÂT 28
III. THE RED SEA HIGHROAD 56
IV. THE IMPERIAL PORPHYRY QUARRIES 90
V. THE QUARRIES OF MONS CLAUDIANUS 115
VI. THE TEMPLE OF WADY ABÂD 141
VII. A NUBIAN HIGHWAY 169

ILLUSTRATIONS.
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PLATE PAGE

THE HEAD OF WADY GATÂR _Frontispiece_