98 MEMORIES OF MY LIFE 



and Mrs. Petrie at Abydos, where he and his very 

 capable party were about to excavate. Abydos lies 

 on the western side of the Nile, roughly one-third of 

 the way between Thebes and Cairo. We were met 

 at the railway station by that most capable lady, 

 then Miss, now Dr. Alice Johnson, mounted on the 

 one horse that the camp possessed, and who with 

 kurbash in hand and voluble Arabic extricated us 

 quickly from a crowd of troublesome natives, and rode 

 with us a distance of eight miles or so to the camp. 

 This consisted of a row of mud huts with a space in 

 front, the whole enclosed with a low mud wall and a 

 wicket gate. The pottery, etc., that had recently been 

 dug up was arranged in front of the huts. They had 

 only mats for doors. One of the huts was the dining- 

 room, and the others were for members of the party, 

 the farthest from the entrance being that of Mr. and 

 Mrs. Petrie. I was prepared for cold nights, but 

 found them more severe than I expected. Being 

 little short of eighty years old, I had lost much of 

 the resisting power of youth, and heaped every scrap 

 of clothing I could find over my body, with only 

 partial success. I amused myself on one occasion 

 by counting the number of layers of these that lay 

 on my chest, and found it to be seventeen. A single 

 skin rug capable of excluding the nimble dry air 

 would have been worth more than half of these flimsy 

 coverings. Our host and hostess were peculiarly 

 independent of ordinary comfort, but the consumption 

 of marmalade at their table was enormous. 



I had no idea before of the strenuous life led by a 

 great excavator. The mere digging can be delegated, 

 but the rest seemed to occupy every faculty of our 



