EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES. 611 



G. Botti, conservator of the museum; the steles of the middle empire, 

 by Willoughby Fraser; those of the Ptolemaic epoch, by Ahmed-bey 

 Kiamal, and the monuments of the Ramessides, by G. Daressy. 



It should be noticed that foreign scholars unite in this work with the 

 members of the Service of Antiquities. Each author is responsible for 

 his publications, the Service of Antiquities contenting itself with put- 

 ting all the memoirs in the same style of type, and with the execution 

 of the volumes. 



The third series will embrace only the description of the principal 

 discoveries. I thought it necessary to preserve for science the details 

 of the researches and discoveries, which unfortunately thus far have 

 been too often neglected. This collection begins this year in a volume 

 on my excavations at Dahchour, for which Messrs. Legrain, Jequier, 

 Loret, Fouquet, and Berthelot have been willing to give me their scien- 

 tific assistance. 



The first idea of these publications came to me on my arrival in 

 Egypt, but I have had recourse to my collaborators, Messrs. U. Bouri- 

 ant, G. Jequier, and G. Legrain, to arrange the details for the execu- 

 tion of my projects. I can not sufficiently express my gratitude for 

 their efforts and their judicious observations, of which the first result 

 has been the printing of this volume from Assouan to Ombos, which I 

 have the honor to offer to the congress. 



These are the results of the efforts of the Service of Antiquities dur- 

 ing these last two years. We wish, above all, to put at the disposition 

 of scholars all the documents that will aid them in their studies. Our 

 excavations, our clearings of monuments, our classification of the muse- 

 ums, and our publications have only this purpose. 



WORK OF THE INSTITUTE. 



Charged by the Egyptian Institute to represent it before you, I will 

 retrace in a summary manner the work of this company since I have 

 had the honor to take part in it. 



Our institute has not, it is true, the pretension to rival the great sci- 

 entific institutions of the world. It treats, only very rarely, questions 

 of general interest; but it is attached to the soil of Egypt, examining 

 it from every point of view, and in making the land of the Pharaohs 

 known, to its slightest details, it responds to the expectations and 

 hopes of its founders, Monge, Bonaparte, and that constellation of emi- 

 nent men who for nearly a hundred years have opened to civilization 

 and science these lands, formerly closed. 



During the last two years technical specialists have furnished mem- 

 oirs to the bulletin of the institute and all have related to Egypt. Dr. 

 Schweinfurth has given us attractive studies on the geology and stra- 

 tigraphy of the Egyptian soil; M. Piot, a curious thesis on the fossil 

 bones of a kind of antelope which formerly lived in the desert. 



Prehistoric Egyptian, or better, the practice of stone cutting in the 



