344 Dr. E. A. "Wallis Budge. On the Orientation 



orders, that it was with the greatest difficulty that a couple of donkeys 

 were found for us to ride upon. The country is depopulated, and we 

 saw hundreds of well built houses falling into ruins. 



The first site visited was that of the temple of Meroe, of which 

 portions of several pillars in situ still remain. Before any satisfactory 

 measurements of angles of orientation could be obtained as regards 

 both the temple and the pyramids, I saw that a good deal of excava- 

 tion and clearing away of debris would have to be done ; but as no 

 men could be found to do the work — there being none in the country, 

 thanks to Dervish rule — I had to abandon that idea, and get the best 

 results I could from the examination of the ruins only. The temple 

 appears to have been surrounded by a wall which was built at some 

 considerable distance from it, and a very large number of people could 

 have assembled in the space between the wall and the temple. The 

 temple was, like most of the Sudan temples, dedicated to the Sun-god 

 Amen-Ra, whose visible type upon earth was the ram, and clearly the 

 ram peculiar to that portion of the Sudan. Of the shrine nothing 

 remains, but a figure of a ram in hard, bluish-grey stone lay among the 

 ruins of the pillars. The pyramids, over a hundred in number, which 

 are situated at no great distance to the north-east of the temple, are in 

 ruins, and the masonry which still remains is of the same class and 

 style as that of the most recent portions of the temple. At two or 

 three places in the plain round about are remains of buildings of the 

 Roman period, and near one of these was found a small Greek in- 

 scription, which I brought home ; it is now in the British Museum. 



Passing from the riverside ruins we made our way due east towards, 

 a chain of very low hills that lay in the distance, and after an hour's 

 ride we arrived at a crescent-shaped eminence which stood with its. 

 convex side towards us. The top of the eminence was about eighty 

 feet above the pebbly plain. When I had walked round the pyramids 

 it was easy to see that they must be divided for purposes of examina- 

 tion into three groups. The first group stood on the crescent-shaped 

 eminence mentioned above, and it seems as if this site originally con- 

 sisted of a series of low hills, from which the tops had been cut off and 

 thrown into the hollows between to make a level base for the pyramids. 

 The first group consisted originally of about twenty-five pyramid?. 

 The second group stood away to the south-east, and consisted origin- 

 ally of about twenty-two pyramids. The third group lay close to the 

 second, and the pyramids which belong to it are about twenty in 

 number. Of the pyramids of the first group there are abundant 

 remains, and it is easy to see that they reproduce all the characteristics 

 and all the angles of orientation with which we are familiar from the 

 pyramids of Gebel Barkal and Nuri, together with some others. Here, 

 as at Gebel Barkal and Nuri, and the pyramid field to the north-east 

 of the ruins of the temple of Meroe, we find a " step " pyramid larger. 



