Benson, Margaret; Gourlay, Janet: The temple of Mut in Asher: an account of the excavation of the temple and of the religious representations and objects found therein, as illustrating the history of Egypt and the main religious ideas of the Egyptians (London, 1899)

CHAP. II.]

THE EXCAVATORS.

'5

all the world over. The men—with their com-
paratively poor physique, their loss of time from
childish want of method and from carelessness, with
their vigorous discussions and their chants when any-
thing has to be hauled or lifted, with their hoes and
baskets instead of spades and wheelbarrows—get
through the work in very amateur fashion com-
pared to the men of an industrial nation.

Over and above the regular wages there is the
chance of backsheesh for discoveries. There can be
no regular rate of backsheesh, and it is not even
given on any universally acknowledged principle.
The officials of the Government excavation at
Karnak during these same years considered it a
more satisfactory plan to increase supervision and
give practically no backsheesh. Professor Petrie
at the Ramesseum inclined to pay backsheesh to the
full amount of the object found, if this was small and
could have been stolen ; and the excavators for the
Egypt Exploration Fund gave as the maximum
backsheesh a clay's wages. Thus three distinct
principles were then reigning in excavations close
together.

The principle of backsheesh must be determined
by considerations of expediency. The object is to
create an inducement to activity and a counter-
inducement to the price offered (if the object can be
stolen) by tourists and antiquity dealers.

Men working in ground that is not theirs, to
discover monuments of a race alien to their own,