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)

18 THE TEMPLE OF MUT. [PART r.

Then they were called by name and came up in
orderly wise to receive payment. Without a com-
petent reis such order was difficult if not impossible
to maintain.

The engagement of the workers was by no means
orderly. On arrival at the temple on the appointed
day we found waiting twice as many workers as were
wanted, each with pick or basket. The men could
keep some decent show of order, but no sooner did
one begin to call out the names of the boys than
they burst all ranks, and surrounded us, each
shouting his own name and waving his basket in
the air. We were humiliated by the disorder until
we received the comforting assurance from one
excavator that he himself had broken two sticks in
the process.

The immense eagerness to pfet work at the waws
offered proves that the people are not ground down
to the economic minimum.

One point we had somewhat at heart. The com-
passionate tourist in Egypt, realising perhaps for the
first time the extreme severity of the fast, is inclined
to prohibit the keeping of Ramadan.

Ramadan lasts for a month, and the pious
Moslem fasts from three in the mornino- till after
the sun has set—fasts not from food only, but from
water and tobacco. The want of food does not
try the abstemious people severely ; but the want of
water is excessively painful to those who are work-
ing in the heat ; and the crowding of the meals