It proved to be a long and costly business, but as he did not mind spending the money, that was no obstacle.

For four winters we worked at it, employing several hundred men.

As we went on we discovered that although not one of the largest, the temple, owing to its having been buried by the sand during, or shortly after the Roman epoch, remained much more perfect than we had expected, because the early Christians had never got at it with their chisels and hammers.
Before long I hope to show you pictures and photographs of the various courts, etc., so I will not attempt to describe them now.
"It is a temple to Isis--built, or rather rebuilt over the remains of an older temple on a site that seems to have been called Amada, at any rate in the later days, and so named after a city in Nubia, apparently by one of the Amen-hetep Pharaohs who had conquered it.
Its style is beautiful, being of the best period of the Egyptian Renaissance under the last native dynasties.
"At the beginning of the fifth winter, at length we approached the sanctuary, a difficult business because of the retaining walls that had to be built to keep the sand from flowing down as fast as it was removed, and the great quantities of stuff that must be carried off by the tramway.

In so doing we came upon a shallow grave which appeared to have been hastily filled in and roughly covered over with paving stones like the rest of the court, as though to conceal its existence.

In this grave lay the skeleton of a large man, together with the rusted blade of an iron sword and some fragments of armour.