ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the story of human frailty than those in which the early explorers of Egypt describe how they wrangled and intrigued, lied and cheated. Herodotus has named at the very beginning of the story of the exploration of ancient Egypt as the pioneer of pioneers. The early story of Egyptian exploration is not the story of pure research, conducted for the love of truth and of antiquity, but very often merely the story of how the representative of France strove with the representative of Britain or Italy for the possession of some ancient monument whose capture might bring glory to his nation, or profit to his own purse. The consuls of the various European powers played an ignoble but doubtless lucrative part, lasted for more than thirty years, in spite of the protests of men like Champollion, who could understand the irreparable loss which was being inflicted on the infant science of Egyptology.
