ABSTRACT
The Ra·n·user tablet has had pieces knocked off it. Only the Semerkhet scene, high up above the quarries, the second Sneferu scene, and the tablet of Tahutmes III have escaped the wanton mischief done by the ignorant savagery of so-called educated man. The Goths, who protected and preserved the monuments of Rome, were cultivated in comparison with the dividend-hunting Englishman. To find a parallel to the destruction by speculating companies and engineering we must look to the Turkish destruction on the Acropolis of Athens, or Mehemet Aly's wrecking of temples to build factories and magazines. In all these cases a little extra proportion of cost or labour would have attained exactly the same benefits without doing any injury. But the destroyers had not that education which would enable them to understand or value what they unluckily had the inclination to waste. Thus perishes year by year what might so easily be preserved by a little foresight and care. Had anyone proposed to carefully transfer these sculptures-the oldest scenes in the world-to a European museum, he would have met with reprobation for appropriating what had stood in position for six thousand years, unaltered and unharmed; and certainly onerous terms would have been demanded of him by the Government. But to abandon the whole to mere savage destruction was the easy course of neglect which befell them.
