Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/163

Rh remark which Sir Peter Teazle makes in the last act of the 'School for Scandal.

"What pregnant remark?"

It's a damned wicked world, Sir Oliver, and the fewer people we praise the better.' I advise you to exercise a certain caution in extolling the honesty and piety of the early Egyptians or, at any rate, in congratulating them on their universal innocence of the crime of tomb-robbing."

"You don't mean to say that this particular form of sacrilegious burglary is an ancient"

"Only just upon three thousand years old. The earliest recorded case was about 1100 "

"Recorded?"

"Yes, to be sure. Ask some Egyptologist to give you a translation of the passages about it in the Abbott and Amherst papyri. You will find enough there to convince you that the early Egyptians knew a thing or two about mummy-snatching, and that K