Genuine lapis lazuli figures are extremely rare, and generally small, the most valuable ones in the museums being only a few inches high. It was thought at first that it would be impossible to make imitations which would pass for the real stone, but on the demand arising it has been met.

I was riding from Deir-el-Bahari down to the river one day when a youth rose up from the side of the road, and shuffled forward to speak to me.

“You buy anticas?” he said in a whisper, casting a sidelong glance of apprehension at a mounted policeman who was following at about seventy yards distance.

I told him to show me what he had, whereupon he produced a blue bowl of earthenware with a pattern of the lotus flower on it. Porcelain, he called it, “and very fine work, sir. I dig in the tombs, sir.”

Now if there was one thing that this youthful Ananias did not do, it was to dig in the tombs. It is one of the worst offences in Egypt to dig and take away antiquities without permission. This constitutes a crime not to be expiated without years of imprisonment in the Tourah stone quarries.

The price of the blue bowl was £3. This at once betrayed it, for no one knows better than these sellers of antiquities the value of the genuine article. £20 or more would not have bought it, had he really dug it up out of a tomb. When I declined to buy the bowl, he produced various fragments of alabaster vessels which were genuine enough, and then some odd Ushebti figures, genuine but very poor in make and colour, and not worth the trouble of taking home. When these were declined, he still ran alongside of my donkey for perhaps half a mile, from time to time casting hunted looks at the mounted policeman not very far away. Presently he cast an agonised look at me and made a sound indicative of silence; then he produced a statue bound up in old rags, thrust it on my saddle in front of me, and with exceedingly well-acted fright, implored me not to let the policeman see it. Our conversation was carried on in Arabic, so that he knew well that I lived in the country, and yet he looked me straight in the face, and with his hand on his heart, lied.

I unrolled the rags, and there was a wonderful statue of Horus, about six inches high, beautifully moulded, in what was apparently lapis lazuli, with most natural cracks and fissures running through the substance. It was the first time I had met with this particular imitation, and for a moment I was dumfounded. I thrust the statue under my coat, and turned to look at our friend, the policeman. He was still at the same distance away, watching us, but the smile had broadened on his face, and this gave the whole thing away. He had evidently witnessed the same play a dozen times before, and perhaps a dozen people had thrust that statue under their coats, and turned to look at him; so that he knew at once the stage which the negotiations had reached. Sometimes the young man would bring off the coup, when, no doubt, they would celebrate the occasion in a manner which would recompense the policeman for his non-interference.

“How much?” I asked.

“Thirty pounds,” was his reply.

“But it is very dear,” I objected, “and it does not seem to be a genuine antiquity.”

“By the Prophet,” swore the boy, “I dug it up myself in the tombs. Please, gentleman, do not let the policeman see.”

His intense anxiety was well acted. I looked at the statue again. It was the work of an artist, made in glass, with all the characteristics of the precious stone, and then sand-blasted to give it the appearance of age. Its value, had it been genuine, would have been many hundreds of pounds. Its actual value was a few shillings. Then we proceeded to bargain. I could have bought the figure for £3, but lower than that he would not come down; so I wrapped the statue up, and gave it back to him. Again he tried to sell me the blue bowl, offering this time to take ten shillings for it. When I said that I had no change, he produced a bag with a considerable quantity of gold and silver in it, and extracted an English half-sovereign. His perseverance was so marked that in the end I bought a few imitations, so that he might not have had his long run for nothing.

On returning to Luxor, I found in a shop a large head of Horus in blue, apparently lapis lazuli. It was in a glass case, and was evidently considered to be very valuable. I asked to see it, and inquired from the dealer what it was. He, decent old fellow, smiled, and, turning his hands upwards, mentioned the name of a well-known Egyptologist, connected with the museum, and said, “He says perhaps it is lapis lazuli.” As a matter of fact, it was glass imitation.

At the last Agricultural Show in Cairo, there were several stalls for the sale of antiquities. At one of these I was shown Hathor, the sacred cow, and the figure of a man. The price asked was £40 for the cow, and £30 for the figure of a man. They were both wrapped up in pieces of old rag, and only brought out after I had seen most of the antiquities on the stall. After informing the man that I knew they were only glass imitations, I tried to buy the figures, but it was impossible to get them for a reasonable sum. The lowest amount he would accept for the cow was £8, and £4 for the man.

PLATE III.

Later on, an itinerant vendor offered to sell me the figure shown in Plate X., No. 4. When we had agreed that it was imitation, and made of glass, I asked him to name a price. The lowest that he would take was £3. I was somewhat puzzled by the consistent high prices asked even for a fraud which had been detected, and after a great deal of argument, the man indignantly informed me that some men from America come each year to Cairo, at the end of the season, and purchase these blue glass figures for sums ranging between £3 and £7. They take them back to America, where they are sold for very high prices—my informant mentioned £50 and £100 each. This would quite explain why they refused to sell them to me at their intrinsic value.

There is a very considerable market for old iridescent glass. A small bottle will fetch from £1 to £3, and good specimens from £2 to £8. There is a moderate quantity of these bottles found in a district called Rakah. The bottles are extremely fragile, but good specimens are very beautiful objects and find quick buyers. There is a demand, and the ingenuity of the Egyptian is keenly exercised to meet it. Imitations are being made by pouring a chemical on the inside and the outside of specially made thin bottles and glasses. This forms a film which gives an appearance of iridescence; but in many cases the film can be detached with the point of a knife, and thus the fraud is made palpable.

One day a youth brought an iridescent bottle for me to buy, and as I happened to be out he sat down in the sun and waited. Upon my return he came up and began to explain that he had brought a beautiful bottle to sell to me, but had sat upon it and smashed it. Now he would sell it to me very cheap. Bottles made of iridescent glass are very thin, and the fragments were quite useless, but day after day the boy haunted the place, wanting to sell me the broken bottle “very cheap.” I much regretted the unfortunate accident, for the bottle, though small, had been of perfect shape and beautiful colour. At last I offered to buy another should he have one for sale, but he walked sullenly away and never came back.