make an admirable soldier if he only wished to kill some one!” The fellahin furnish three squadrons, five batteries, three garrison artillery companies and nine battalions.
The well-educated Egyptian officer, with his natural aptitude for figures, does subordinate regimental routine carefully, and works well when supervised by men of stronger character. The ordinary Egyptian is not self-reliant or energetic by nature, and, like most Eastern people, finds it difficult to be impartial where duty and family or other personal relations are in the balance. The black soldier has, on the other hand, many of the finest fighting qualities. This was observed by British officers, from the time of the preliminary operations about Kosha and at the action near Ginnis in December 1885 down to the brilliant operations in the pursuit of the Mahdists on the Blue Nile after the action of Gedaref (subsequent to the battle of Omdurman), and the fighting in Kordofan in 1899, which resulted in the death of the khalifa and his amirs.
Black soldiers served in the army of Mehemet Ali, but their fighting value was not then duly appreciated. Prior to the death of the khalifa, many of his soldiers deserted to join their brethren who had been captured by the sirdar’s troops, during the gradual advance up the Nile. After 1899 many more enlisted: the greater number were Shilluks and Dinkas coming from the country between Fashoda and the equatorial provinces, but a proportion came from the western borders of the Sudan, and some from Wadai and Bornu. Many were absolute savages, difficult to control, wayward and thoughtless like children. Sudanese are very excitable and apt to get out of hand; unlike the fellahs they are not fond of drill, and are slow to acquire it; but their dash, pugnacious instincts and desire to close with an enemy, are valuable military qualities. The Sudanese, moreover, shoot better than the fellahin, whose eyesight is often defective. The Sudanese captain can seldom read or write, and is therefore in the hands of the Egyptian-born company quartermaster-sergeant as regards pay and clothing accounts. He is slow, and as a rule has little knowledge of drill. Nevertheless he is self-reliant, much respected by his men, and can be trusted in the field to carry out any orders received from his British officer. The most efficient companies in the Sudanese battalions are apparently those in which the captain is a black and the lieutenants are Egyptians.
In 1908 the Egyptian army, with a total establishment of 18,000, consisted of three squadrons of cavalry (one composed of Sudanese) each numbering 116 men; four batteries of field artillery and a Maxim battery, horses and mules being used, with a total strength of 1257 of all ranks; the camel corps, 626 of all ranks (fellahin and Sudanese); and nine fellahin and six Sudanese infantry battalions, 10,631 of all ranks. Every battalion receives two additional companies on mobilization and takes the field with six companies.
The armament of the infantry is Martini-Henry rifle and bayonet; of the cavalry, lance, sword and carbine.
There are seven gunboats on the Nile.
The medical department (reorganized in 1883 by Surgeon-Major J. G. Rogers at the time of the cholera epidemic) controls in peace fourteen station hospitals, and in war furnishes a mobile field hospital to each brigade. There are also veterinary station hospitals. The supply department controls mills at Tura, Halfa and Khartum.
The stringent system of selecting British officers, originated by the first sirdar in 1883, is shown by the fact that of the 24 employed in creating the army, 14 rose to be generals. The competition for employment in the army is still severe. In 1908 there were 140 British warrant and non-commissioned officers. Four of the fellahin battalions were officered by Orientals; in the other five, British officers commanded. Seven officers were employed with the artillery, six with the camel corps. Each of the Sudanese battalions had four British officers, and each squadron of cavalry one. Twelve medical and two veterinary officers are also employed departmentally, as well as officers acting as directors of supply, &c. Since the assumption of command by the third sirdar, Colonel (afterwards Lord) Kitchener, the ordnance, supply and engineer services have been separately administered, and a financial secretary is charged with the duty of preparing the budget, making contracts, &c. The total annual expenditure is £500,000.
The reorganized military school system under British control, for supplying officers, dates from 1887. The course lasts for about two years, and two hundred students can be accommodated. After the reconquest of the Sudan one-fourth of the cadets in the military school of Cairo were Sudanese. Later, however, the Sudanese cadets were transferred to a branch school at Khartum.
The army raised by the first sirdar in January 1883 was highly commended for its work on the line of communication in 1884–1885, and its artillery and camelry distinguished themselves in the action at Kirbekan in February 1885. Colonel Sir Francis Grenfell succeeded General Sir Evelyn Wood in March 1885, and while under his command the army continued to improve, and fought successful actions at Gemaiza, Argin, Toski and Tokar. At Toski the Dervish force was nearly annihilated. In March 1892 Colonel Kitchener succeeded General Sir Francis Grenfell, and four years later began his successful reconquest of the Sudan. In June 1896, owing to the indefatigable exertions of Major Wingate, a perfected system of secret intelligence enabled the sirdar to bring an overwhelming force of 6 to 1 against the Dervish outpost at Firket and destroy it. In September 1896 a skirmish at Hafir, with similarly successful tactics, gave the British commander the possession of Dongola. On the 7th of August 1897 Colonel Hunter surprised and annihilated a weak Dervish garrison at Abu Hamed, to which place, by the 31st of October 1897, a railway had been laid across the Nubian desert from Wadi Halfa, a distance of 230 m., the “record” construction of 5300 yds surveyed, embanked and laid in one day having been attained. On the 26th of December 1897 the Italian troops handed over Kassala to Colonel Parsons, R.A. On the 8th of April 1898 a British division, with the Egyptian army, destroyed the Dervish force under the amir Mahmud Ahmed, on the Atbara river. On the 2nd of September the khalifa attacked the British-Egyptian troops at Kerreri (near Omdurman), and being routed, his men dispersed; Khartum was occupied, and on the 19th of September the Egyptian flag was rehoisted at Fashoda. On the 22nd of September 1898 Gedaref was taken from the amir Ahmed Fedil by Colonel Parsons, and on the 26th of December the army of Ahmed Fedil was finally defeated and dispersed near Roseires. The khalifa’s army, reduced to an insignificant number, after several unsuccessful engagements withdrew to the west of the Nile, where it was attacked, on the 24th of November 1899, after a forced march by Colonel Wingate, and annihilated. The khalifa himself was killed; while the victor, who had joined the Egyptian army in 1883 as aide-de-camp to the first sirdar, in December 1899 became the fourth sirdar, as Major-General Sir F. R. Wingate, K.C.B., K.C.M.G., D.S.O., &c. (E. Wo.)
II. Ancient Egypt
A. Exploration and Research.—Owing to its early development of a high civilization with written records, its wealth, and its preservative climate, Egypt is the country which most amply repays archaeological research. It is especially those long ages during which Egypt was an independent centre of culture and government, before its absorption in the Persian empire in the 6th century B.C., that make the most powerful appeal to the imagination and can often justify this appeal by the splendour of the monuments representing them. Later, however, the history of Hellenism, the provincial history of the Roman empire, the rise of Christianity and the triumph of Islam successively receive brilliant illustration in Egypt.
As early as the 17th century travellers began to bring home specimens of ancient Egyptian handiwork: a valuable stele from Sakkara of the beginning of the Old Kingdom was presented to the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford in 1683. In the following century the Englishman R. Pococke (1704–1765), the Dane F. L. Norden (1708–1742), both travelling in 1737, and others later, planned, described or figured Egyptian ruins in a primitive way and identified many of the sites with cities named in classical authors. Napoleon’s great military expedition in 1798 was accompanied by a scientific commission including artists and archaeologists, the results of whose labours fill several of the magnificent volumes of the Description de l’Égypte. The antiquities collected by the expedition, including the famous Rosetta stone, were ceded to the British government at the capitulation of Alexandria, in 1801. Thereafter Mehemet Ali threw Egypt freely open to Europeans, and a busy traffic in antiquities began, chiefly through the agency of the consuls of different powers. From the year 1820 onwards the growth of the European collections was rapid, and Champollion’s decipherments (see below, § “Language and Writing”) of the hieroglyphic inscriptions, dating from 1821, added fresh impetus to the fashion of collecting, in spite of doubts as to their trustworthiness. In 1827 a combined expedition led by Champollion and Rosellini was despatched by the governments of France and Tuscany, and accomplished a great deal of valuable work in copying scenes and inscriptions. But the greatest of such expeditions was that of Lepsius, under the auspices of the
