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South of Aswan and Philse begins Nubia. The Nubian language, which is quite different from Arabic, is spoken by everybody on the island of Elephantine, and its various dialects are used as far south as Dongola, where Arabic again is generally spoken till we reach the land of the negroes, south of Khartum. In Ptolemaic and Roman days the Nubians were a powerful people, and the whole of Nubia and the modern North Sudan formed an independent kingdom, ruled by queens who bore the title or name of Candace. It was the eunuch of a Candace who was converted to Christianity as he was returning from a mission to Jerusalem to salute Jehovah. "Go and join thyself unto his chariot" was the command to Philip, and when the Ethiopian had heard the gospel from his lips he went on his way rejoicing. The capital of this Candace was at Meroë, the modern Bagarawiya, near Shendi. Here, and at Naga not far off, are the remains of the temples of the Can-daces, great buildings of semi-barbaric Egyptian style. For the civilization of the Nubians, such as it was, was of Egyptian origin. Ever since Egyptian rule had been extended southwards to Jebel Barkal, beyond Dongola, in the time of Amenhetep II, Egyptian culture had influenced the Nubians. Amenhetep III built a temple to Amen at Napat
The monuments of this Nubian kingdom, the temples of Jebel Barkal, the pyramids of Nure close by, the pyramids of Bagarawiya, the temples of Wadi Ben Naga, Mesawwarat en-Naga, and Mesawwarat es-Sufra ("Mesawwarat" proper), were originally investigated by Cailliaud and afterwards by Lepsius. During the last few years they and the pyramids excavated by Dr. E. A. Wallis-Budge, of the British Museum, for the Sudan government, have been again explored. As the results of his work are not yet fully published, it is possible at present only to quote the following description from Cook's Handbook for Egypt and the Sudan (by Dr. Budge), p. 6, of work on the pyramids of Jebel Barkal: "the writer excavated the shafts of one of the pyramids here in 1897, and at the depth of about twenty-five cubits found a group of three chambers, in one of which were a number of bones of the sheep which was sacrificed there about two thousand years ago, and also portions of a broken amphora which had held Rho-dian wine. A second shaft, which led to the mummy-chamber, was partly emptied, but at a further depth of twenty cubits water was found. The high-water mark of the reservoir when full is and, as there were no visible means for pumping it out, the mummy-chamber could not be entered." With regard to the Bagarawîya pyramids, Dr. Budge writes, on p. 700 of the same work,
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