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by his secretary, Gregory, began the checking of the finds, moving from one gang to the next. Gregory had his own secretary in attendance, a proudly smiling boy named Yusuf, whose special duty it was to bear the pen and the large red account book. Bringing up the rear were two men, one with a wicker basket, the other with a number of small boxes, not regular jobs these, but assigned from day to day and much coveted—the standard rate was three piastres per man.
    At his approach the groups stopped work and squatted in a line. He began always with the senior member, the pickman, first inquiring the name.
    “Qasmagi?”
    “Daud Muhammad.”
    “What have you got?”
    Daud Muhammad had the handle and lower part of a large terra-cotta pot with a crude design of crosses incised around the base, some very small pieces of copper beaten out flat, fragments of painted pottery, and the bone haft of a knife much chipped away.
    The smaller things Somerville scrutinized briefly then cast aside, without regard for any hopes the pickman might have set on them. The bone implement went into one of the boxes; the pieces of pottery were placed in the basket. This done, he considered for some moments. It was general practice to pay baksheesh for objects found, in addition to the daily wage. It was an insurance against theft and encouraged the workpeople to keep their eyes open. And the possibility of some large reward appealed to the gambling instinct, strong in most Arabs. Baksheesh accounted for about 20 percent of the total wage bill. But it was always necessary to lend weight by a pause for consideration.
    “Four piastres,” he said, in clear and distinct tones.
    This was immediately repeated in a loud voice by the pickman, both as public acknowledgment and as an aid to memory. The pen and the account book were handed to Gregory; Yusuf crouched and presented his back so that the name and the amount could be entered. There were four Daud Muhammads working on the site, and some further name or distinguishing feature had to be added so as to avoid confusion. This one was Daud Muhammad the Pockmarked. At the end of the week Gregory would add up the amounts, a difficult and complicated feat of arithmetic, sometimes disputed by the men themselves if the total did not correspond to their memory of it.
    Somerville repeated the procedure with the remaining members of the group before moving on. The basket people sometimes made small finds, beads, rings, seals—objects that had escaped the notice of the spademan when the baskets were being filled.
    Moving from group to group, he worked his way up the side of the mound. There were more fragments of pottery, some lapis lazuli beads, an almost intact cylinder seal with a design of foliage on it. A better than usual day, nothing outstanding. The seal looked interesting, though it would need careful cleaning with a solution of alcohol before much could be known for sure about it.
    “Where was this found?” he asked the spademan who had found it. The man pointed some yards to his right, on the eastern side of the mound, where a short lateral trench had been dug. It was in this area that the piece of ivory had been found.
    Another group was working at the limit of this trench, and Somerville approached them now.
    “Qasmagi?”
    “Hassan Muhammad Ibrahim.”
    “What have you got?”
    But Hassan Muhammad did not answer at once, giving instead a broad and triumphant smile. There was a cloth at his feet as he squatted there, and he glanced down at this now, still delaying.
    “What is it?” Palmer said. “What have you got?”
    With the air of a conjurer the pickman drew the cloth away and lifted out with both hands a piece of stone, the shape of a narrow rectangle, broken at the edges, about a foot in length.
    Somerville took it from him and looked down at it. It weighed less than he had expected, being no more than a couple of inches in thickness. Impacted clay obscured much of the detail, but he