.

     *The early portion of this chapter is selected, by kind
     permission of Dr. Henry Smith Williams, from his "History
     of the Art of Writing," Copyright, 1902 and 1903.

The Rosetta Stone: The Discoveries of Dr. Thomas Young: The Classification of the Egyptian Alphabet by Champollion: Egyptian Love-songs and the Book of the Dead

Conspicuously placed in the great hall of Egyptian antiquities, in the British Museum, is a wonderful piece of sculpture known as the Rosetta Stone. A glance at its graven surface suffices to show that three sets of inscriptions are recorded there. The upper one, occupying about one-fourth of the surface, is a pictured scroll, made up of chains of those strange outlines of serpents, hawks, lions, and so on, which are recognised, even by the least initiated, as hieroglyphics. The middle inscription, made up of lines, angles, and half-pictures, one might suppose to be a sort of abbreviated or shorthand hieroglyphic. The third, or lower, inscription, is manifestly Greek, obviously a thing of words. If the screeds above be also made of words, only the elect have any way of proving the fact.

Fortunately, however, even the least scholarly observer is left in no doubt as to the real import of the thing he sees, for an obliging English label tells us that these three inscriptions are renderings of the same message, and that this message is a "decree of the Priests of Memphis conferring divine honours on Ptolemy V., Epiphanes, King of Egypt, B.C. 195." The label goes on to state that the upper transcription (of which, unfortunately, only parts of the last dozen lines or so remain, the slab being broken) is in "the Egyptian language, in hieroglyphics, or writing of the priests"; the second inscription in the same language, "in demotic, or the writing of the people"; and the third "in the Greek language and character."

Then comes a brief biography of the Rosetta Stone itself, as follows: "This stone was found by the French in 1798 among the ruins of Fort St. Julian, near the Rosetta mouth of the Nile. It passed into the hands of the British by the treaty of Alexandria, and was deposited in the British Museum in the year 1801." There is a whole volume of history in that brief inscription, and a bitter sting thrown in, if the reader chance to be a Frenchman. Yet the facts involved could scarcely be suggested more modestly. They are recorded much more bluntly in a graven inscription on the side of the stone, which runs: "Captured in Egypt by the British Army, 1801." No Frenchman could read those words without a sinking of the heart.

The value of the Rosetta Stone depended on the fact that it gave promise, even when originally inspected, of furnishing a key to the centuries-old mystery of the hieroglyphics. For two thousand years the secret of these strange markings had been forgotten. Nowhere in the world—quite as little in Egypt as elsewhere—had any man the slightest clue to their meaning; there were even those who doubted whether these droll picturings really had any specific meaning, questioning whether they were not merely vague symbols of esoteric religious import and nothing more. And it was the Rosetta Stone that gave the answer to these doubters, and restored to the world a lost language and a forgotten literature.

The trustees of the British Museum recognised that the problem of the Rosetta Stone was one on which the scientists of the world might well exhaust their ingenuity, and they promptly published a carefully lithographed copy of the entire inscription, so that foreign scholarship had equal opportunity with British to try to solve the riddle. How difficult a riddle it was, even with this key in hand, is illustrated by the fact that, though scholars of all nations brought their ingenuity to bear upon it, nothing more was accomplished for a dozen years than to give authority to three or four guesses regarding the nature of the upper inscriptions, which, as it afterwards proved, were quite incorrect and altogether misleading. This in itself is sufficient to show that ordinary scholarship might have studied the Rosetta Stone till the end of time without getting far on the track of its secrets. The key was there, but to apply it required the inspired insight—that is to say, the shrewd guessing power—of genius.

The man who undertook the task had perhaps the keenest scientific imagination and the most versatile profundity of knowledge of his generation—one is tempted to say, of any generation. For he was none other than the extraordinary Dr. Thomas Young, the demonstrator of the vibratory nature of light.

Young had his attention called to the Rosetta Stone by accident, and his usual rapacity for knowledge at once led him to speculate as to the possible aid this tri-lingual inscription might give in the solution of Egyptian problems. Resolving at once to attempt the solution himself, he set to work to learn Koptic, which was rightly believed to represent the nearest existing approach to the ancient Egyptian language. His amazing facility in the acquisition of languages stood him in such good stead that within a year of his first efforts he had mastered Koptic and assured himself that the ancient Egyptian language was really similar to it, and had even made a tentative attempt at the translation of the Egyptian scroll. His results were only tentative, to be sure, yet they constituted the very beginnings of our knowledge regarding the meaning of hieroglyphics. Just how far they carried has been a subject of ardent controversy ever since. Not that there is any doubt about the specific facts; what is questioned is the exact importance of these facts. For it is undeniable that Young did not complete and perfect the discovery, and, as always in such matters, there is opportunity for difference of opinion as to the share of credit due to each of the workers who entered into the discovery.

Young's specific discoveries were these: (1) that many of the pictures of the hieroglyphics stand for the names of the objects actually delineated; (2) that other pictures are sometimes only symbolic; (3) that plural numbers are represented by repetition; (4) that numerals are represented by dashes; (5) that hieroglyphics may read either from the right or from the left, but always from the direction in which the animals and human figures face; (6) that proper names are surrounded by a graven oval ring, making what he called a cartouche; (7) that the cartouches of the preserved portion of the Rosetta Stone stand for the name of Ptolemy alone; (8) that the presence of a female figure after such cartouches, in other inscriptions, always denotes the female sex; (9) that within the cartouches the hieroglyphic symbols have a positively phonetic value, either alphabetic or syllabic; and (10) that several different characters may have the same phonetic value.

Just what these phonetic values are, Doctor Young pointed out in the case of fourteen characters, representing nine sounds, six of which are accepted to-day as correctly representing the letters to which he ascribed them, and the three others as being correct regarding their essential or consonantal element. It is clear, therefore, that he was on the right track thus far, and on the very verge of complete discovery. But, unfortunately, he failed to take the next step, which would have been to realise that the same phonetic values given the alphabetic characters within the cartouches were often ascribed to them also when used in the general text of an inscription; in other words, that the use of an alphabet was not confined to proper names. This was the great secret which Young missed, but which his French successor, Jean François Champollion, working on the foundation that Young had laid, was enabled to ferret out.

Young's initial studies of the Rosetta Stone were made in 1814; his later publications bore date of 1819. Champollion's first announcement of results came in 1822; his second and more important one in 1824. By this time, through study of the cartouches of other inscriptions, he had made out almost the complete alphabet, and the "Riddle of the Sphinx" was practically solved. He proved that the Egyptians had developed a relatively complete alphabet (mostly neglecting the vowels, as early Semitic alphabets did also) centuries before the Phoenicians were heard of in history.

Even this statement, however, must in a measure be modified. These pictures are letters and something more. Some of them are purely alphabetical in character, and some are symbolic in another way. Some characters represent syllables. Others stand sometimes as mere representatives of sounds, and again, in a more extended sense, as representatives of things, such as all hieroglyphics doubtless were in the beginning. In a word, this is an alphabet, but not a perfected alphabet such as modern nations generally use.

The word "hieroglyphic" is applied, as we have seen, to various forms of picture writing; but the original interpretation which the Greeks, who invented it, put upon the word was the "holy writing" of the Egyptians. The earliest Greek travellers who went to Egypt, when that country was finally opened up to the outside world, must have noticed the strange picture scrolls everywhere to be seen there on the temple walls, on obelisks, on statues, and mummy-cases, as well as on papyrus rolls, which were obviously intended to serve the purpose of handing down records of events to future generations.

It is now known that this writing of the Egyptians was of a most extraordinary compound character. Part of its pictures are used as direct representations of the objects presented. Here are some examples:

Again the picture of an object becomes an ideograph, as in the following instances:

Here the sacred ibis or the sacred bull symbolises the soul. The bee stands for honey, the eyes for the verb "to see." Yet again these pictures may stand neither as pictures of things nor as ideographs, but as having the phonetic value of a syllable. Such syllabic signs may be used either singly, as above, or in combination, as illustrated below.

But one other stage of evolution is possible, namely, the use of signs with a purely alphabetical significance. The Egyptians made this step also, and their strangely conglomerate writing makes use of the following alphabet:

In a word, then, the Egyptian writing has passed through all the stages of development, from the purely pictorial to the alphabetical, but with this strange qualification,—that while advancing to the later stages it retains the use of crude earlier forms. As Canon Taylor has graphically phrased it, the Egyptian writing is a completed structure, but one from which the scaffolding has not been removed.

The next step would have been to remove the now useless scaffolding, leaving a purely alphabetical writing as the completed structure. Looking at the matter from the modern standpoint, it seems almost incredible that so intelligent a people as the Egyptians should have failed to make this advance. Yet the facts stand, that as early as the time of the Pyramid Builders, say four thousand years B.C.,* the Egyptians had made the wonderful analysis of sounds, without which the invention of an alphabet would be impossible.

     * The latest word on the subject of the origin of the
     alphabet takes back some of the primitive phonetic signs to
     prehistoric times. Among these prehistoric signs are the
     letters A, E, I, O, U, (V), F and M.

They had set aside certain of their hieroglyphic symbols and given them alphabetical significance. They had learned to write their words with the use of this alphabet; and it would seem as if, in the course of a few generations, they must come to see how unnecessary was the cruder form of picture-writing which this alphabet would naturally supplant; but, in point of fact, they never did come to a realisation of this seemingly simple proposition. Generation after generation and century after century, they continued to use their same cumbersome, complex writing, and it remained for an outside nation to prove that an alphabet pure and simple was capable of fulfilling all the conditions of a written language.

Thus in practice there are found in the hieroglyphics the strangest combinations of ideographs, syllabic signs, and alphabetical signs or true letters used together indiscriminately.

It was, for example, not at all unusual, after spelling a word syllabically or alphabetically, to introduce a figure giving the idea of the thing intended, and then even to supplement this with a so-called determinative sign or figure:

Here Queften, monkey, is spelled out in full, but the picture of a monkey is added as a determinative; second, Qenu, cavalry, after being spelled, is made unequivocal by the introduction of a picture of a horse; third, Temati, wings, though spelled elaborately, has pictures of wings added; and fourth, Tatu, quadrupeds, after being spelled, has a picture of a quadruped, and then the picture of a hide, which is the usual determinative of a quadruped, followed by three dashes to indicate the plural number.*

     * Another illustration of the plural number is seen in the
     sign Pau, on page 298, where the plural is indicated in the
     same manner.

These determinatives are in themselves so interesting, as illustrations of the association of ideas, that it is worth while to add a few more examples. The word Pet, which signifies heaven, and which has also the meaning up or even, is represented primarily by what may be supposed to be a conventionalised picture of the covering to the earth. But this picture, used as a determinative, is curiously modified in the expression of other ideas, as it symbolises evening when a closed flower is added, and night when a star hangs in the sky, and rain or tempest when a series of zigzag lines, which by themselves represent water, are appended.

As aids to memory such pictures are obviously of advantage, but this advantage in the modern view is outweighed by the cumbrousness of the system of writing as a whole.

Why was such a complex system retained? Chiefly, no doubt, because the Egyptians, like all other highly developed peoples, were conservatives. They held to their old method after a better one had been invented. But this inherent conservatism was enormously aided, no doubt, by the fact that the Egyptian language, like the Chinese, has many words that have a varied significance, making it seem necessary, or at least highly desirable, either to spell such words with different signs, or, having spelled them in the same way, to introduce the varied determinatives.

Here are some examples of discrimination between words of the same sound by the use of different signs:

Here, it will be observed, exactly the same expedient is adopted which we still retain when we discriminate between words of the same sound by different spelling, as to, two, too; whole, hole; through, threw, etc.

But the more usual Egyptian method was to resort to the determinatives; the result seems to us most extraordinary. After what has been said, the following examples will explain themselves:

It goes without saying that the great mass of people in Egypt were never able to write at all. Had they been accustomed to do so, the Egyptians would have been a nation of artists. Even as the case stands, a remarkable number of men must have had their artistic sense well developed, for the birds, animals, and human figures constantly presented on their hieroglyphic scrolls are drawn with a fidelity which the average European of to-day would certainly find far beyond his skill.

Until Professor Petrie* published his "Medum," and Professor Erman his "Grammar," no important work on Egyptian hieroglyphic writing had appeared in recent years.

     * The information as to the modern investigation in
     hieroglyphics has been obtained from F. L. Griffith's paper
     in the 6th Memoir of the Archaeological Survey on
     Hieroglyphics from the collections of the Egypt Exploration
     Fund, London, 1894-95.

Professor Petrie's "Medum" is the mainstay of the student in regard to examples of form for the old kingdom; but for all periods detailed and trustworthy drawings and photographs are found among the enormous mass of published texts.*

     *To these may now be added the 105 coloured signs in Beni
     Hasan, Part III., and still more numerous examples in the
     Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund (Archaeological
     Survey), for the season 1895-96.

There is an important collection of facsimiles at University College, London, made for Professor Petrie by Miss Paget. A large proportion of these are copied from the collections from Beni Hasan and El Bersheh; others are from coffins of later periods, and have only paleographical interest; and others are from earlier coffins in the British Museum. But the flower of the collection consists in exquisite drawings of sculptured hieroglyphics, sometimes with traces of colour, from the tomb of Phtahhotep at Saqqâra, supplemented by a few from other tombs in the same neighbourhood, and from the pyramid of Papi I. These were all copied on the spot in 1895—96.

The only critical list of hieroglyphics with their powers published recently is that of Erman, printed in his "Grammar." The system by which he classifies the values—obscured in the English edition by the substitution of the term of "ideograph" for Wortzeichen (word-sign)—displays the author's keen insight into the nature of hieroglyphic writing, and the list itself is highly suggestive.

In the case of an altogether different system of ancient writing that has come down to us,—the old cuneiform syllabary of the Assyrians,—dictionaries, glossaries, and other works of a grammatical character have been preserved to the present day. Documents such as these are, of course, of material aid in regard to obscure texts, but in the case of the Egyptian writing the only surviving native word-list is the Sign Papyrus of Tanis,* which is, unfortunately, of the Roman Period, when the original meanings of the signs had been well-nigh forgotten.

     * Egypt Exploration Fund, Ninth Memoir, 1889-1890. This is
     an extra volume, now out of print.

It has its own peculiar interest, but seldom furnishes the smallest hint to the seeker after origins. The famous "Hieroglyphics of Horapollo" occasionally contains a reminiscence of true hieroglyphics, but may well be a composition of the Middle Ages, embodying a tiny modicum of half-genuine tradition that had survived until then.

Scattered throughout Egyptological literature there are, as may be imagined, many attempts at explaining individual signs. But any endeavour to treat Egyptian hieroglyphics critically, to ascertain their origins, the history of their use, the original distinction or the relationship of signs that resemble each other, reveals how little is really known about them. For study, good examples showing detail and colouring at different periods are needed, and the evidence furnished by form and colour must be checked by examination of their powers in writing.

In investigating the powers of the uses of the signs, dictionaries give most important aid to the student. The key-words of the meanings, viz., the names of the objects or actions depicted, are often exceedingly rare in the texts. Doctor Brugsch's great Dictionary (1867-82) frequently settles with close accuracy the meanings of the words considered in it, supplying by quotations the proof of his conclusions.*

     * There has been in preparation since 1897 an exhaustive
     dictionary, to be published under the auspices of the German
     government. The academies of Berlin, Gottingen, Leipsig and
     Munich have charge of the work, and they have nominated as
     their respective commissioners Professors Erman, Pietsch-
     mann, Steindorff, and Ebers (since deceased). This colossal
     undertaking is the fitting culmination of the labours of a
     century in the Egyptian language and writing. The collection
     and arrangement of material are estimated to occupy eleven
     years; printing may thus be begun about 1908.

     Despite its uncritical method of compilation, Levy's bulky
     Vocabulary (1887-1804), with its two supplements and long
     tables of signs, is indispensable in this branch of
     research, since it gives a multitude of references to rare
     words and forms of words that occur in notable publications
     of recent date, such as Maspero's excellent edition of the
     Pyramid Texts. There are also some important special
     indices, such as Stern's excellent "Glossary of the Papyrus
     Ebers," Piehl's "Vocabulary of the Harris Papyrus," Erman's
     "Glossary of the Westcar Papyrus," and Doctor Pudge's
     "Vocabulary" of the XVIIIth Dynasty "Book of the Dead."
     Schack's Index to the Pyramid Texts will prove to be an
     important work, and the synoptic index of parallel chapters
     prefixed to the work is of the greatest value in the search
     for variant spellings.

In 1872, Brugsch, in his "Grammaire Hiéroglyphique," published a useful list of signs with their phonetic and ideographic values, accompanying them with references to his Dictionary, and distinguishing some of the specially early and late forms. We may also note the careful list in Lepsius' "Ægyptische Lesestucke," 1883.

Champollion in his "Grammaire Egyptienne," issued after the author's death in 1836, gave descriptive names to large numbers of the signs. In 1848, to the first volume of Bunsen's "Egypt's Place in Universal History," Birch contributed a long list of hieroglyphics, with descriptions and statements of their separate phonetic and ideographic values. De Rougé, in his "Catalogue des signes hiéroglyphiques de l'imprimerie nationale," 1851, attached to each of many hundreds of signs and varieties of signs a short description, often very correct. He again dealt with the subject in 1867, and published a "Catalogue Raisonné" of the more usual signs in the first livraison of his "Chrestomathie Egyptienne." Useful to the student as these first lists were, in the early stages of decipherment, they are now of little value. For, at the time they were made, the fine early forms were mostly unstudied, and the signs were taken without discrimination from texts of all periods; moreover, the outlines of the signs were inaccurately rendered, their colours unnoted, and their phonetic and ideographic powers very imperfectly determined. Thus, whenever doubt was possible as to the object represented by a sign, little external help was forthcoming for correct identification. To a present-day student of the subject, the scholarly understanding of De Rougé and the ingenuity of Birch are apparent, but the aid which they afford him is small.

As a result of recent discoveries, some very interesting researches have been made in Egyptian paleography in what is known as the signary.* We reach signs which seem to be disconnected from the known hieroglyphs, and we are probably touching on the system of geometrical signs used from prehistoric to Roman times in Egypt, and also in other countries around the Mediterranean.

     * The information regarding the alphabet here given is
     derived from the Eighteenth Memoir of the Egypt Exploration
     Fund, 1899-1890.

How far these signs are originally due to geometrical invention, or how far due to corruption of some picture, we cannot say. But in any case they stood so detached from the hieroglyphic writing and its hieratic and demotic derivations, that they must be treated as a separate system. For the present the best course is to show here the similarity of forms between these marks and those known in Egypt in earlier and later times, adding the similar forms in the Karian and Spanish alphabets. The usage of such forms in the same country from about 6000 B.C. down to 1200 B.C., or later, shows that we have to deal with a definite system. And it seems impossible to separate that used in 1200 B.C. in Egypt from the similar forms found in other lands connected with Egypt from 800 B.C. down to later times: we may find many of these also in the Kretan inscriptions long before 800 B.C. The only conclusion then seems to be that a great body of signs—or a signary—was in use around the Mediterranean for several thousand years. Whether these signs were ideographic or syllabic or alphabetic in the early stages we do not know; certainly they were alphabetic in the later stage. And the identity of most of the signs in Asia Minor and Spain shows them to belong to a system with commonly received values in the later times.

What then becomes of the Phoenician legend of the alphabet? Certainly the so-called Phoenician letters were familiar long before the rise of Phoenician influence. What is really due to the Phoenicians seems to have been the selection of a short series (only half the amount of the surviving alphabets) for numerical purposes, as A = 1, E = 5, I = 10, N = 50, P = 100.

This usage would soon render these signs as invariable in order as our own numbers, and force the use of them on all countries with which the Phoenicians traded. Hence, before long these signs drove out of use all others, except in the less changed civilisations of Asia Minor and Spain. According to our modern authorities this exactly explains the phenomena of the early Greek alphabets; many in variety, and so diverse that each has to be learned separately, and yet entirely uniform in order. Each tribe had its own signs for certain sounds, varying a good deal; yet all had to follow a fixed numerical system. Certainly all did not learn their forms from an independent Phoenician alphabet, unknown to them before it was selected.

The work of Young and Champollion, says Doctor Williams,* gives a new interest to the mass of records, in the form of graven inscriptions, and papyrus rolls, and cases and wrappings, which abound in Egypt, but which hitherto had served no better purpose for centuries than to excite, without satisfying, the curiosity of the traveller.

     * History of the Art of Writing, Portfolio I., plate 8.

Now these strange records, so long enigmatic, could be read, and within the past fifty years a vast literature of translations of these Egyptian records has been given to the world. It was early discovered that the hieroglyphic character was not reserved solely for sacred inscriptions, as the Greeks had supposed in naming it; indeed, the inscription of the Rosetta Stone sufficiently dispelled that illusion. But no one, perhaps, was prepared for the revelations that were soon made as to the extent of range of these various inscriptions, and the strictly literary character of some of them.

A large proportion of these inscriptions are, to be sure, religious in character, but there are other extensive inscriptions, such as those on the walls of the temple of Karnak, that are strictly historical; telling of the warlike deeds of such mighty kings as Thûtmosis III. and Ramses II. Again, there are documents which belong to the domain of belles-lettres pure and simple. Of these the best known example is the now famous "Tale of Two Brothers"—the prototype of the "modern" short story.

Up to the middle of the nineteenth century, no Egyptologist had discovered that the grave-faced personages who lie in their mummy-cases in our great museums ever read or composed romance. Their literature, as far as recovered, was of an eminently serious nature,—hymns to the divinities, epic poems, writings on magic and science, business letters, etc., but no stories. In 1852, however, an Englishwoman, Mrs. Elizabeth d'Orbiney, sent M. de Rougé, at Paris, a papyrus she had purchased in Italy, and whose contents she was anxious to know. Thus was the tale of the "Two Brothers" brought to light, and for twelve years it remained our sole specimen of a species of literature which is now constantly being added to.

This remarkable papyrus dates from the thirteenth century B.C., and was the work of Anna, one of the most distinguished temple-scribes of his age. Indeed, it is to him that we are indebted for a large portion of the Egyptian literature that has been preserved to us. This particular work was executed for Seti II., son of Meneptah, and grandson of Ramses II. of the nineteenth dynasty, while he was yet crown prince.

The tale itself is clearly formed of two parts. The first, up to the Bata's self-exile to the Valley of the Cedar, gives a really excellent picture of the life and habits of the peasant dwelling on the banks of the Nile. The civilisation and moral conditions it describes are distinctly Egyptian. Were it not for such details as the words spoken by the cows, and the miraculous appearance of the body of water between the two brothers, we might say the ancient Egyptians were strict realists in their theory of fiction. But the second part leads us through marvels enough to satisfy the most vivid of imaginations. It is possible, therefore, that the tale as we have it was originally two separate stories.

The main theme of the story has occupied a great deal of attention. Its analogy to the Biblical narrative of Joseph and Potiphar's wife comes at once into the reader's mind. But there is just as close a similarity in the Greek tales, where the hero is killed or his life endangered for having scorned the guilty love of a woman, as in the stories of Hippolytus, Peleus, Bellerophon, and the son of Glaucus, not to mention the extraordinary adventure of Amgiad and Assad, sons of Prince Kamaralzaman, in the Thousand and One Nights.

The religions of Greece and Western Asia likewise contain myths that can be compared almost point for point with the tale of the two brothers. In Phrygia, for example, Atyo scorns the love of the goddess Cybele, as does Bata the love of Anpu's wife. Like Bata, again, he mutilates himself, and is transformed into a pine instead of a persea tree. Are we, therefore, to seek for the common origin of all the myths and romance in the tragedy of Anpu and Bata that was current, we know not how long, before the days of King Seti?

Of one thing we may be sure: of this particular type the Egyptian tale is by far the oldest that we possess, and, if we may not look to the valley of the Nile as the original home of the popular tale, we may justly regard it as the locality where it was earliest naturalised and assumed a true literary form.

Analogies to the second part of the tale are even more numerous and curious. They are to be found everywhere, in France, Italy, Germany, Hungary, in Russia and all Slavonic countries, Roumania, Peloponnesia, in Asia Minor, Abyssinia, and even India.

Of late years an ever-increasing accumulation of the literature of every age of Egyptian history has either been brought to light or for the first time studied from a wider point of view than was formerly possible. In making a few typical selections from the mass of this new material, none perhaps are more worthy of note than some of the love-songs which have been translated into German from Egyptian in "Die Liebespoesie der Alten Ægypten," by W. Max Muller. This is a very careful edition of the love-songs on the recto (or upper surface) of the Harris Papyrus 500, and of similar lyrics from Turin, Gizeh, and Paris. The introduction contains an account of Egyptian notions of love and marriage, gathered from hieroglyphic and demotic sources, and a chapter is devoted to the forms of Egyptian verse, its rhythm and accent. The interesting "Song of the Harper," which is found on the same Harris Papyrus, is also fully edited and collated with the parallel texts from the Theban tombs, and compared with other writings dealing with death from the agnostic point of view. The following extracts are translated from the German:

     LOVE-SICKNESS

     I will lie down within doors
     For I am sick with wrongs. T
     hen my neighbours come in to visit me.
     With them cometh my sister,
     She will make fun of the physicians;
     She knoweth mine illness.

     THE LUCKY DOORKEEPER

     The villa of my sister!—
     Her gates (are) in the midst of the domain—
     (So oft as) its portals open,
     (So oft as) the bolt is withdrawn,
     Then is my sister angry:
     O were I but set as the gatekeeper!
     I should cause her to chide me;
     (Then) I should hear her voice in anger,
     A child in fear before her!

     THE UNSUCCESSFUL BIRD-CATCHER

     The voice of the wild goose crieth,
     (For) she hath taken her bait;
     (But) thy love restraineth me,
     I cannot free her (from the snare);
     (So) must I take (home) my net.
     What (shall I say) to my mother,
     To whom (I am wont) to come daily
     Laden with wild fowl?
     I lay not my snare to-day
     (For) thy love hath taken hold upon me.

The most ardent interest that has been manifested in the Egyptian records had its origin in the desire to find evidence corroborative of the Hebrew accounts of the Egyptian captivity of the Jewish people.* The Egyptian word-treasury being at last unlocked, it was hoped that much new light would be thrown on Hebrew history. But the hope proved illusive. After ardent researches of hosts of fervid seekers for half a century, scarcely a word of reference to the Hebrews has been found among the Egyptian records.

     * The only inscription relating directly to the Israelites
     will be found described in Chapter VII.

If depicted at all, the Hebrew captives are simply grouped with other subordinate peoples, not even considered worthy of the dignity of names. Nor is this strange when one reflects on the subordinate position which the Hebrews held in the ancient world. In historical as in other matter, much depends upon the point of view, and a series of events that seemed all-important from the Hebrew standpoint might very well be thought too insignificant for record from the point of view of a great nation like the Egyptians. But the all-powerful pen wrought a conquest for the Hebrews in succeeding generations that their swords never achieved, and, thanks to their literature, succeeding generations have cast historical perspective to the winds in viewing them. Indeed, such are the strange mutations of time that, had any scribe of ancient Egypt seen fit to scrawl a dozen words about the despised Israelite captives, and had this monument been preserved, it would have outweighed in value, in the opinion of nineteenth-century Europe, all the historical records of Thûtmosis, Ramses, and their kin that have come down to us. But seemingly no scribe ever thought it worth his while to make such an effort.

It has just been noted that the hieroglyphic inscriptions are by no means restricted to sacred subjects. Nevertheless, the most widely known book of the Egyptians was, as might be expected, one associated with the funeral rites that played so large a part in the thoughts of the dwellers by the Nile. This is the document known as "The Chapters of the Coming-Forth by Day," or, as it is more commonly interpreted, "The Book of the Dead." It is a veritable book in scope, inasmuch as the closely written papyrus roll on which it is enscrolled measures sometimes seventy feet in length. It is virtually the Bible of the Egyptians, and, as in the case of the sacred books of other nations, its exact origin is obscure. The earliest known copy is to be found, not on a papyrus roll, but upon the walls of the chamber of the pyramid at Saqqâra near Cairo. The discovery of this particular recension of "The Book of the Dead" was made by Lepsius. Its date is 3333 B.C. No one supposes, however, that this date marks the time of the origin of "The Book of the Dead." On the contrary, it is held by competent authority that the earliest chapters, essentially unmodified, had been in existence at least a thousand years before this, and quite possibly for a much longer time. Numerous copies of this work in whole or in part have been preserved either on the walls of temples, on papyrus rolls, or upon the cases of mummies. These copies are of various epochs, from the fourth millennium B.C., as just mentioned, to the late Roman period, about the fourth century A.D.

Throughout this period of about four thousand years the essential character of the book remained unchanged. It is true that no two copies that have been preserved are exactly identical in all their parts. There are various omissions and repetitions that seem to indicate that the book was not written by any one person or in any one epoch, but that it was originally a set of traditions quite possibly handed down for a long period by word of mouth before being put into writing. In this regard, as in many others, this sacred book of the Egyptians is closely comparable to the sacred books of other nations. It differs, however, in one important regard from these others in that it was never authoritatively pronounced upon and crystallised into a fixed, unalterable shape. From first to last, apparently, the individual scribe was at liberty to omit such portions as he chose, and even to modify somewhat the exact form of expression in making a copy of the sacred book. Even in this regard, however, the anomaly is not so great as might at first sight appear, for it must be recalled that even the sacred books of the Hebrews were not given final and authoritative shape until a period almost exactly coeval with that in which the Egyptian "Book of the Dead" ceased to be used at all.

A peculiar feature of "The Book of the Dead," and one that gives it still greater interest, is the fact that from an early day it was the custom to illustrate it with graphic pictures in colour. In fact, taken as a whole, "The Book of the Dead" gives a very fair delineation of the progress of Egyptian art from the fourth millennium B.C. to its climax in the eighteenth dynasty, and throughout the period of its decline; and this applies not merely to the pictures proper, but to the forms of the hieroglyphic letters themselves, for it requires but the most cursory inspection to show that these give opportunity for no small artistic skill.

As to the ideas preserved in "The Book of the Dead," it is sufficient here to note that they deal largely with the condition of the human being after death, implying in the most explicit way a firm and unwavering belief in the immortality of the soul. The Egyptian believed most fully that by his works a man would be known and judged after death. His religion was essentially a religion of deeds, and the code of morals, according to which these deeds were adjudged, has been said by Doctor Budge, the famous translator of "The Book of the Dead," to be "the grandest and most comprehensive of those now known to have existed among the nations of antiquity."

CHAPTER VII—THE DEVELOPMENT OF EGYPTOLOGY

Mariette, Wilkinson, Bunsen, Brugsch, and Ebers: Erman's speech on Egyptology: The Egypt Exploration Fund: Maspero's investigations: The Temple of Bubàstis: Ancient record of "Israel": American interest in Egyptology.

Accompanying Napoleon's army of invasion in Egypt was a band of savants representative of every art and science, through whom the conqueror hoped to make known the topography and antiquities of Egypt to the European world. The result of their researches was the famous work called "Description de l'Egypte," published under the direction of the French Academy in twenty-four volumes of text, and twelve volumes of plates. Through this magnificent production the Western world received its first initiation into the mysteries of the wonderful civilisation which had flourished so many centuries ago, on the banks of the Nile. Egypt has continued to yield an ever-increasing harvest of antiquities, which, owing to the dry climate and the sand in which they have been buried, are many of them in a marvellous state of preservation. From the correlation of these discoveries the new science of Egyptology has sprung, which has many different branches, relating either to hieroglyphics, chronology, or archaeology proper.

The earliest and most helpful of all the discoveries was that of the famous Rosetta Stone, found by a French artillery officer in 1799, while Napoleon's soldiers were excavating preparatory to erecting fortifications at Fort St. Julien. The deciphering of its trilingual inscriptions was the greatest literary feat of modern times, in which Dr. Thomas Young and J. F. Champollion share almost equal honours.

Jean François Champollion (1790-1832) is perhaps the most famous of the early students of Egyptian hieroglyphs. After writing his "De l'écriture hiératique des anciens égyptiens" at Paris, he produced in 1824 in two volumes, his "Précis du système hiéroglyphique des anciens égyptiens," on which his fame largely depends, as he was the first to furnish any practical system of deciphering the symbolic writing, which was to disclose to the waiting world Egyptian history, literature, and civilisation. Champollion wrote many other works relating to Egypt, and may truly be considered the pioneer of modern Egyptology. While much of his work has been superseded by more recent investigations, he was so imbued with the scientific spirit that he was enabled securely to lay the foundation of all the work which followed.

The distinguished French savant, Augustus Mariette, (1821-1881) began his remarkable excavations in Egypt in the year 1850. The series of discoveries inaugurated by him lasted until the year 1880. Mariette made an ever-memorable discovery when he unearthed the famous Serapeum which had once been the burial-place of the sacred bulls of Memphis, which the geographer Strabo records had been covered over by the drifting sands of the desert even in the days of Augustus.

The Serapeum was in the neighbourhood of the Sphinx, and, on account of its great height, remained in part above the ground, and was visible to all passers-by; while everything else in the neighbourhood except the great Pyramid of Khûfûi was totally buried under the sand. Mariette worked his way along the passage between the Great Sphinx and the other lesser sphinxes which lay concealed in the vicinity, and thus gradually came to the opening of the Serapeum. In November, 1850, his labours were crowned with brilliant success. He discovered sixty-four tombs of Apis, dating from the eighteenth dynasty until as late as the reign of Cleopatra. He likewise found here many figures, images, ancient Egyptian ornaments and amulets, and memorial stones erected by the devout worshippers of antiquity. Fortunately for Egyptian archæology and history, nearly all the monuments here discovered were dated, and were thus of the highest value in settling the dates of dynasties and of the reigns of individual monarchs. Mariette afterwards discovered a splendid temple in the same place, which he proved to have been the famous shrine of the god Sokar-Osiris. He was soon appointed by the Egyptian Viceroy, Said Pasha, as director of the new museum of antiquities which was then placed at Bulak, in the vicinity of Cairo, awaiting the completion of a more substantial building at Gizeh. He obtained permission to make researches in every part of Egypt; and with varying success he excavated in as many as thirty-seven localities. In some of the researches undertaken by his direction, it is to be feared that many invaluable relics of antiquity may have been destroyed through the carelessness of the workmen. This is to be accounted for from the fact that Mariette was not always able to be present, and the workmen naturally had no personal interest in preserving every relic and fragment from the past. It is also to be regretted that he left no full account of the work which he undertook, and for this reason much of it had to be gone over again by more modern explorers.

In the Delta excavations were made at Sais, Bubastis, and elsewhere. Mariette also discovered the temple of Tanis, and many curious human-headed sphinxes, which probably belong to the twelfth dynasty, and represent its kings. He further continued the labours of Lepsius about the necropolis of Memphis and Saqqâra. Here several hundred tombs were discovered with the many inscriptions and figures which these contained. One of the most important of these findings—a superb example of Egyptian art—is the statue called by the Arabs "The Village Chief," which is now in the museum at Bulak. Mariette followed out his researches on the site of the sacred city of Abydos. Here he discovered the temple of Seti I. of the nineteenth dynasty.

324.jpg Types of Egyptian Columns: 1, 2, 3, Geometric ', 6-11, Botanical; 4, 5, 12, Hathoric.

On the walls are beautiful sculptures which are exquisite examples of Egyptian art, and a chronological table of the Kings of Abydos. Here Seti I. and Ramses IL, his son, are represented as offering homage to their many ancestors seated upon thrones inscribed with their names and dates.

Mariette discovered eight hundred tombs belonging for the most part to the Middle Kingdom. At Denderah he discovered the famous Ptolemaic temple of Hâthor, the goddess of love, and his accounts of these discoveries make up a large volume. Continuing his labours, he excavated much of the site of ancient Thebes and the temple of Karnak, and, south of Thebes, the temple of Medinet-Habu. At Edfu Mariette found the temple of Horus, built during the time of the Ptolemies, whose roof formed the foundation of an Arab village. After persevering excavations the whole magnificent plan of the temple stood uncovered, with all its columns, inscriptions, and carvings nearly intact.*

     * In connection with the architecture of the ancient
     Egyptian tombs, it is interesting to note that there was a
     development of architectural style in the formation of
     Egyptian columns not dissimilar in its evolution to that
     which is visible in the case of the Greek and Roman columns.

     The earliest Egyptian column appears to have been of a
     strictly geometrical character. This developed into a column
     resembling the Doric order. A second class of Egyptian
     column was based upon plant forms, probably derived from the
     practice of using reeds in the construction of mud huts. The
     chief botanical form which has come down to us is that of
     the lotus. A more advanced type of decoration utilised the
     goddess Hâthor for the support of the superincumbent weight
     and has its analogy in the decadent caraytides of late Roman
     times.

Owing to Mariette's friendship with the viceroy he was able to guard his right to excavate with strict exclusiveness. He was accustomed to allow other scholars the right to examine localities where he had been the first one to make the researches, but he would not even allow the famous Egyptologist, also his great friend, Heinrich Brugsch, to make excavations in new places. After his death, conditions were somewhat altered, although the general directorship of the excavations was still given exclusively to Frenchmen. The successors of Mariette Bey were Gaston Maspero, E. Grébault, J. de Morgan, and Victor Laret. But as time went on, savants of other nationalities were allowed to explore, with certain reservations. Maspero founded an archaeological mission in Cairo in 1880, and placed at its head, in successive order, MM. Lebebure, Grébault, and Bouriant. The first of all to translate complete Egyptian books and entire inscriptions was Emanuel de Rougé, who exerted a great influence upon an illustrious galaxy of French savants, who followed more or less closely the example set by him. Among these translators we may enumerate Mariette, Charles Deveria, Pierret, Maspero himself, and Revillout, who has proved himself to be the greatest demotic scholar of France.

England is also represented by scholars of note, among whom may be mentioned Dr. Samuel Birch (1813—85). He was a scholar of recognised profundity and also of remarkable versatility. One of the most important editorial tasks of Doctor Birch was a series known as "The Records of the Past," which consisted of translations from Egyptian and Assyrio-Babylonian records. Doctor Birch himself contributed several volumes to this series. He had also the added distinction of being the first translator of the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

Another English authority was Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson, who wrote several important works on the manners and customs of the ancient Egyptians. Wilkinson was born in 1797 and died in 1875. Whoever would know the Egyptian as he was, in manner and custom, should peruse the pages of his Egyptian works. His "Popular Account of the Ancient Egyptians" has been the chief source of information on the subject.

German scholars have done especially valuable work in the translation of texts from the Egyptian temples, and in pointing out the relation between these texts and historical events. Foremost among practical German archaeologists is Karl Richard Lepsius, who was born in 1810 at Naumburg, Prussia, and died in 1884 at Berlin. In his maturer years he had a professorship in Berlin. He made excursions to Egypt in an official capacity, and familiarised himself at first hand with the monuments and records that were his life-study. The letters of Lepsius from Egypt and Nubia were more popular than his other writings, and were translated into English and widely read.

Another famous German who was interested in the study of Egyptology was Baron Christian Bunsen (1791-1867). From early youth he showed the instincts of a scholar, but was prevented for many years from leading a scholar's life, owing to his active duties in the diplomatic service for Prussia at Rome and London. During the years 1848—67, Bunsen brought out the famous work called "Egypt's Place in Universal History," which Brugsch deemed to have contributed more than any other work in popularising the subject of Egyptology.

Heinrich Carl Brugsch was born at Berlin in 1827 and died there in 1894. Like Bunsen, he was a diplomatist and a scholar. He entered the service of the Egyptian government, and merited the titles of bey and subsequently of pasha. He became known as one of the foremost of Egyptologists, and was the greatest authority of his day on Egyptian writing. He wrote a work of standard authority, translated into English under the title of "The History of Egypt under the Pharaohs." The chronology of Egypt now in use is still based upon the system created by Brugsch, which, though confessedly artificial, nevertheless is able to meet the difficulties of the subject better than any other yet devised.

Among distinguished German Egyptologists must be mentioned Georg Moritz Ebers (1839-96). He is best known by his far-famed novels, whose subjects are taken from the history of ancient Egypt, perhaps the most popular being "An Egyptian Princess." Besides these popular novels and a valuable description of Egypt, Ebers also made personal explorations in the country, and discovered at Thebes the great medical papyrus, which is called the Papyrus Ebers. This remarkable document, to which he devoted so much labour, is our chief source of information regarding the practice of medicine as it existed, and would alone keep the name of Ebers alive among Egyptologists.

The leading German Egyptologist of to-day is Dr. Adolf Erman, who was born at Berlin in 1854. He is the worthy successor to Brugsch in the chair of Egyptology at the University of Berlin, and is director of the Berlin Egyptian Museum. His writings have had to do mainly with grammatical and literary investigations. His editions of the "Romances of Old Egypt" are models of scholarly interpretation. They give the original hieratic text, with translation into Egyptian hieroglyphics, into Latin and into German. Doctor Erman has not, however, confined his labours to this strictly scholarly type of work, but has also written a distinctly popular book on the life of the ancient Egyptians, which is the most complete work that has appeared since the writings of Wilkinson.

The memorable speech of Erman, delivered on the occasion of his election as a member of the Berlin Academy, sets forth clearly the progress made in the science of Egyptology and present-day tendencies. On that occasion he said:

"Some of our older fellow-specialists complain that we of the younger generation are depriving Egyptology of all its charm, and that, out of a delightful science, abounding in startling discoveries, we have made a philological study, with strange phonetic laws and a wretched syntax. There is doubtless truth in this complaint, but it should be urged against the natural growth of the science, and not against the personal influence of individuals or its development. The state through which Egyptology is now passing is one from which no science escapes. It is a reaction against the enthusiasm and the rapid advance of its early days.

"I can well understand to outsiders it may seem as though we had only retrograded during later years. Where are the good old times when every text could be translated and understood? Alas! a better comprehension of the grammar has revealed on every side difficulties and impediments of which hitherto nothing had been suspected. Moreover, the number of ascertained words in the vocabulary is continually diminishing, while the host of the unknown increases; for we no longer arrive at the meaning by the way of audacious etymologies and still more audacious guesses.

"We have yet to travel for many years on the arduous path of empirical research before we can attain to an adequate dictionary. There is indeed an exceptional reward which beckons us on to the same goal, namely, that we shall then be able to assign to Egyptian its place among the languages of Western Asia and of Africa. At present we do well to let this great question alone. As in the linguistic department of Egyptology, so it is in every other section of the subject. The Egyptian religion seemed intelligently and systematically rounded off when each god was held to be the incarnation of some power of nature. Now we comprehend that we had better reserve our verdict on this matter until we know the facts and the history of the religion; and how far we are from knowing them is proved to us by every text. The texts are full of allusions to the deeds and fortunes of the gods, but only a very small number of these allusions are intelligible to us.

"The time has gone by in which it was thought possible to furnish the chronology of Egyptian history, and in which that history was supposed to be known, because the succession of the most powerful kings had been ascertained. To us the history of Egypt has become something altogether different. It comprises the history of her civilisation, her art, and her administration; and we rejoice in the prospect that one day it may be possible in that land to trace the development of a nation throughout five thousand years by means of its own monuments and records. But we also know that the realisation of this dream must be the work of many generations.

"The so-called 'demotic' texts, which lead us out of ancient Egypt into the Græco-Roman period, were deciphered with the acumen of genius more than half a century ago by Heinrich Brugsch, but to-day these also appear to us in a new light as being full of unexpected difficulties and in apparent disagreement with both the older and the later forms of the language. In this important department we must not shrink from a revision of past work.

"I will not further illustrate this theme; but the case is the same in every branch of Egyptology. In each, the day of rapid results is at an end, and the monotonous time of special studies has begun. Hence I would beg the Academy not to expect sensational discoveries from their new associate. I can only offer what labor improbus brings to light, and that is small discoveries; yet in the process of time they will lead us to those very ends which seemed so nearly attainable to our predecessors."

The German school may perhaps be said to have devoted its time especially to labours upon Egyptian grammar and philology, while the French school is better known for its excellent work on the history and archaeology of ancient Egypt. On these topics the leading authority among all the scholars of to-day is the eminent Frenchman, Professor Gaston C. C. Maspero, author of the first nine volumes of the present work. He was born at Paris, June 24,1846. He is a member of the French Institute, and was formerly Professor of Egyptian Archeology and Ethnology in the Collège de France, and, more recently, Director of the Egyptian Museum at Bulak. His writings cover the entire field of Oriental antiquity. In this field Maspero has no peer among Egyptologists of the present or the past. He possesses an eminent gift of style, and his works afford a rare combination of the qualities of authority, scientific accuracy, and of popular readableness.

Some extraordinary treasures from tombs were discovered in the year 1881. At that date Arabs often hawked about in the streets what purported to be genuine works of antiquity. Many of these were in reality imitations; but Professor Maspero in this year secured from an Arab a funeral papyrus of Phtahhotpû I., and after considerable trouble he was able to locate the tomb in Thebes from which the treasure had been taken. Brugsch now excavated the cave, which was found to be the place where a quantity of valuable treasures had been secreted, probably at the time of the sacking of Thebes by the Assyrians. Six thousand objects were secured, and they included twenty-nine mummies of kings, queens, princes, and high priests, and five papyri, among which was the funeral papyrus of Queen Makeru of the twentieth dynasty. The mummy-cases had been opened by the Arabs, who had taken out the mummies and in some instances replaced the wrong ones. Many mummies of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties had been removed to this cave probably for safety, on account of its secrecy. Out of the twenty-nine mummies found here, seven were of kings, nine of queens and princesses, and several more of persons of distinction. The place of concealment was situated at a turn of a cliff southwest of the village of Deîr-el-Baharî.

The explorers managed successfully to identify King Raskamen of the seventeenth dynasty, King Ahmosis I., founder of the eighteenth dynasty, and his queen Ahmo-sis-Nofrîtari, also Queen Arhotep and Princess Set Amnion, and the king's daughters, and his son Prince Sa Amnion. They also found the mummies of Thûtmosis I., Thûtmosis II. and of Thûtmosis III. (Thûtmosis the Great), together with Ramses I., Seti I., Ramses XII., King Phtahhotpû II., and noted queens and princesses.

In the year 1883 the Egypt Exploration Fund was founded for the purpose of accurate historical investigation in Egypt. The first work undertaken was on a mound called the Tel-el-Mashuta, in the Wadi-et-Tumi-lat. This place was discovered to be the site of the ancient Pithom, a treasure-city supposed to have been built by the Israelites for Pharaoh. In the Greek and Roman period the same place had been called Hereopolis. M. Naville also discovered Succoth, the first camping-ground of the Israelites while fleeing from their oppressor, and an inscription with the word "Pikeheret," which he judged to be the Pihahiroth of the Book of Exodus. The next season the site of Zoan of the Bible was explored, a village now termed San.

Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie started work where a rim of red granite stood up upon one of the many mounds in the neighbourhood. The site of the ancient city had been here, and the granite rim was on the site of a temple. The latter had two enclosure walls, one of which had been built of sun-dried bricks, and was of extreme antiquity; the other was built of bricks of eight times the size and weight of modern bricks, and the wall was of very great strength. Dwelling-houses had been built in the locality, and coins and potsherds discovered. These remains Professor Petrie found to belong to periods between the sixth and twenty-sixth dynasties. Stones were found in the vicinity with the cartouche of King Papi from one of the earliest dynasties. There were also red granite statues of Ahmenemhâît I., and a black granite statue of Kind Usirtasen I. and of King Ahmenemhâît II., and a torso of King Usirtasen II. was found cut from yellow-stained stone, together with a vast number of relics of other monarchs. Parts of a giant statue of King Ramses II. were discovered which must have been ninety-eight feet in height before it was broken, the great toe alone measuring eighteen inches across, and the weight of the statue estimated to be about 1,200 tons. In addition to these relics of ancient monarchs, a large number of antiquities were discovered, with remains of objects for domestic use in ancient Egyptian society.

The explorations conducted at Tanis during 1883-84 brought to light objects mainly of the Ptolemaic period, because a lower level had not at that period been reached, but here many invaluable relics of Ptolemaic arts were unearthed. The results of researches were published at this date bearing upon the Great Pyramid. Accurate measurements had been undertaken by Professor Petrie, who was able to prove that during one epoch systematic but unavailing efforts had been made to destroy these great structures.

Professor Maspero discovered among the hills of Thebes an important tomb of the eleventh dynasty, which threw light upon obscure portions of Egyptian history, and contained texts of the "Book of the Dead." The following year he discovered the necropolis of Khemnis in the neighbourhood of Kekhrneen, a provincial town in Upper Egypt built on the site of the ancient Panopolis. The remains were all in a state of perfect preservation.

In July, 1884, Professor Maspero secured permission from the Egyptian government to buy from the natives the property which they held on the site of the Great Temple at Luxor, and to prevent any further work of destruction. These orders, however, were not carried out till early in 1885, when Maspero began excavating with one hundred and fifty workmen. He first unearthed the sanctuary of Amenhôthes III., with its massive roof. He brought to light the great central colonnade, and discovered a portico of Ramses II., and many colossi, which were either still erect or else had fallen on the ground. The columns of Amenhôthes III. were next explored, which were found to be among the most beautiful of all specimens of Egyptian architecture. It is believed that Luxor will prove to have been a locality of almost as great a beauty as Karnak.

During the season of 1884-85 Professor Petrie started excavations at the modern Nehireh, which he learned was the site of the ancient Naucratis.* Here many Greek inscriptions were found.

     * The investigations on this site were continued in the
     season of 1888-89.

This city was one of great importance and a commercial mart during the reign of Ahmosis, although in the time of the Emperor Commodus it had wholly disappeared. Two temples of Apollo were discovered, one of which was built from limestone in the seventh century B.C.; and the other was of white marble, beautifully decorated, and dating from the fifth century.

Magnificent libation bowls were also discovered here, some of which had been dedicated to Hera, others to Zeus, and others to Aphrodite. The lines of the ancient streets were traced, and a storehouse or granary of the ancient Egyptians was unearthed, also many Greek coins. Besides these were discovered votive deposits, cups of porcelain, alabaster jugs, limestone mortars; and trowels, chisels, knives, and hoes.

Much light was thrown by these discoveries on the progress of the ceramic arts, and many links uniting the Greek pottery with the Egyptian pottery were here for the first time traced. It was learned that the Greeks were the pupils of the Egyptians, but that they idealised the work of their masters and brought into it freer conceptions of beauty and of proportion.

M. Naville was engaged about this time in controversies as to the true site of this ancient Pithom. He also made, in 1886, a search for the site of Goshen. He believed he had identified this when he discovered at Saft an inscription dedicated to the gods of Kes, which Naville identified with Kesem, the name used in the Septuagint for Goshen. Others, however, disagree, and locate the site of Goshen at a place called Fakoos, twelve miles north of Tel-el-Kebir.

The explorations of 1885-86 started under the direction of Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie, Mr. F. Llewellen Griffith, and Mr. Ernest A. Gardiner. Gardiner set out in the direction of Naucratis, and Petrie and Griffith proceeded to explore the site of Tanis. The mound at which they worked, like many other localities of modern and ancient Egypt, has been known by a variety of names. It is called Tel Farum, or the Mound of the Pharaoh; Tel Bedawi, the Mound of the Bedouins; and Tel Nebesheh, after the name of the village upon this site. There are remains here of an ancient cemetery and of two ancient towns and a temple. The cemetery was found to be unlike those of Memphis, Thebes, or Abydos. It contained many small chambers and groups of chambers irregularly placed about a sandy plain. These were built mostly of brick, but there were other and larger ones built of limestone. A black granite altar of the reign of Ahmenemhait II. was discovered, and thrones of royal statues of the twelfth dynasty. Here were also found a statue of Harpocrates, a portion of a statue of Phtah, with an inscription of Ramses II., a sphinx and tombs of the twentieth century B.C. containing many small relics of antiquity.

Professor Petrie went on from here to the site of Tell Defenneh, the Tahpanhes of the Bible, called Taphne in the version of the Septuagint. This proved to be the remains of the earliest Greek settlement in Egypt, and contains no remains from a later period than the twenty-sixth dynasty. It was here that Psammeticus I. established a colony of the Carian and Ionian mercenaries, by whose aid this monarch had won the throne; and this Greek city had been built as one out of three fortresses to prevent the incursions of the Arabians and Syrians. The city of Tahpanhes or Taphne is referred to in the book of Jeremiah.

There were found on this site the remains of a vast pile of brick buildings, which could be seen in outline from a great distance across the plains. The Arabs called this "El Kasr el Bin el Yahudi," that is, "The Castle of the Jew's Daughter." This was found to have been a fort, and it contained a stele with a record of the garrison which had been stationed there; pieces of ancient armour and arms were also found in the neighbourhood. There was likewise a royal hunting-box on this site, and all the principal parts of the settlement were found to have been surrounded by a wall fifty feet thick, which enclosed an area of three thousand feet in length and one thousand in breadth. The gate on the north opened towards the Pelusiac canal, and the south looked out upon the ancient military road which led up from Egypt to Syria. Pottery, bronze-work, some exquisitely wrought scale armour, very light but overlapping six times, were unearthed within this enclosure. There were also Greek vases and other Greek remains, dating in the earlier part of the reign of Ahmosis, who had subsequently sent the Greeks away, and prevented them from trading in Egypt. Since this Greek colony came to an end in the year 570 B.C., and as the locality was no longer frequented by Greek soldiers or merchants, it is possible to set an exact term to the period of Greek art which these antiquities represent. The Greek pottery here is so unlike that of Naucratis and of other places that it seems to be well ascertained that it must have been all manufactured at Defenneh itself. Outside the buildings of the Kasr, Petrie discovered a large sun-baked pavement resting upon the sands, and this discovery was of value in explaining a certain passage of the forty-third chapter of Jeremiah, translated from the Revised Version as follows: "Then came the word of the Lord to Jeremiah in Tahpanhes, saying, Take great stones in thine hand, and hide them in the mortar of the brick-work which is at the entry of Pharaoh's house in Tahpanhes in the sight of the men of Judah [i.e. Johannan and the captains who had gone to Egypt]; and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Behold I will send and take Nebuchadrezzar the King of Babylon, my servant, and will set his throne upon these stones that I have hid; and he shall spread his royal pavilion over them. And he shall come and smite the land of Egypt." An alternate reading for "brickwork" is the pavement or square. The pavement which Jeremiah described was evidently the one which Petrie discovered, though he was not able at the time to discover the stones which, according to Jeremiah, had been inserted in the mortar. Outside the camp wall was further discovered the remains of a large settlement, strewn on all sides with bits of pottery and jewelry and a great number of weights.

During this season Maspero carried on researches at Luxor, and proceeded to excavate in the neighbourhood of the Great Sphinx. There are many Egyptian pictures which represent the Sphinx in its entirety down to the paws, but the lower parts had for centuries been buried in the accumulations of sand which had covered up all of the ancient site. It had previously been supposed that the Sphinx had been hewn out of a solid mass of rock resembling an immense boulder. Professor Maspero's excavations enabled him not only to verify the accuracy of the old Egyptian paintings of the Sphinx, but also to show that a vast amphitheatre had been hewn out of the rock round the Sphinx, which was not therefore sculptured from a projecting rock. Since the upper rim of this basin was about on the same level with the head of the figure, it became evident that the ancient sculptors had cut the rock away on all sides, and had subsequently left the Sphinx isolated, as it is at the present day. Maspero dug down during this season to a depth of thirty yards in the vicinity.

Professor Maspero's last official act as Director-General of the Excavations and Antiquities of Egypt was his examination of the mummy of Ramses II. found in 1884, in the presence of the khédive and other high dignitaries. The mummy of this great conqueror was well preserved, revealing a giant frame and a face expressive of sovereign majesty, indomitable will, and the pride of the Egyptian king of kings. He then unbandaged the mummy of Nofritari, wife of King Ahmosis I. of the eighteenth dynasty, beside which, in the same sarcophagus, had been discovered the mummy of Ramses ITT. The physiognomy of this monarch is more refined and intellectual than that of his warlike predecessor; nor was his frame built upon the same colossal plan. The height of the body was less, and the shoulders not so wide. In the same season Maspero also discovered an ancient Egyptian romance inscribed on limestone near the tomb of Sinûhît at Thebes. A fragment on papyrus had been preserved at the Berlin Museum, but the whole romance was now decipherable.

Professor Maspero resigned his office of directorship on June 5, 1886, and was succeeded in the superintendency of excavations and Egyptian archeology by M. Eugene Grébault. In the same month Grébault started upon the work of unbandaging the mummy of the Theban King Sekenenra Ta-aken, of the eighteenth dynasty. It was under this monarch that a revolt against the Hyksôs, or Shepherd Kings, had originated, in the course of which the Asiatics were expelled from Egypt. The history of this king has always been considered legendary, but from the signs of wounds present in the mummy, it is certain that he had died in battle. In the same season the mummy of Seti I. was unbandaged, and also that of an anonymous prince.

The next season the work of clearing away the sand from around the Great Sphinx was vigorously prosecuted by Grébault. In the beginning of the year 1887, the chest, the paws, the altar, and plateau were all made visible. Flights of steps were unearthed, and finally accurate measurements were taken of the great figures. The height from the lowest of the steps was found to be one hundred feet, and the space between the paws was found to be thirty-five feet long and ten feet wide. Here there was formerly an altar; and a stele of Thûtmosis IV. was discovered, recording a dream in which he was ordered to clear away the sand that even then was gathering round the site of the Sphinx.

M. Naville and Mr. F. Llewellen Griffiths explored during the season of 1886-87 the mound of Tel-el-Yehu-dieh (the mound of the Jew). The site is probably that on which was once built the city that Ptolemy Philadelphus allowed the Jews to construct. The remains of a statue of the cat-headed goddess Bast, to which there is a reference in Josephus, was also found here. The discovery of tablets of definitely Jewish origin make it clear that the modern name had been given to the place for some reason connected with the colony thus proved to have once been settled there.

Naville also made researches at Tel Basta, the site of the Bubastis of the Greeks, the Pi Beseth of the Bible, and the Pi Bast of the Egyptians, which was formerly the centre of worship of the goddess Pasht and her sacred animal, the cat. The whole plan of the ancient temple was soon disclosed, the general outline of which bears much resemblance to that of the great Temple of San. In the division which Naville called the Festival Hall were numerous black and red statues inscribed with the name of Ramses II., but many of which were probably not really erected by this monarch. Here there was also found a standing statue of the Governor of Ethiopia, a priest and priestess of the twenty-sixth dynasty, and many other monuments of the greatest historical interest. The hall itself was built of red granite.

Another hall, which Naville called the "Hypostyle Hall," possessed a colonnade of such beauty that it would seem to justify the statement of Herodotus, that the temple of Bubastis was one of the finest in Egypt. The columns were either splendid red granite monoliths, with lotus-bud or palm-leaf capitals; or, a head of Hâthor from which fell two long locks. These columns probably belonged to the twelfth dynasty. In what Naville called the "Ptolemaic Hall" occurs the name Nephthorheb or Nectanebo I. of the thirtieth dynasty. The relics of this remarkable temple thus cover a period from the sixth to the thirtieth dynasties, some 3,200 years. During this season Professor Petrie made important discoveries in relation to the obscure Hyksôs dominion in Egypt. Many representations of these Shepherd Kings were found, and, from their physiognomy, it was judged that they were not Semites, but rather Mongols or Tatars, who probably came from the same part of Asia as the Mongul hordes of Genghis Khan.

Early in 1888 excavations were resumed on the site of the great temple of Bubastis by M. Edouard Naville, Mr. F. LI. Griffiths, and the Count d'Hulst. The investigation again yielded the usual crop of antiquities that was now always expected from the exploration of the famous sites. A third hall was discovered, which had been built in the time of Osorkon I., of red granite inlaid with sculptured slabs. There were also many other monuments and remains of the monarchs, together with much valuable evidence relating to the rule of the Hyksôs.

Petrie brought to London many beautiful Ptolemaic and Roman portraits, which he had discovered in a vast cemetery near the pyramid which bears the name of King Ahmenemhâît III. The portraits are in an excellent state of preservation, and are invaluable as illustrative of the features, manners, and customs of the Greek and Roman periods in Egyptian history.

His researches in the neighbourhood of the Fayum at this time commenced to bear fruit; and many questions were answered regarding the ancient Lake Mceris. It was in this season also that the ever memorable excavations conducted at Tel-el-Amarna were first begun. This place is situated in Upper Egypt on the site of the capital, which had been built by Ahmenhotpû IV. Here were discovered many clay tablets in cuneiform characters containing documents in the Babylonian language. These were found in the tomb of a royal scribe. The list contained a quantity of correspondence from the kings or rulers of Palestine, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Babylonia to Ahmenhotpû III. and IV. There were Egyptian garrisons in those days in Palestine, and they were accustomed to keep their royal masters well informed as to what was going on in the country. Among other cities mentioned are Byblos, Smyrna, Appo or Acre, Megiddo, and Ashpelon. During this season many relics of early Christian art were discovered. In many cases a pagan picture had been in part painted over, and thus given a Christian significance. Two figures of Isis suckling Horus are, with slight alterations, made to represent the Virgin and the Child. A bas-relief of St. George slaying the dragon was discovered, which closely resembled that of Horus slaying Set.

During the following season of 1888-89, Petrie resumed his excavations round the pyramid of Hawara, which was supposed to be the site of the famous Labyrinth. Work had been begun here in the season previous, and it was now to be crowned with great success. All the underground passages and secret chambers under the pyramid were examined, and the inscriptions discovered of King Ahmenemhâît III. prove that this was without doubt the pyramid of the monarch of that name. It was discovered that the Romans had broken into the recesses of these secret chambers, and many broken Roman amphoræ were unearthed. Later Professor Petrie examined the pyramid of Illahûn, which stands at the gate of the Fayum. It is probable that this was on the site of the ancient locks which regulated the flow of the Nile into Lake Moris. Many of the antiquities here discovered bore inscriptions of King Usirtasen II., and, in the same locality, was discovered the site of an early Christian cemetery dating from the fifth or sixth centuries. A few miles from Illahûn, the same indefatigable explorer discovered the remains of another town belonging to the eighteenth or nineteenth dynasties. A wall once surrounded the town, and beyond the wall was a necropolis. The place is now called Tell Gurah, and the relics give inscriptions of Thûtmosis III. or Tûtankhamon and of Horemheb.

In the same season of 1888—89, Miss Amelia B. Edwards, who had been sent out by the Egypt Exploration Fund, brought to a conclusion the excavations which had been carried on for several seasons at Bubastis. It was discovered that the temple itself dated back to the reign of the famous Khûfûi (Kheops), the builder of the great Pyramid, since an inscription with his name on it was discovered, together with one inscribed to King Khafrî (Chephren). The monuments discovered on this site were, for the most part, shipped to Europe and America.

The city of Boston, Mass., received a colossal Hâthor-head capital of red granite, part of a colossal figure of a king, an immense lotus-bud capital from the Hypo-style Hall of the temple, a bas-relief in red granite from the Hall of Osorken II., and two bas-reliefs of limestone from the temple of Hâthor, taken from the ancient Termuther.

Specimens recovered from here date from the fourth to the twenty-second dynasties, and the relics from Termuther are from the last period of the Ptolemies.

Early in 1891, Professor Petrie made his exhaustive examination of the pyramid of Me-dum, which he declared to be the earliest of all dated Egyptian pyramids, and probably the oldest dated building in the world. Its builder was Snofrui of the third dynasty; and, joined with it, and in a perfect state of preservation, was the pyramid temple built at the same period. From forty to sixty feet of rubbish had accumulated around the buildings, and had to be removed. The front of the temple was thirty feet wide and nine feet high, and a door was discovered at the south end. A wide doorway leads to the open court built on the side of the pyramid. In the centre of the court stands the altar of offerings, where there is also an inscribed obelisk thirteen feet high. The walls of the temple are all marked with graffiti of visitors who belonged to the twelfth and eighteenth dynasties. A statuette was found dedicated to the gods of the town by a woman.

The tombs at this place had been rifled in ancient times, but many skeletons of people, who had been buried in a crouching attitude, were discovered, and Petrie considered that these belonged to a different race from that which was accustomed to bury the dead recumbent. A quantity of pottery was also unearthed, dating from the fourth century. The method by which the plan of a pyramid was laid out by the ancient Egyptians was discovered in this excavation, and the designs show considerable mechanical ingenuity in their execution, and afford a perfect system for maintaining the symmetry of the building itself, no matter how uneven the ground on which it was to be built.

In the spring of 1891, M. Naville started an excavation on the site of the ancient Heracleopolis Magna at a place now named Hanassieh. He found here many Roman and Koptic remains, and further discovered the vestibule of an ancient Egyptian temple. There were six columns, on which Ramses II. was represented as offering gifts. The name of Menephtah was also noticed, and the architraves above the columns were seen to be cut with cartouches of Usirtasen II. of the twelfth dynasty. This temple was probably one of those to the service of which Ramses II. donated some slaves, as is described in one of the papyri of the Harris collection.

A stone was discovered by Mr. Wilborn at Luxor, recording a period of seven years' successive failure of the Nile to overflow, and the efforts made by a certain sorcerer named Chit Net to remove the calamity.

During the season of 1895, Professor Petrie and Mr. Quibell discovered homes belonging to paleolithic man on a plateau four thousand feet above the Nile. Thirty miles south of Thebes, there are many large and beautifully worked flints. Their great antiquity is proved by the fact that they are deeply stained, whereas, in the same locality, there are other flints of an age of five thousand years, which show no traces of stains.

Close by this site was discovered the abundant remains of a hitherto unknown race. This race has nothing in common with the true Egyptians, although their relics are invariably found with those of the Egyptians of the fourth, twelfth, eighteenth, and nineteenth dynasties. Petrie declares these men to have been tall and powerful, with strong features, a hooked nose, a long, pointed beard, and brown, wavy hair. They were not related to the negroes, but rather to the Amorites or Libyans. The bodies in these tombs are not mummified, but are contracted, though laid in an opposite direction from those discovered at Medum. The graves are open, square pits, roofed over with beams of wood. This ancient race used forked hunting-lances for chasing the gazelle, and their beautiful flints were found to be like those belonging to an excellent collection already existing in the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford. They also made an abundant use of copper for adzes, harpoons for spearing fish, and needles for sewing garments. They used pottery abundantly, and its variety is remarkable no less than the quality, which, unlike the Egyptian, was all hand-made and never fashioned by aid of the wheel. They entered Egypt about 3,000 B.C., and were probably of the white Libyan race, and possibly may have been the foreigners who overthrew the old Egyptian empire.

The discovery of the name of "Israel" in an Egyptian inscription was in a sense, perhaps, the most remarkable event of the year 1895 in archæology. It was first laid before the public by Professor Petrie,* and was treated by Spiegelberg** in a communication to the Berlin Academy, and by Steindorff.***

     * Contemporary Review, May 1896.

     ** Sitzberichte, xxv., p. 593. 3.

     *** Zeitschrift fur deutsch. Alt. test. Wiss., 1896, p. 330.

The name occurs in an inscription dated in the fifth year of Merenptah, the successor of Ramses II., and often supposed to be the Pharaoh of the Exodus. It is there written with the determinative of a people, not of a city or country, and reads in our conventional transliteration Ysiràar, but in reality agrees very closely to the Hebrew [...] the last portion aar being recognised as the equivalent of el in several words. Merenptah states that "Israel is fekt (?) without seed (grain or offspring), Syria (Kharu) has become widows (Kharut) of or to Egypt." We can form no conclusion from these statements as to the relation in which the Israelites stood to Pharaoh and to Egypt, except that they are represented as having been powerless. It is pretty clear, however, from the context that they were then in Palestine, or at least in Syria. Steindorff suggests that they may have entered Syria from Chaldæa during the disturbed times in Egypt at the end of the eighteenth dynasty, and connects them with the movements of the Khabiri (Hebrews?) mentioned in the Tel-el-Amarna tablets. On the other hand, it is of course possible, as Professor Petrie points out, that this reference to the Israelites may have some connection with the Exodus itself. M. Clermont Ganneau thinks that the localities mentioned are all in Southern Palestine.*

     * Revue Archéologique, xxix., p. 127.

M. Edouard Naville found at Thebes many remains of the Punt sculptures. The Puntites appear with their aquiline features, their pointed beards, and their long hair; negroes also of black and brown varieties are represented adjoining the Puntites proper. There are wickerwork huts, and a figure of a large white dog with its ears hanging down. Long-billed birds also appear flying about in the trees. Their nests have been forsaken and robbed, and the men are represented as gathering incense from the trees. Altogether, much invaluable information has been gathered concerning the famous people who lived in the Land of Punt, and with whom for a long period the Egyptians held intercommunication. Other discoveries were made near the great temple of Karnak, and the buildings of Medinet-Habu were cleared of rubbish in order to show their true proportions.

From its foundation, the Egypt Exploration Fund has received large pecuniary support from the United States, chiefly through the enthusiasm and energy of Dr. W. C. Winslow, of Boston. In 1880 Doctor Winslow, who had been five months in Egypt, returned to America deeply impressed with the importance of scientific research in Egypt, and, upon hearing of the Exploration Fund in London, he wrote a letter expressive of his interest and sympathy to the president, Sir Erasmus Wilson, which brought a reply not only from him, but also from the secretary, Miss Edwards, expatiating upon the purpose and needs of the society, and outlining optimistically its ultimate accomplishments.

Doctor Winslow was elected honorary treasurer of the Fund for the United States for the year 1883-84.* Many prominent residents became interested and added their names to its membership, and have given it their effort and their hearty financial support. Among the distinguished American members have been J. R. Lowell, G. W. Curtis, Charles Dudley Warner, and among the chief Canadian members are Doctor Bourinot and Dr. J. William Dawson.

     *The American subscriptions from the year 1883 rapidly
     increased, and by the year 1895 had figured up to $75,800,
     and the total number of letters and articles written during
     that time had grown to 2,467. The organisation in America
     consists of a central office at Boston, together with
     independent local societies, such as have already been
     formed in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago. The Boston
     office, and any independent local society, which subscribes
     not less than $750 a year, is entitled to nominate a member
     of the Committee. At the end of July, 1884, Doctor Winslow
     had forwarded to London $1,332.20.

The Fund has always preserved amicable relations with the Government Department of Antiquities in Egypt. Excavations are conducted by skilled explorers, and the results published promptly with due regard to scientific accuracy and pictorial embellishment. The antiquities found are either deposited in the National Museum at Cairo, or distributed among public museums in the United Kingdom and the United States of America and Canada, in strict proportion to the contribution of each locality. Exhibitions are usually held in London in July of each year.

The Fund now consists of three departments, for each of which separate accounts are kept. These departments are: 1. The Exploration Fund, for conducting archeological research generally, by means of systematic excavations. 2. The Archæological Survey, for preserving an accurate pictorial record of monuments already excavated but liable to destruction. 3. The Græco-Roman Branch, for the discovery of the remains of classical antiquity and early Christianity.

The first work of the Græco-Roman Branch was to publish the recently discovered Oxyrrhynchos papyri, of which two volumes, containing many important classical and theological texts, were issued in 1898 and 1899 and 1900. Among its contents are parts of two odes of Pindar, of which one begins with a description of the poet's relation to Xenocritus, the inventor of the Locrian mode of music; a considerable piece of the "Kolax" of Menander, one of the two plays upon which the "Eunuchus" of Terence was based; part of a rhetorical treatise in Doric dialect, which is undoubtedly a work of the Pythagorean school; the conclusion of the eighteenth Keo-Tcfe of Julius Africanus, dealing with a question of Homeric criticism; and part of a biography of Alcibiades. A new light is thrown upon some of the less-known departments of Greek literature by a well-preserved papyrus, which contains on one side a prose mime in two scenes, a work of the school of Sophron, having points of resemblance to the fifth mime of Herondas; while on the other side is an amusing farce, partly in prose, partly in verse. The scene is laid on the shores of the Indian Ocean, and the plot turns upon the rescue of a Greek maiden from the hands of barbarians, who speak a non-Greek language with elements apparently derived from Prakrit.*

     * This is a peculiarly interesting suggestion in view of the
     fact that there is in the British Museum an unpublished
     fragment which for some time was considered by Doctor Budge
     to be a species of Egyptian stenography, but which has also
     been suggested to be in Pehlevi characters.

The new Homeric fragments include one of Iliad VI., with critical signs and interesting textual notes. Sappho, Euripides (Andromache, "Archelaus," and "Medea"), Antiphanes, Thucydides, Plato ("Gorgias" and "Republic"), Æschines, Demosthenes, and Xenophon are also represented. Among the theological texts are fragments of the lost Greek original of the "Apocalypse of Baruch" and of the missing Greek conclusion of the "Shepherd" of Hennas.

In the winter of 1898-99, Doctors Grenfell and Hunt conducted excavations for the Græco-Roman Branch in the Fayûm. In 1899-1900, they excavated at Tebtunis, in the Fayûm, on behalf of the University of California; and by an arrangement between that university and the Egypt Exploration Fund an important section of the Tebtunis papyri, consisting of second-century B.C. papyri from crocodile mummies, was issued jointly by the two bodies, forming the annual volumes of the Græco-Roman Branch for 1900-01 and 1901-02. Since 1900 Doctors Grenfell and Hunt have excavated each winter on behalf of the Græco-Roman Branch,—in 1900-01 in the Fayûm, and in 1901-02 both there and at Hibeh, with the result that a very large collection of Ptolemaic papyri was obtained. In the winter of 1902-03, after finishing their work at Hibeh, they returned to Oxyrrhynchos. Here was found a third-century fragment of a collection of sayings of Jesus, similar in style to the so-called "Logia" discovered at Oxyrrhynchos in 1897. As in that papyrus, the separate sayings are introduced by the words "Jesus saith," and are for the most part unrecorded elsewhere, though some which are found in the Gospels (e.g. "The Kingdom of God is within you" and "Many that are first shall be last, and the last shall be first") occur here in different surroundings. Six sayings are preserved, unfortunately in an imperfect condition. But the new "Logia" papyrus supplies more evidence concerning its origin than was the case with its predecessor, for it contains an introductory paragraph stating that what follows consisted of "the words which Jesus, the Living Lord, spake" to two of His disciples; and, moreover, one of the uncanonical sayings is already extant in part, the conclusion of it, "He that wonders shall reign and he that reigns shall rest," being quoted by Clement of Alexandria from the Gospel according to the Hebrews. It is, indeed, possible that this Gospel was the source from which all this second series of "Logia" was derived, or they, or some of them, may perhaps have been taken from the Gospel according to the Egyptians, to which Professor Harnack and others have referred the "Logia" found in 1897. But the discoverers are disposed to regard both series as collections of sayings currently ascribed to our Lord rather than as extracts from any one uncanonical gospel.

CHAPTER VIII.—IMPORTANT RESEARCHES IN EGYPT

The Royal Tombs at Abydos: Reconstruction of the First and Second Dynasties: The Ten Temples at Abydos: The statuette of Khûfûi: Pottery and Pottery Marks: The Expedition of the University of California.

Some interesting explorations have been conducted in Egypt by the Exploration Fund during the four years 1900-04, under the guidance of Prof. W. M. Flinders Petrie, whose enthusiasm and patience for the work in this field seem to increase with the years of labour. In the winter of 1899-1900, Professor Petrie and his zealous helpers began their investigation of the royal tombs of the first dynasty at Abydos. Commenting on this undertaking, Professor Petrie writes:

"It might have seemed a fruitless and thankless task to work at Abydos after it had been ransacked by Mariette, and had been for the last four years in the hands of the Mission Amélineau. My only reason was that the extreme importance of results from there led to a wish to ascertain everything possible about the early royal tombs after they were done with by others, and to search even for fragments of the pottery. To work at Abydos had been my aim for years past; but it was only after it was abandoned by the Mission Amélineau that at last, on my fourth application for it, I was permitted to rescue for historical study the results that are here shown.

"Nothing is more disheartening than being obliged to gather results out of the fraction left behind by past plunderers. In these royal tombs there had been not only the plundering of the precious metals and the larger valuables by the wreckers of early ages; there was after that the systematic destruction of monuments by the vile fanaticism of the Kopts, which crushed everything beautiful and everything noble that mere greed had spared; and worst of all, for history, came the active search in the last four years for everything that could have a value in the eyes of purchasers, or be sold for profit regardless of its source; a search in which whatever was not removed was deliberately and avowedly destroyed in order to enhance the intended profits of European speculators. The results are therefore only the remains which have escaped the lust of gold, the fury of fanaticism, and the greed of speculators in this ransacked spot.

"A rich harvest of history has come from the site which was said to be exhausted; and in place of the disordered confusion of names without any historical connection, which was all that was known from the Mission Amélineau, we now have the complete sequence of kings from the middle of the dynasty before Mena to probably the close of the second dynasty, and we can trace in detail the fluctuations of art throughout these reigns."*

At the time when Professor Maspero brought his history of Egypt to a close, the earliest known historical ruler of Egypt was King Mena or Menés.**

     * "The Royal Tombs of the First Dynasty," Parts I.-II.
     (Eighteenth and Twenty-first Memoirs of the Egypt
     Exploration Fund), London, 1900-1902.

     ** See Volume I., page 322, et seq.

Mena is the first king on the fragmentary list of Manetho, and the general accuracy of Manetho was supported by the accounts of Herodotus and other ancient writers. For several centuries these accounts were accepted as the basis of authentic history. With the rise of the science of Egyptology, however, search began to be made for some corroboration of the actual existence of Mena, and this was found in the inscriptions of a temple wall at Abydos, which places Mena at the head of the first dynasty; and, allowing for differences of language, the records of Manetho relating to the earlier dynasty were established. Mena was therefore accepted as the first king of the first dynasty up to the very end of the nineteenth century.

As a result of Professor Petrie 's recent investigations, however, he has been enabled to carry back the line of the early kings for three or four generations.

The royal tombs at Abydos lie closely together in a compact group on a site raised slightly above the level of the surrounding plain, so that the tombs could never be flooded. Each of the royal tombs is a large square pit, lined with brickwork. Close around it, on its own level, or higher up, there are generally small chambers in rows, in which were buried the domestics of the king. Each reign adopted some variety in the mode of burial, but they all follow the type of the prehistoric burials, more or less developed. The plain square pit, like those in which the predynastic people were buried, is here the essential of the tomb. It is surrounded in the earlier examples of Zer or Zet by small chambers opening from it. By Merneit these chambers were built separately around it. By Den an entrance passage was added, and by Qa the entrance was turned to the north. At this stage we are left within reach of the early passage-mastabas and pyramids. Substituting a stone lining and roof for bricks and wood, and placing the small tombs of domestics farther away, we reach the type of the mas-taba-pyramid of Snofrui, and so lead on to the pyramid series of the Old Kingdom.

361.jpg Plan of the Royal Tombs As Abydos

The careful manner with which all details of a burial were supervised under the first dynasty enables the modern Egyptologist, by a skilful piecing together of evidence, to reconstruct an almost perfect picture of the life of Egypt at the dawn of civilisation. One of our most valuable sources of information is due to the fact that, in building the walls of the royal tombs, there were deposited in certain parts within the walls objects now technically known as deposits. We do not know whether, in selecting these objects, the ancient Egyptian had regard to what he considered their intrinsic value, or whether, as was most probable, it was some religious motive that prompted his action. Often the objects thus deposited come under the designation of pottery, although the vases were sometimes shaped of stone and not of clay. Within such vases all kinds of objects were preserved. The jar or vase was closed with a lump of clay, either flat or conical, and the clay was impressed, while wet, with a seal.

A detailed and elaborate examination of the relative positions of the tombs, their dimensions, and the objects found in them, compared with the various fragments of historical records of the early dynasties, enables us to reconstruct the exact order of these ancient rulers. This sequence is:

     * Ka and Zeser were possibly brothers of Mena.

Following the dating tentatively computed by Professor Petrie, the dates of some of these kings are:

363a.jpg Table of Chronology Of Early Kings

Thus we have reconstructed the list of Thinite kings before Mena so far as the facts allow, and perhaps so far as we are ever likely to ascertain them.

The facts about the second dynasty, the kings after Qa, must now be studied. In the tomb of Perabsen it was found that there were buried with him vases of three other kings, which are therefore his predecessors. Their names are Hotepahaui, Raneb, and Neteren; and it is certain that Raneb preceded Neteren, as the latter had defaced and re-used a vase of the former. As on statue No. 1, Cairo Museum, these three names are in the above order, and, as the succession of two of them is now proved, it is only reasonable to accept them in this order. From all the available facts it seems that we ought to restore the dynasty thus:

The oldest tomb that we can definitely assign is that marked B 7, the tomb of King Ka. This is a pit with sloping sides; the thickness of the brick walls is that of the length of one brick, and the soft footing of the wall and pressure of sand behind it has overthrown the longer sides.

364.jpg Enlarged Plan of First Dynasty Tombs

The broken pottery mixed with the sand, which filled it, largely consisted of cylinder jars, like the later prehistoric form; and these had many inscriptions on them, written in ink with a brush, most of which showed the name of Ka in the usual panelled frame. There can therefore be no doubt of the attribution of this tomb.

The tomb B 9 is perhaps that of King Zeser, who seems to have been a successor of Ka. It is of the same construction as that of Ka. The tomb B 10 appears to be the oldest of the great tombs, by its easternmost position; and the objects of Narmer point to this as his tomb. In both the thickness and the batter of the walls there is a care shown in proportioning the strength of the ends and the sides. The tomb B 15 is probably that of King Sma. Its walls are not quite so thick, being fifty inches at the end. The post-holes in the floor suggest that there were five on the long side, and one in the middle of each end, as in the tomb of Narmer. But along the sides are holes for roofing beams near the top of the wall. These roof beams do not at all accord with the posts; and this proves that, here at least, the posts were for backing a wooden chamber inside the brick chamber. If this be the case here, it was probably also true in Narmer's tomb; and hence these brick tombs were only the protective shell around a wooden chamber which contained the burial. This same system is known in the first dynasty tombs, and we see here the source of the chambered tombs of Zer and Zet. Before the age of Mena, the space around the wood chamber was used for dropping in offerings between the framing posts; and then, after Mena, separate brick chambers were made around the wooden chamber in order to hold more offerings.*

     *This chamber was burnt; and is apparently that mentioned by
     M. Amélineau, Fouilles, in extenso, 1899, page 107.

The tomb B 19, which contained the best tablet of Aha-Mena, is probably his tomb; for the tomb with his vases at Naqada is more probably that of his queen Neithotep. As both the tombs B 17 and 18 to the north of this contained objects of Mena, it is probable that they were the tombs of some members of his family.

The great cemetery of the domestics of this age is the triple row of tombs to the east of the royal tombs; in all the thirty-four tombs here, no name was found beside that of Aha on the jar sealings, and the two tombs, B 6 and B 14, seen to be probably of the same age. In B 14 were found only objects of Aha, and three of them were inscribed with the name of Bener-eb, probably the name of a wife or a daughter of Mena, which is not found in any other tomb.*

     * Professor Petrie's arguments, although home out by the
     evidence that he produces, have from time to time been
     criticised. M. Naville, for example, endeavours to prove
     that the buildings in the desert are not literally tombs,
     but rather temples for the cult of their Ka; and that there
     ought not to be kings anterior to Mena, particularly at
     Abydos: "Narmer" is really Boethos, the first king of the
     second dynasty. According to M. Naville, Boethos, Usaphis,
     and Miebidos are the only kings as yet identified of the
     early time. M. Naville also suggests that Ka-Sekhem and Ka-
     Sekhemui are two names for one king.

From the time of Mena has come down to us an ebony tablet, as shown in the illustration. This is the most complete of the inscriptions of this king, and was found in two portions in the tombs marked B 18 and B 19. The signs upon the tablet are most interesting. On the top line, after the cartouche of Aha-Mena, there are two sacred boats, probably of Sokaris, and a shrine and temenos of Nit. In the line below is seen a man making an offering, and behind him is a bull running over undulating ground into a net stretched between two poles, while at the end, standing upon a shrine, is a bird, which appears to be the ibis of Thot. A third line shows three boats upon a canal or river, passing between certain places, and it has been reasonably conjectured that the other signs in this line indicate these places as being Biu, a district of Memphis; Pa She (or "the dwelling of the lake"), the capital of the Fayum; and the Canal of Mer, or Bahr Yusef. So far this tablet contains picture signs, but the fourth line gives a continued series of hieroglyphics, and is the oldest line of such characters yet discovered. Mr. F. LI. Griffiths translates these characters as "who takes the throne of Horus."

In the north-west corner of the tomb, a stairway of bricks was roughly inserted in later times in order to give access to the shrine of Osiris. That this is not an original feature is manifest: the walls are burnt red by the burning of the tomb, while the stairs are built of black mud brick with fresh mud mortar smeared over the reddened wall. It is notable that the burning of these tombs took place before their re-use in the eighteenth dynasty; as is also seen by the re-built doorway of the tomb of Den, which is of large black bricks over smaller red burnt bricks. It is therefore quite beside the mark to attribute this burning to the Kopts.

The tomb of King Zer has an important secondary history as the site of the shrine of Osiris, established in the eighteenth dynasty (for none of the pottery offered there is earlier than that of Amenhôthes III.), and visited with offerings from that time until the twenty-sixth dynasty, when additional sculptures were placed here.

Afterwards it was despoiled by the Kopts in erasing the worship of Osiris. It is the early state of the place as the tomb of King Zer that we have to study here, and not its later history.

The tomb chamber has been built of wood; and the brick cells around it were built subsequently against the wooden chamber, as their rough, unplastered ends show; moreover, the cast of the grain of the wood can be seen on the mud mortar adhering to the bricks. There are also long, shallow grooves in the floor, a wide one near the west wall, three narrow ones parallel to that, and a short cross groove, all probably the places of beams which supported the wooden chamber. Besides these there was till recently a great mass of carbonised wood along the north side of the floor. This was probably part of the flooring of the tomb, which, beneath the woodwork, was covered with a layer of bricks, which lay on clean sand. But all the middle of the tomb had been cleared to the native marl for building the Osiris shrine, of which some fragments of sculpture in hard limestone are now all that remain.

A strange feature here is that of the red recesses, such as were also found in the tomb of Zet. The large ones are on the west wall, and in the second cell on the north wall. No meaning can yet be assigned to these, except as spirit-entrances to the cells of offerings, like the false doors in tombs of the Old Kingdom.

In spite of the plundering of the tombs in various ages, the work of the Egypt Exploration Fund was so thorough that not a few gold objects have been found in the course of recent excavations. By far the most important discovery of recent years was that of some jewelry in the tomb of King Zer. The story of this find is so entertaining, and illustrates so admirably the method of the modern scientific explorer, that we give the account of it in Professor Petrie's own words:

"While my workmen were clearing the tomb, they noticed among the rubbish which they were moving a piece of the arm of a mummy in its wrappings. It lay in a broken hole in the north wall of the tomb. The party of four who found it looked into the end of the wrappings and saw a large gold bead, the rosette in the second bracelet. They did not yield to the natural wish to search further or to remove it; but laid the arm down where they found it until Mr. Mace should come and verify it. Nothing but obtaining the complete confidence of the workmen, and paying them for all they find, could ever make them deal with valuables in this careful manner. On seeing it, Mr. Mace told them to bring it to our huts intact, and I received it quite undisturbed. In the evening the most intelligent of the party was summoned as a witness of the opening of the wrappings, so that there should be no suspicion that I had not dealt fairly with the men. I then cut open the linen bandages, and found, to our great surprise, the four bracelets of gold and jewelry. The verification of the exact order of threading occupied an hour or two, working with a magnifier, my wife and Mr. Mace assisting. When recorded, the gold was put in the scales and weighed against sovereigns before the workman, who saw everything. Rather more than the value of gold was given to the men, and thus we ensured their good-will and honesty for the future."

The hawk bracelet consists of thirteen gold and fourteen turquoise plaques in the form of the façade with the hawk, which usually encloses the ka name of the king. The gold hawks have been cast in a mould with two faces, and the junction line has been carefully removed and burnished. The gold was worked by chisel and burnishing; no grinding or file marks are visible. In the second bracelet, with the rosette, two groups of beads are united at the sides by bands of gold wire and thick hair. The fastening of the bracelet was by a loop and button. This button is a hollow ball of gold with a shank of gold wire fastened in it. The third bracelet is formed of three similar groups, one larger, and the other smaller on either side. The middle of each group consists of three beads of dark purple lazuli. The fastening of this bracelet was by a loop and button. The fourth bracelet is fashioned of hour-glass beads.

In this extraordinary group of the oldest jewelry known, we see unlimited variety and fertility of design. Excepting the plain gold balls, there is not a single bead in any one bracelet which would be interchangeable with those in another bracelet. Each is of independent design, fresh and free from all convention or copying.

The tomb of Zet consists of a large chamber twenty feet wide and thirty feet long, with smaller chambers around it at its level, the whole bounded by a thick brick wall, which rises seven and a half feet to the roof, and then three and a half feet more to the top of the retaining wall. Outside of this on the north is a line of small tombs about five feet deep, and on the south a triple line of tombs of the same depth. And apparently of the same system and same age is the mass of tombs marked W, which are parallel to the tomb of Zet. Later there appears to have been built the long line of tombs, placed askew, in order not to interfere with those which have been mentioned, and then this skew line gave the di-rection to the next tomb, that of Merneit, and later on to that of Azab. The private graves around the royal tomb are all built of mud brick, with a coat of mud plaster over it, and the floor is of sand, usually also coated over with mud.

The first question about these great tombs is how they were covered over. Some have said that such spaces could not be roofed, and at first sight it would seem almost impossible. But the actual beams found yet remaining in the tombs are as long as the widths of the tombs, and therefore timber of such sizes could be procured. In the tomb of Qa the holes for the beams yet remain in the walls, and even the cast of the end of a beam, and in the tombs of Merneit, Azab, and Mer-sekha are posts and pilasters to help in supporting a roof. The clear span of the chamber of Zet is 240 inches, or 220 if the beams were carried on a wooden lining, as seems likely. It is quite practicable to roof over these great chambers up to spans of twenty feet. The wood of such lengths was actually used, and, if spaced out over only a quarter of the area, the beams would carry their load with full safety. Any boarding, mats, or straw laid over the beams would not increase the load. That there was a mass of sand laid over the tomb is strongly shown by the retaining wall around the top. This wall is roughly built, and not intended to be a visible feature. The outside is daubed with mud plaster, and has a considerable slope; the inside is left quite rough, with bricks in and out.

Turning now to the floor, the basis of it is mud plastering, which was whitewashed. On that were laid beams around the sides, and one down the middle: these beams were placed before the mud floor was hard, and have sunk about one-quarter inch into it. On the beams a ledge was recessed, and on this ledge the edges of the flooring planks rested. Such planks would not bend in the middle by a man standing on them, and therefore made a sound floor. Over the planks was laid a coat of mud plaster. This construction doubtless shows what was the mode of flooring the palaces and large houses of the early Egyptians, in order to keep off the damp of the ground in the Nile valley. For common houses a basis of pottery jars turned mouth down was used for the same purpose. A very striking example of this method was unearthed at Koptos.

The sides of the great central chamber of Zet are not clear in arrangement. The brick cross walls, which subdivide them into separate cells, have no finished faces on their ends. All the wall faces are plastered and whitewashed; but the ends of the cross walls are rough bricks, all irregularly in and out. Moreover, the bricks project forward irregularly over the beam line. It seems, then, that there was an upright timber lining to the chamber, against which the cross walls were built the walls thus having rough ends projecting over the beams. The footing of this upright plank lining is indicated by a groove left along the western floor beam between the ledge on the beam and the side of the flooring planks. Thus we reach a wooden chamber, lined with upright planks, which stood out from the wall, or from the backs of the beams. How the side chambers were entered is not shown; whether there was a door to each or not. But as they were intended to be for ever closed, and as the chambers in two corners were shut off by brickwork all round, it seems likely that all the side chambers were equally closed. And thus, after the slain domestics and offerings were deposited in them, and the king in the centre hall, the roof would be permanently placed over the whole.

The height of the chamber is proved by the cast of straw which formed part of the roofing, and which comes at the top of the course of headers on edge which copes the wall all around the chamber. Over this straw there was laid one course of bricks a little recessed, and beyond that is the wide ledge all round before reaching the retaining wall. The height of the main chamber was 90.6 inches from the floor level.

Having examined the central chamber, the chambers at the sides should be next considered. The cross walls were built after the main brick outside was finished and plastered. The deep recesses coloured red, on the north side, were built in the construction; where the top is preserved entire, as in a side chamber on the north, it is seen that the roofing of the recess was upheld by building in a board about an inch thick. The shallow recesses along the south side were merely made in the plastering, and even in the secondary plastering after the cross walls were built. All of these recesses, except that at the south-west, were coloured pink-red, due to mixing burnt ochre with the white.

The tomb of Merneit was not at first suspected to exist, as it had no accumulation of pottery over it; and the whole ground had been pitted all over by the Mission Amélineau making "quelques sondages," without revealing the chambers or the plan. As soon, however, as Petrie began systematically to clear the ground, the scheme of a large central chamber, with eight long chambers for offerings around it, and a line of private tombs enclosing it, stood apparent. The central chamber is very accurately built, with vertical sides parallel to less than an inch. It is about twenty-one feet wide and thirty feet long, or practically the same as the chamber of Zet. Around the chamber are walls forty-eight to fifty-two inches thick, and beyond them a girdle of long, narrow chambers forty-eight inches wide and 160 to 215 inches long. Of these chambers for offerings, Nos. 1, 2, 5, and 7 still contain pottery in place, and No. 3 contains many jar sealings.

At a few yards distant from the chambers full of offerings is a line of private graves almost surrounding the royal tomb. This line has an interruption at the south end of the west side similar to the interruption of the retaining wall of the tomb of Zet at that quarter. It seems, therefore, that the funeral approached it from that direction.

The chamber of the tomb of Merneit shows signs of burning on both the walls and the floor. A small piece of wood yet remaining indicates that it also had a wooden floor like the other tombs. Against the walls stand pilasters of brick; and, although these are not at present more than a quarter of the whole height of the wall, they originally reached to the top. These pilasters are entirely additions to the first building; they stand against the plastering and upon a loose layer of sand and pebbles about four inches thick. Thus it is clear that they belonged to the subsequent stage of the fitting of a roof to the chamber. The holes that are shown in the floor are apparently connected with the construction, as they are not in the mid-line where pillars are likely. At the edge of chamber No. 2 is a cast of plaited palm-leaf matting on the mud mortar above this level, and the bricks are set back irregularly. This shows the mode of finishing off the roof of this tomb.

377.jpg Plans of the Tombs Of Den-setui and Others

From the position of the tomb of Den-Setui, it is seen naturally to follow the building of the tombs of Zet and Merneit. It is surrounded by rows of small chambers for offerings, and for the burial of domestics. The king's tomb appears to have contained a large number of tablets of ivory and ebony, for fragments of eighteen were found, and two others are known, making in all twenty tablets from this one tomb. The inscriptions on stone vases are, however, not more frequent than in previous reigns. This tomb appears to have been one of the most costly and sumptuous. The astonishing feature of this chamber is the granite pavement, such considerable use of granite being quite unknown until the step pyramid of Saqqâra early in the third dynasty. At the south-west corner is a strange annex. A stairway leads down from the west and then turns to the north. At the foot of the first flight of steps is a space for inserting planks and brickwork to close the chamber, like the blocking of the door of the tomb of Azab.1 This small chamber was therefore intended to be closed. Whether this chamber was for the burial of one of the royal family, or for the deposit of offerings, it is difficult to determine. Of the various rows of graves around the great tomb there is nothing to record in detail. An ebony tablet, presumably of the time of Den, found among the first dynasty tombs, represents a scene in which a king is dancing before Osiris, the god being seated in his shrine. This tablet is the earliest example of those pictorial records of a religious ceremony which, as we now know, was continued almost without change from the first dynasty to the thirty-third. It is interesting to note on this engraving that the king is represented with the hap and a short stick instead of the oar.

It should be noted also that the royal name, Setui, occurs in the lower part of the tablet, so that there is a strong presumption that the tablet is of the time of Den-Setui, and the presumption is almost a certainty when the tablet is compared with some sealings found in its vicinity. Mr. F. LI. Griffiths has written at length on this important inscription.*

     * Royal Tombs of the first dynasty, Part I: Eighteenth
     Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund, London, 1900, page 42.

He thinks that this tablet and two others somewhat similar were the brief annals of the time, and record the historic events and the names of government officials. He translates a portion of the inscription as "Opening the gates of foreign lands," and in another part he reads, "The master comes, the King of Upper and Lower Egypt." Moreover, he translates certain signs as "Sheikh of the Libyans," and he identifies a place named Tny as This, or the capital of the nome in which Abydos lay.

Of this reign also is an ivory tablet finely polished, but blackened with burning, which has engraved upon it the oldest architectural drawing in the world.

380.jpg Architectural Drawing, B.c. 4600.

381.jpg Ivory Panel of Den-setui, 4600 B.c.

The inscription on this precious fragment apparently refers to the great chiefs coming to the tomb of Setui, and a picture of a building in the middle of the inscription may be taken as representing on the left the tomb chamber of Den-Setui, with a slight mound over it. The upright strokes represent the steles outside the tombs, adjacent to which is the inclined stairway, while on the right is a diagram of the cemetery, with graves ar-ranged in rows around the tomb, with small steles standing up over the graves.

A small piece of still another ivory tablet gives an interesting portrait of Den-Setui. This king flourished about 4600 b. c, so that this is perhaps the oldest portrait that can be named and dated. It shows the double crown fully developed, and has an additional interest, inasmuch as the crown of Lower Egypt was apparently coloured red, while the crown of Upper Egypt was white in accordance with the practice that we know existed during the later historic period.

Among the many ivory objects found at Abydos is a small ivory panel from a box which seems to have contained the golden seal of judgment of King Den.

The engraving of this ivory panel is of the finest description, and bears evidence of the magnificent workmanship of the Egyptians 6,500 years ago. It will be seen that enough of the fragment has been preserved to include the cartouche of the monarch, and the snake at the side is the pictograph of judgment. Beneath is the hieroglyph for gold, and at the bottom is a sign which represents a seal cylinder* rolling over a piece of clay.

     * It was for a long time thought that this hieroglyphic
     character represented a finger ring, but as it is now
     positively known that finger rings were not in use until
     long after the time of Den, this explanation had to be
     abandoned in favour of the more correct interpretation of a
     seal cylinder.

The tomb of Azab-Merpaba is a plain chamber, with rather sloping sides, about twenty-two feet long and fourteen feet wide. The surrounding wall is nearly five feet thick. The lesser and more irregular chamber on the north is of the same depth and construction, fourteen feet by nine. This lesser chamber had no remains of flooring; it contained many large sealings of jars, and seems to have been for all the funeral provision, like the eight chambers around the tomb of Merneit. Around this tomb is a circuit of small private tombs, leaving a gap on the southwest like that of Merneit, and an additional branch line has been added on at the north.

All of these tombs are very irregularly built; the sides are wavy in direction, and the divisions of the long trench are slightly piled up, of bricks laid lengthwise, and easily overthrown. This agrees with the rough and irregular construction of the central tomb and offering chamber. The funeral of Azab seems to have been more carelessly conducted than that of any of the other kings here; only one piece of inscribed vase was in his tomb, as against eight of his found in his successor's tomb, and many other of his vases erased by his successor. Thus his palace property seems to have been kept back for his successor's use, and not buried with Azab himself. In some of the chambers much ivory inlaying was found.

The entrance to the tomb of Azab was by a stairway descending from the east, thus according with the system begun by Den. On the steps, just outside of the door, were found dozens of small pots loosely piled together. These must have contained offerings made after the completion of the burial. The blocking is made by planks and bricks, the whole outside of the planking being covered by bricks loosely stacked, as can be seen in the photograph, the planking having decayed away from before them. The chamber was floored with planks of wood laid flat on the sand, without any supporting beams as in other tombs.

The tomb of Mersekha-Semempses is forty-four feet long and twenty-five feet wide, surrounded by a wall over five feet thick. The surrounding small chambers are only three to four feet deep where perfect, while the central pit is still eleven and one-half feet deep, though broken away at the top. When examined by Professor Petrie few of the small chambers contained anything. Seven steles were found, the inscriptions of which are marked in the chambers of the plan; and other steles were also found here, scattered so that they could not be identified with the tombs. The most interesting are two steles of dwarfs, which show the dwarf type clearly; with one were found bones of a dwarf. In a chamber on the east was a jar and a copper bowl, which shows the hammer marks, and is roughly finished, with the edge turned over to leave it smooth. The small compartments in the south-eastern chambers were probably intended to hold the offerings placed in the graves; the dividing walls are only about half the depth of the grave.

384.jpg Tomb of Mersekha, Showing Wooden Floor

The structure of the interior of the tomb of Mersekha is at present uncertain. Only in the corner by the entrance was the wooden flooring preserved; several beams (one now in Cairo Museum) and much broken wood was found loose in the rubbish. The entrance is nine feet wide, and was blocked by loose bricks, flush with wall face, as seen in the photograph. Another looser walling farther out, also seen in the photograph, is probably that of plunderers to hold back the sand.

The tomb of King Qa, which is the last of the first dynasty, shows a more developed stage than the others. Chambers for offerings are built on each side of the entrance passage, and this passage is turned to the north, as in the mastabas of the third dynasty and in the pyramids. The whole of the building is hasty and defective.

385.jpg Plan of Tomb Of Qa, Circa 4500 B.c.

The bricks were mostly used too new, probably less than a week after being made. Hence the walls have seriously collapsed in most of the lesser chambers; only the one great chamber was built of firm and well-dried bricks. In the small chambers along the east side the long wall between chambers 10 and 5 has crushed out at the base, and spread against the pottery in the grave 5, and against the wooden box in grave 2. Hence the objects must have been placed in those graves within a few days of the building of the wall, before the mud bricks were hard enough to carry even four feet height of wall. The burials of the domestics must therefore have taken place all at once, immediately after the king's tomb was built, and hence they must have been sacrificed at the funeral. The pottery placed in the chambers is all figured in position on the plan.

Only three steles were found in the grave of Qa, but these were larger than those of the earlier graves. One of them, No. 48, is the longest and most important inscription that has come down to us from the first dynasty. This lay in a chamber on the west side of the tomb. In the preparation of the stele, the block of stone had been ground all over and edges rounded. On its surface the hieroglyphs were then sketched in red ink, and were finally drawn in black, the ground being then roughly hammered out. There the work stopped, and the final scraping and dressing of the figures was never accomplished. The reading of the signs is therefore difficult, but enough is seen to show that the keeper of the tomb bore the name of Sabef. He had two titles which are now illegible, and was also "Overseer of the Sed Festival." This scanty information goes to show how little the official titles were changed between the days of the first dynasty and the time of the building of the pyramids. The stele of the king Qa was found lying over chamber; it is like that found by M. Amélineau, carved in black quartzose stone. Near it, on the south, were dozens of large pieces of fine alabaster bowls.

Among various objects found in these chambers should be noted the fine ivory carving from chamber 23, showing a bound captive; the large stock of painted model vases in limestone in a box in chamber 20; the set of perfect vases found in chamber 21; a fine piece of ribbed ivory; a piece of thick gold-foil covering of a hotep table, patterned as a mat, found in the long chamber west of the tomb; the deep mass of brown vegetable matter in the north-east chamber; the large stock of grain between chambers 8 and 11; and the bed of currants ten inches thick, though dried, which underlay the pottery in chamber 11. In chamber 16 were large dome-shaped jar sealings, with the name of Azab, and on one of them the ink-written signs of the "King's ka."

The entrance passage has been closed with rough brick walling at the top. It is curiously turned askew, as if to avoid some obstacle, but the chambers of the tomb of Den do not come near its direction. After nine steps, the straight passage is reached, and then a limestone portcullis slab bars the way, let into grooves on either side; it was, moreover, backed up by a buttress of brickwork in five steps behind it. All this shows that the rest of the passage must have been roofed in so deeply that entry from above was not the obvious course. The inner passage descends by steps, each about five inches high, partly in the slope, partly in the rise of the step. The side chambers open off this stairway by side passages a little above the level of the stairs.

The interior structure of the tomb of Qa is rather different from any other. Instead of the timber being an entirely separate structure apart from the brick, the brick sides seem here to have been very loosely built against the timber sides. Some detail yet remains of the wooden floor. The roofing is distinct in this tomb, and it is evident that there was an axial beam, and that the side beam only went half across the chamber. This is the only tomb with the awkward feature of an axial doorway, and it is interesting to note how the beam was placed out of the axis to accommodate it.

The tomb of Perabsen shows a great change in form since the earlier series. A new dynasty with new ideas had succeeded the great founders of the monarchy; the three reigns had passed by before we can again see here the system of the tombs. Even the national worship was changed, and Set had become prominent. The type of tomb which had been developed under Azab, Mer-sekha, and Qa seems to have given way to the earlier pattern of Zer and Zet. In this tomb of Perabsen we see the same row of small cells separated by cross walls, like those of the early kings; but in place of a wooden central chamber there is a brick chamber, and a free passage is left around it communicating with the cells. What was the form of the south side of that chamber cannot now be traced, as, if any wall existed, it is now entirely destroyed. The entirely new feature is the continuous passage around the whole tomb. Perhaps the object of this was to guard against plunderers entering by digging sideways into the tomb.

The tomb of Khasekhemui is very different from any of the other royal tombs yet known. The total length of the chamber from end to end is two hundred and twenty-three feet, and the breadth in the middle is forty feet, growing wider towards the northern end. The whole structure is very irregular; and, to add to the confusion, the greater part of it was built of freshly made mud bricks, which have yielded with the pressure and flowed out sideways, until the walls are often double their original breadth. It was only owing to this flow of the walls over the objects in the chambers, that so many valuable things were found perfect, and in position. Where the whole of the original outline of a wall had disappeared, the form is given in the plan with wavy outline.

The central stone chamber of the tomb of Khasekhemui is the most important part of the whole, as it is the oldest stone construction yet known. The chamber is roughly seventeen by ten feet; the depth is nearly six feet. There is no sign of any roof.

Nearly all the contents of this tomb were removed by the French investigators in 1897. Among the more interesting objects found were sealings of yellow clay, which were curiously enough of different types at opposite ends of the tomb. Copper needles, chisels, axes, and model tools were also found, and a beautiful sceptre of gold and sard was brought to light by Professor Petrie, only an inch or two below a spot that had been cleared by previous explorers.

In chamber 2 of the tomb of Khasekhemui were also found six vases of dolomite and one of carnelian. Two of these are shown in the illustration, and each has a cover of thick gold-foil fitted over the top, and secured with a double turn of twisted gold wire, the wire being sealed with a small lump of clay, the whole operation resembling the method of the modern druggist, in fastening a box of ointment. Near these vases were found two beautiful gold bracelets; one, Number 3, is still in a perfect condition; the other, Number 4, has been, unfortunately, crushed by the yielding of the wall of the tomb in which it was deposited.

391.jpg Gold-capped Vases and Gold Bracelets

Each royal grave seems to have had connected with it two great steles. Two, for instance, were found in the tomb of Merneit, one of which, however, was demolished. There were also two steles at the grave of Qa. So far only one stele had been found of Zet, and one of Mersekha, and none appear to have survived of Zer, Den, or Azab. These steles seem to have been placed at the east side of the tombs, and on the ground level, and such of them as happened to fall down upon their inscribed faces have generally been found in an excellent state of preservation.

Hence we must figure to ourselves two great steles standing up, side by side, on the east of the tomb; and this is exactly in accord with the next period that we know, in which, at Medum, Snofrui had two great steles and an altar between them on the east of his tomb; and Rahotep had two great steles, one on either side of the offering-niche, east of his tomb. Probably the pair of obelisks of the tomb of Antef V., at Thebes, were a later form of this system. Around the royal tomb stood the little private steles of the domestics, placed in rows, thus forming an enclosure about the king.

Some of Professor Petrie's most interesting work at Abydos was commenced in November, 1902. In the previous season a part of the early town of Abydos had been excavated, and it was found that its period began at the close of the prehistoric age, and extended over the first few dynasties; the connection between the prehistoric scale and historic reigns was thus settled. The position of this town was close behind the site of the old temples of Abydos, and within the great girdle-wall enclosure of the twelfth dynasty, which stands about half a mile north of the well-known later temples of Seti I. and Ramses II. This early town, being behind the temples, or more into the sandy edge of the desert, was higher up; the ground gently sloping from the cultivated land upward as a sandy plain, until it reaches the foot of the hills, a couple of miles back.

The broad result of these new excavations is that ten different temples can be traced on the same ground, though of about twenty feet difference of level; each temple built on the ruins of that which preceded it, quite regardless of the work of the earlier kings.

In such a clearance it was impossible to preserve all the structures. Had Petrie and his companions avoided moving the foundations of the twenty-sixth dynasty, they could never have seen much of the earlier work; had they left the paving of the twelfth dynasty in place, they must have sacrificed the objects of the Old Kingdom.

393.jpg General Plan of Buildings at Abydos

Also, had they only worked the higher levels, and left the rest, the inflow of high Nile would have formed a pond, which would have so rotted the ground that deeper work could not have been carried on in the future. The only course, therefore, was to plan everything fully, and remove whatever stood in the way of more complete exploration. All striking pieces of construction, such as the stone gateways of Papi, were left untouched, and work carried on to deep levels around them; in this way, at the end of the season, the site was bristling with pieces of wall and blocks of stonework, rising ten or fifteen feet above the low level clearances. As the excavations progressed, there was an incessant need of planning and recording all the constructions. Professor Petrie always went about with a large dinner-knife and a trowel in his pocket, and spent much time in cutting innumerable sections and tracing out the lines of the bricks. The top and base level of each piece of wall had to be marked on it; and the levels could then be measured off to fixed points.

An outline of some of the principal buildings is given, to show the general nature of the site of the temple of Abydos. This plan is not intended to show all periods, nor the whole work of any one age; but only a selection which will avoid confusion. The great outer wall on the plan was probably first built by Usirtasen I.; the bricks of the oldest parts of it are the same size as bricks of his foundation deposits, and it rests upon town ruins of the Old Kingdom. But this wall has been so often broken and repaired that a complete study of it would be a heavy task; some parts rest on nineteenth dynasty building, and even Roman patchwork is seen. Its general character is shown with alternating portions, the first set consisting of towers of brickwork built in concave foundations, and then connecting walls between; formed in straight courses. The purpose of this construction has long been a puzzle. The alternate concave and straight courses are the natural result of building isolated masses, on a concave bed like all Egyptian houses, and then connecting them by intermediate walls. The hard face across the wall, and the joint to prevent the spread of scaling, are the essential advantages of this construction.

The corner marked Kom-de-Sultan is the enclosure which was emptied out by Mariette 's diggers, because of the abundance of burials with steles of the twelfth to eighteenth dynasties.

They have removed all the earth to far below the base of the walls, thus digging in most parts right through the town of the Old Kingdom, which stood here before the great walls were built. The inner two sides of this enclosed corner are later than the outer wall; the bricks are larger than those of Usirtasen, and the base of the wall is higher than his. The causeway line indicated through the site by a dotted line from the east to the west gate is a main feature; but it is later than the sixth dynasty, as the wall of that age cuts it, and it was cut in two by later buildings of the twentieth dynasty. It seems then to begin with Usirtasen, whose gateways it runs through; and to have been kept up by Thûtmosis III., who built a wall with granite pylon for it, and also by Ramses II., who built a great portal colonnade of limestone for the causeway to pass through on entering the cemetery outside the west wall of this plan.

To the north of the causeway are seen the tombs of the first dynasty. One more, No. 27, was found beneath the wall of Thûtmosis; it was of the same character as the larger of the previous tombs. All of these are far below any of the buildings shown on this outline plan.

Of the two long walls, marked vi., the inner is older, but was re-used by Papi. It is probably the temenos of the third dynasty. The outer wall is the temenos of the sixth dynasty, the west side of which is yet unknown, and has probably been all destroyed. The temple of Papi is shown in the middle with the north-west and south sides of the thin boundary wall which enclosed it. The thick wall which lies outside of that is the great wall of the eighteenth dynasty, with the granite pylon of Thûtmosis III. It seems to have followed the line of the sixth dynasty wall on the north. The outline marked xix. shows a high level platform of stone, which was probably for the basement of buildings of Ramses II.

Within the area of these temples was discovered quite a number of historical relics. None is more interesting, perhaps, than the ivory statuette of the first dynasty king. This anonymous ruler is figured as wearing the crown of Upper Egypt, and a thick embroidered robe.

From the nature of the pattern and the stiff edge represented, it looks as if this robe were quilted with embroidery; no such dress is known on any Egyptian figure yet found. The work belongs to an unconventional school, before the rise of the fixed traditions; it might have been carved in any age and country where good natural work was done. In its unshrinking figuring of age and weakness with a subtle character, it shows a power of dealing with individuality which stands apart from all the later work.

397.jpg Ivory Statuette of First Dynasty King

Of greater interest, however, is the ivory statuette of Khûfûi, which is the first figure of that monarch that has come to light. The king is seated upon his throne, and the inscription upon the front of it leaves no doubt as to the identity of the figure. The work is of extraordinary delicacy and finish; for even when magnified it does not suggest any imperfection or clumsiness, but might have belonged to a life-sized statue. The proportion of the head is slightly exaggerated; as, indeed, is always the case in minute work; but the character and expression are as well handled as they might be on any other scale, and are full of power and vigour. The idea which it conveys to us of the personality of Khûfûi agrees with his historical position. We see the energy, the commanding air, the indomitable will, and the firm ability of the man who stamped for ever the character of the Egyptian monarchy and outdid all time in the scale of his works. No other Egyptian king that we know resembled this head; and it stands apart in portraiture, though perhaps it may be compared with the energetic face of Justinian, the great builder and organiser.

Two ivory lions were also found in one of the private tombs around that of Zer. It is evident that these lions were used as playing pieces, probably for the well-known pre-historic game of Four Lions and a Hare, for the bases of the lions are much worn, as if by sliding about upon a smooth surface, and the pelt of the lion, as originally carved, is also worn off as if by continued handling. The lion shown in the illustration is of a later style than those of Zer or of Mena. Near the place where this was found were a few others. One of them, apparently a lioness, is depicted with a collar, indicating that the animal had been tamed, and yet another had inserted within the head an eye accurately cut in chalcedony. Another valuable object unearthed at Abydos was the sceptre of King Khase-khemui. This consisted of a series of cylinders of sard embellished at every fourth cylinder with double bands of thick gold, and completed at the thinner end with a plain cap of gold, copper rod, now corroded, binding the whole together.

During the reign of King Zer the ivory arrow tip began to be commonly used; hundreds were gathered from his tomb, and the variety of forms is greater than in any other reign. Besides the plain circular points, many of them have reddened tips; there are also examples of quadrangular barbed tips, and others are pentagonal, square, or oval. Only the plain circular tips appear in succeeding reigns down to the reign of Mersekha, except a single example of the oval forms under Den.

Some flint arrow-heads were also found around the tomb of Zer, mostly of the same type as those found in the tomb of Mena. Two, however, of these arrow-heads, Numbers 13 and 14, are of a form entirely unknown as yet in any other age or country. The extreme top of the head is of a chisel form, and this passes below into the more familiar pointed form. The inference here is almost inevitable, and it seems as if the arrow-heads had been made in this peculiar way with a view to using the arrow a second time after the tip was broken in attacking an animal.

Another curious object dating from this reign and classed among the arrows is a small portion of flint set perpendicularly into the end of a piece of wood. This, in the opinion of Professor Giglioli, is not an arrow at all, but a tattooing instrument. If this explanation be correct, then this instrument is an extremely interesting find, for the fact has been recently brought to light that tattooing was in vogue in prehistoric times, and there is, moreover, at Cairo, the mummy of a priestess of the twelfth dynasty having the skin decorated in this manner.

Among the domestic articles is an admirable design of pair of tweezers, made with a wide hinge and stiff points. Of analogous interest are two copper fish-hooks, which, however, have no barbs. Needles also, which we know were used in prehistoric days, appear in the relics of the tomb of Zer and of subsequent rulers. Of the reign of Zer are also found copper harpoons cut with a second fang, similar forms being found among the remains of Mersekha and of Khasekhemui. In the centre of the illustration is seen the outline of a chisel of the time of Zer, very similar to those used in the early prehistoric ages. The same continuity from prehistoric to first dynasty times is shown in the shape of the copper pins dating from Zer, Den, Mersekha, and Qa.

At various times quite a considerable number of articles relating to intimate daily life has been discovered. An exceedingly fortunate find was that of an ivory comb of crude but careful workmanship, and which, even after the lapse of sixty-seven centuries, has only lost three of its teeth. This comb, according to the inscription on it, belonged to Bener-ab, a distinguished lady, whose tomb has been already mentioned, and who was either the wife or the daughter of King Mena of the first dynasty.

Of the class of domestic objects is the primitive but doubtless quite effective corn-grinder shown in the illustration. This was found in an undisturbed tomb in the Osiris temenos, where also was a strangely shaped three-sided pottery bowl, similar in shape to a stone bowl of the same period, but otherwise unknown in antiquity. This three-sided bowl may be regarded as a freak of the workman rather than as having any particular value along the line of evolution of pottery forms; and it is interesting to note that bowls of this form have been quite recently made by the modern English potters in South Devonshire, as the result of the inventive fancy of a village workman.

During the course of the excavations at Abydos many thousands of fragments of pottery were collected.

Those that appeared to be of historic value were sorted and classified, and, as a result of minute and extended labours, it is now possible for the reader to see at a glance the principal types of Egyptian pottery from prehistoric times, and to view their relationship as a whole. The diagram exhibits an unbroken series of pottery forms from s.d. 76 to B.C. 4400.

402b.jpg Corn-grinder and Three-sided Bowl

The forms in the first column are those classified according to the chronological notation devised by Professor Petrie, enabling a "sequence date" (s. d.) to be assigned to an object which cannot otherwise be dated. In the second column are forms found in the town of Abydos, and in the last column are those unearthed in the tombs. Most of the large jars bear marks, which were scratched in the moist clay before being baked; some few were marked after the baking.

403.jpg Types of Prehistoric and First Dynasty Pottery

Some of the marks are unquestionably hieroglyphs; others are probably connected with the signs used by the earlier prehistoric people; and many can scarcely be determined.

A typical instance of these pottery marks is shown in the illustration. These signs appear to be distinctly of the time of Mer-sekha, and the fortified enclosure around the name may refer to the tomb as the eternal fortress of the king. These marks can be roughly classified into types according to the skill with which they were drawn. The first example illustrates the more careful workmanship, and the others show more degraded forms, in which the outline of the hawk and the signs in the cartouche become gradually more debased. It is tolerably certain that what are known as the Mediterranean alphabets were derived from a selection of the signs used in these pottery marks.

An undisturbed tomb was found by accident in the Osiris temenos. The soil was so wet that the bones were mostly dissolved; and only fragments of the skull, crushed under an inverted slate bowl, were preserved. The head had been laid upon a sandstone corn-grinder. Around the sides of the tomb were over two dozen jars of pottery, most of them large. And near the body were sixteen stone vases and bowls. Some of the forms, such as are shown in the illustration, Nos. 3, 7, 8, are new to us. A strange three-sided pottery bowl was also found here, but since there is no museum in England where such a complete tomb can be placed, it was sent to Philadelphia, in order that the whole series should be arranged as originally found.

The sealings, the general description of which has been already given, have come to light in such considerable quantities during the past few years that their study became a special branch of Egyptology. As to the earliest sealings, it was not until the time of Den that a broad uniformity of style was established. The seals of the second dynasty are generally of a smaller style and more elaborately worked than those of the first dynasty. It is reasonable, therefore, to conclude that the later seals were made in stone or metal rather than in wood.

The illustration given of sealing No. 128, of the Egypt Exploration Fund collection, shows a very fair type of the figuring of men and animals at the time of the first dynasty as a survival of the prehistoric manner of engraving. Here, then, at the very dawn of history, we find a spirited depiction of the human form, for, rude though it is, there can be no doubt but that it is a representation of the human figure, and stiff and ungainly though the action of the drawing be, there can be no doubt as to the progressive movement intended by the artist. On a sealing, No. 116, is seen the leopard with the bent bars on his back. The shrine upon the same seal is of the general form, and is like the early huts with reed sides, and an interwoven palm-rib roof. This is a specimen of an intermediate manner of workmanship. The most advanced stage of art in the sealings of the first dynasty, is No. 108. This is the royal seal of King Zer, B.C. 4700, showing him seated and wearing the crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt. By his side are the royal staff and his cartouches. It was workmanship of this character which survived in Egypt almost as late as Roman times; that is to say, the same style engraving was current in the Valley of the Nile for forty-six centuries.

A particularly interesting sealing is a representation of two jars with the flat seals across their tops.

These jars, moreover, are depicted as bound around with a network of rope in a manner which corresponds with some fragments of rope found around some jars of this character.

A small fragment of pottery originally forming the base of a brown earthenware dish had inscribed upon it some accounts, and is the oldest of such business records yet found in Egypt. The exact import of the figures is not yet entirely intelligible, but they seem to refer to quantities of things rather than to individuals, as the numbers, although mostly twenty, are sometimes one hundred and two hundred. This interesting fragment was found at the tomb of Zet, and thus establishes the use of arithmetic before 4600 B.C.

The expedition supported by Mrs. Hearst, in the name of the University of California, has done some useful work at El-Ahaiwah, opposite Menshiyeh. The main cemetery at this place is an archaic one, containing about a thousand graves or more, of which about seven hundred had already been plundered. Between these plundered graves, about 250 were found untouched in modern times. The graves yielded a good collection of archaic pottery, pearl and ivory bracelets, hairpins, carnelian, garnet, gold, blue glaze and other beads, etc.

About this cemetery was a cemetery of the late New Empire, containing a number of vaulted tombs built of unburned brick. These yielded a large number of necklaces, and several fine pieces of faïence and ivory, and other objects. A second cemetery, farther north, contained a few late archaic graves and about fifteen large tombs, usually with one main chamber and two small chambers at each end. These tombs were of two types (1) roofed over with wood, without a stairway, (2) roofed over with a corbelled vault and entered from the west by a stairway. The burials in these tombs are in the archaic position, head to south. Dissected, or secondary, burials occur in these cemeteries, but only rarely. Only one indisputable case was found, as shown in the illustration.

408.jpg Unique Instance of a Dissected Burial

It would require several volumes adequately to deal with the results of the excavations of the present century. Further discoveries, all throwing new light upon the life of ancient Egypt, are being made each season, and the number of enthusiastic workers gathered from every nation constantly increases. Notwithstanding the heroic and splendid work of past investigators, for many years to come the valley of the Nile promises to yield important results, not only in actual field work, but also in the close study and better classification of the thousands of objects that are continually being brought to light.

Six thousand years of history have been unrolled; tomb and tablet, shard and papyrus have told their story, and the vista stretches back to the dawn of human history in that inexhaustible valley watered by the perennial overflow of the grandest river in the world. But there is much still to be accomplished by the enthusiastic spirit, the keen and selective mind, in the study of this ancient land, the cradle and the grave of nations.

THE END.

PART C.

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History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12), S. Rappoport

.

HISTORY OF EGYPT

From 330 B.C. to the Present Time

By S. RAPPOPORT, Doctor of Philosophy, Basel

Member of the Ecole Langues Orientales, Paris; Russian, German,
French Orientalist and Philologist

VOL. XII., Part C.

Containing over Twelve Hundred Colored Plates and Illustrations

THE GROLIER SOCIETY
PUBLISHERS, LONDON

Contents

List of Illustrations

CHAPTER VI—THE DECIPHERMENT OF THE HIEROGLYPHS*

CHAPTER VII—THE DEVELOPMENT OF EGYPTOLOGY

CHAPTER VIII.—IMPORTANT RESEARCHES IN EGYPT

History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12), S. Rappoport

.

HISTORY OF EGYPT

From 330 B.C. to the Present Time

By S. RAPPOPORT, Doctor of Philosophy, Basel

Member of the Ecole Langues Orientales, Paris; Russian, German, French Orientalist and Philologist

VOL. XII., Part C.

Containing over Twelve Hundred Colored Plates and Illustrations

THE GROLIER SOCIETY PUBLISHERS, LONDON

Contents

List of Illustrations

CHAPTER VI—THE DECIPHERMENT OF THE HIEROGLYPHS*

CHAPTER VII—THE DEVELOPMENT OF EGYPTOLOGY

CHAPTER VIII.—IMPORTANT RESEARCHES IN EGYPT

Member of the Ecole Langues Orientales, Paris; Russian, German,
French Orientalist and Philologist

THE GROLIER SOCIETY
PUBLISHERS, LONDON