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Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 279, 4 December 1901, Page 3

The middle aged man who has explored life to weariness and whom novels will no longer stir may find his sense of mystery and wonder excited anew by the amount of discoveries in buried Egypt Prof. Flinders Petrie who has devoted his life to exploration

of the soil and research into the history of that ancient land, completed last week a series of highly instructive and suggestive lectures at the Royal Institution. Long - buried tombs of ancient kings have been discovered and explored, and, although in nearly all cases these have been previously pillaged in the Roman age, enough of their contents remain unbroken or overlooked till now to afford ground for reconstructing in outline at least, a wonderful and unsuspected civilisation. When we are shown, for example, specimens of goldsmith’s work dating from -1750 years before the Christian era, which have never been surpassed in technical skill, working of designs, variety of form and perfection of soldering, we are sobered somewhat in our belief that the process of time means progress and that

the present is the best and noblest era o£ civilization. We are proud for ininstance oi the produects of modern steam spinning and weaving. Yet the linen woven 6,000 years ago was finer in thread and closer in web than our finest cambric.