Excavating in Egypt.

Manawatu Herald, 11 January 1898, Page 3

Excavating in Egypt.

.-■'■■ — +~ — Professor Flinders Petrie divides bis years into two halves, and spends them in a curiously dissimilar manner. Throughout the winter be delves among the rnins of the forgotten past in Egyptian tombs, and in the summer he lectures to young England at University College. His work in Egypt is of absorbing interest to those whose imagination is capable of being aronse^nby discoveries of tht manners and customs of races which flourished before the dawn of history. At Hawara he obtained the sarcophagus containing Horuta's body. It wai hauled np with great diffi oulty, and proved to be worth the trouble it had cost, for the amulets found /Jn the mommy were the richest and most complete series yet discovered. In the Bame cemetery as yielded this mnmmy Professor Petrie dis covered rag dolls which had belonged to almdst pre-historic little girls, and wreaths of real flowers, in perfect . preservation, which added immensely to the stock x>f modern knowledge of ancient Egyptian botany. At another buried town he dog np balls of thread, fishing nets, rakes, whipping tops and tip cats. A bow-drill for producing fire snowed what hid hitherto been unknown, " the Egyptain makeshift for matchi." At Mednm, " bent on finding the beginning of thing*, he and his workers got down to the _^Jspraple of Seneferu, the first king of the fourth dynasty, who reigned 8766 years before the Christian era. This is the earliest that has ever been reached. " They found beautiful architecture, bronze cbiself, stone axe?, and— a draught board ! Even rheumatism was known in those days. The skeleton was found of a man who had been a. martyr to that malady, as united vertebra proved. Another man was - found who had suffered from rickety onrvature of the spine." At Seneferu, Professor Petrie said, positive know* ledge at present stops, and the three earliest d„ nasties -wh'ch vere not really the earliest, for it seems that it is now know that there were earlier dynasties than the so-called first — remain blank. Still, it is something to have brought to light the implements and toys of peopW who lived between 5000 and OOOT years ago..