THE PHARAOHS

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 35, 10 February 1913, Page 4

THE PHARAOHS

According to accounts published in the English papers, Professor Elliot Smith, F.R.S., has had the oppor-j tnnity of examining a series of some fifty mummies which comprise all that is left of the great Pharaohs of anci-; out Egypt, their queens, and some j members of their households. .1 he. mummies are contained in the Cairo Museum, and the examination has been made at the request of Sir Oaston Maspero, Director of the Department of Antiquities at Cairo. The mummies are believed to include those of Snqnounri, the last king of the Seventeenth Dynasty, about 2000 b.c., whose battered skull and wounded body, showing signs of having been hastily embalmed, bear witness to sudden death by murder. Menephthah, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, his father Raineses 11., his grandfather the great Seti 1., his son Siphthah, and the grandson Seti 11. Professor Smith was afforded a fine opportunity of studying the anthropological •history of the royal dynasties, and after a lapse of more than twenty-five centuries material has been obtained with which to form fairly accurate pictures of the appearance of the Pharaohs. Mencphthah, the Pharaoh of the Exodus, is described as having been a “somewhat corpulent old man.” He was almost completely bald, only a narrow fringe of white hair remaining on the temples. The process of embalming had been eminently successful, the body being well preserved. Professor Smith .found the general aspect of the face recalled that of Monephthah’s father, Raineses 11., but the form of the cranium and the measurements of the face more nearly agree with those of his grandfather Seti the Great. Seti I. and Raineses 11. exhibit in their cranial and facial features many alien traits curiously blended with Egyptian, but in Menephthah the foreign element in composition is more ,obstrusively shown than it is in either his father or his grandfather. He has the prominent high-bridged nose of his ftaher, but a shorter and much broader cranium than either of his predecessors. His height was about sft. 7in.