ARCR/EOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES. (EGYPT.) 



21 



animation should be postponed. Among places 

 that promised to yield important discoveries 

 was one so covered with early Greek pottery 

 that the potsherds crackled under the feet as 

 one walked over it. This pottery was of every 

 date, from the prehistoric down through the 

 Phoenician and black-figured to the finest period 

 of red-figured pottery on a black ground, and 

 on into still later times. Such a site was of 

 the first importance for the study of Greek 

 archeology, and, so far as was known, it had 

 never been visited by a European. This site, 

 with the one in which the great sarcophagus 

 of red granite already mentioned, and one in 

 which the jamb of a gateway of Amenemhe I 

 were found, were .spoken of as places not be- 

 fore known to Europeans, on which the agents 

 of the fund hoped to make more thorough ex- 

 plorations. They had been foiled in finding 

 relics of the Hyksos dynasties at Zoan, simply 

 by the immensity of the area to be explored 

 there, to clear which exhaustively would take 

 centuries of work, rather than the few months 

 that could be given to it between the rains and 

 the heat of one season. The whole of that 

 area, however, had been examined to depths 

 of ten, twenty, or thirty feet, with shafts that 

 left no spaces of more than three hundred yards 

 untouched by excavations. The financial re- 

 port showed a balance of 2,162 to the credit 

 of the fund. It was proposed to spend 1,650 

 luring the ensuing year, and to send out an 

 English student of Egyptology to assist Mr. 

 Petrie. American friends of the fund had con- 

 tributed 260 to its treasury, through the Rev. 

 W. 0. Winslow, of Boston. It was resolved 

 to present a selection from the objects collected 

 in the excavations to the museum in Boston. 



Measurements of the Great Pyramid. W. Flin- 

 ders Petrie has published the results of meas- 

 urements of the Pyramids of Gizeh, which 

 he made during the season of 1880-'81 and 

 1882-'83, and in which he believes he has 

 secured, by the systems of checks and tri- 

 angulations he employed, a higher degree of 

 accuracy than has been obtained in any pre- 

 vious survey. The dimensions of the Great 

 Pyramid and its several parts, as calculated by 

 him, differ from those announced by Prof. 0. 

 Piazzi Smith slightly, but sufficiently, if the 

 measurements are actually more accurate, to 

 overthrow the theory of mystic harmonies and 

 proportions which Prof. Smith has founded 

 upon his own surveys ; and Mr. Petrie suggests 

 new relations of proportion in the different 

 parts of the pyramid, without attaching any 

 particular significance to them. He contro- 

 verts the theory of Lepsius, that the pyramids 

 were built by successive accretions, or by the 

 addition of new layers over the whole struct- 

 ure in the successive years of the king-builder's 

 reign, and finds reason in his observations on 

 the mode of structure for believing that they 

 were constructed according to a predeter- 

 mined plan. Mr. Petrie also inquired into the 

 character of the tools that were used in build- 



ing the pyramids. Of these tools, a bronze 

 plate or scraper, and a copper instrument, and 

 traces of bronze saws and tubular drills, have 

 been discovered, but not the tubes themselves. 

 The drills are supposed to have been jeweled 

 with tough, uncrystallized corundum or some 

 other gem-mineral capable of cutting into gran- 

 ite, diorite, and basalt, and the saws were 

 probably about nine feet long. An enormous 

 levy of forced labor might have been' made 

 during the season of the overflow, without in- 

 terfering with the regular industries of tho 

 country. Barracks have been discovered to 

 the west of the second pyramid which were ca- 

 pable of accommodating about four thousand 

 workmen. These, supposing them to have 

 been masons, with relays of one hundred thou- 

 sand men every three months, would have been 

 adequate, Mr. Petrie supposes, for the construc- 

 tion of the pyramids. The accuracy with which 

 the base is squared so close that it is hardly 

 conceivable that the angles could have been 

 measured without the aid of telescopes is 

 mentioned as the most wonderful feature in 

 the construction of the Great Pyramid. 



One of the most interesting results of Mr. 

 Petrie's investigations was the discovery of 

 evidence that these works of the ancient em- 

 pire had been at some period subjected to de- 

 liberate, determined attempts to destroy them. 

 To this is owing the condition of the second 

 pyramid of Aboo Roash, which had led to the 

 supposition that it had never been finished. 

 From the examination of the rubbish-heaps 

 around this work, Mr. Petrie learned that the 

 whole granite casing of the pyramid had been 

 stripped off to be laboriously smashed. He 

 found fragments of a sarcophagus of granite, 

 which the structure had once contained, and 

 pieces of a throne and of a statue in diorite as 

 large as the statue of Khafra of the second 

 pyramid of Gizeh, which had been seated on the 

 throne, and part of the name of the king. Chips 

 and fragments of precious vessels in alabaster, 

 bronze, and basalt, were also discovered in 

 this debris. The rubbish in which the ruins 

 of the votive chapel, attached to the pyramid 

 of Khafra at Gizeh, are half buried, yielded 

 similar results. Considerable masses of chips 

 of diorite and alabaster statues, fingers, toes, 

 bits of drapery, fragments of diorite and ala- 

 baster bowls, and even of hieroglyphical in- 

 scriptions, were found in it. These discoveries 

 may help to throw light on the character of 

 the period from the seventh to the eleventh 

 dynasties, the darkest epoch of Egyptian his- 

 tory, which it is supposed may have been a 

 period of revolution, and upon the hitherto 

 unexplained expression of Herodotus respect- 

 ing the pyramid-builders, that "the Egyptians 

 so detest the memory of these kings that they 

 do not like even to mention their names." 



A Theban Tomb of the Eleventh Dynasty. M. 

 Maspero discovered in February, 1883, among 

 the hills near Thebes, the tomb of a person 

 named Horhotpu, of the eleventh dynasty, a 



