ARCHEOLOGY. 



chapter of the Book of the Dead written on them 

 with ink is of importance. Many of these fig- 

 ures were inclosed in a small sarcophagus of 

 earthenware. Once such a sarcophagus had a 

 small imitation of a tomb over itself, made from 

 a few bricks. Four conic vessels stood at the 

 corners of the sarcophagus. The theory that 

 these figures did not represent slaves of the dead 

 (as, indeed, did different statuettes of the earlier 

 periods), but were proxies of the deceased which 

 were expected to take his place when Osiris called 

 him to the daily work in the heavenly fields, 

 finds by the new observations a brilliant con- 

 firmation. This becomes the plainer if we con- 

 sider that many of these proxies were wrapped 

 in linen bandages, exactly like mummies." The 

 time when these pits were plundered seems to 

 be near the end of the Thebaic kingdom, when, 

 Dr. Spiegelberg thinks, a general clearing up of 

 the old tombs for reuse was going on. Some of 

 the old pits were used as collective burial places 

 for ibises and other sacred birds. One of the 

 tombs, which had suffered this fate, belonged to 

 a certain Here, the inspector of granaries of 

 Queen Aahhotep, of the beginning of the eight- 

 eenth dynasty. Near this was a tomb belonging 

 to the chief of the silver and gold house, Dhuti. 

 Of two stelae standing in the court at the en- 

 trance to the tomb, one contained a hymn ad- 

 dressed to Amon Re, while the other contained in 

 42 lines an account of the official acts of the de- 

 ceased among other facts, that he was appointed 

 to superintend the manufacture of works in pre- 

 cious metals under the reigns of Queen Hatasu 

 and King Thothmes III. Apposite to this is the 

 collection of magnificent gold and silver plates of 

 curious style preserved in the Louvre, and bear- 

 ing the same name of Dhuti. Dhuti, too, is de- 

 scribed in a tale in a papyrus in London as the 

 hero who took by surprise the hostile city of 

 Yapu, or Jaffa, in Palestine. He also claims to 

 have registered the spoils brought back by the 

 expedition which Queen Hatasu sent to the in- 

 cense country of Punt, on the Red Sea. Seek- 

 ing more light on this passage, Dr. Spiegelberg, 

 Mr. Percy Newberry, and Mr. Howard Carter to- 

 gether examined anew the pictures relating to 

 the expedition in the temple of Hatasu at Deir- 

 el-Bahari, and found in the section representing 

 the piling up of the products traces of a figure, 

 before unperceived, of a man making entries, over 

 which was the name of Dhuti, half obliterated, 

 an effort having evidently been made to scratch 

 out this part of the scene. Hence it is inferred 

 that Dhuti eventually fell into disfavor. 



Predynastic Belies. In a paper read to the 

 Society of Antiquaries, June 15, Mr. F. G. Hilton 

 Price, director, described a number of very an- 

 cient antiquities in his collection which had come 

 from Negada, Abydos, Gebelen, and other archaic 

 sites. Many of these objects had been known to 

 Egyptologists for several years, but it was not 

 until systematic excavations had been carried on 

 by Prof. Flinders Petrie at Negada and Ballas, in 

 1894-'95, that their period could be ascertained. 

 It has been found that they belong to a pre- 

 dynastic people, who lived in the Nile valley 

 previous to or about the time of the first dynasty. 

 Among these objects were a remarkably fine and 

 perfect amulet, made out of the end of the tusk 

 of an elephant, having a human head of Asiatic 

 type, with pointed beard, carved out on the 

 point; an amulet made of a thin, flat piece of 

 gold, apparently representing the former done in 

 the flat instead of the round; a wand or baton in 

 ivory, shaped like a boomerang, and engraved 

 with fantastic figures; cone-shaped stone disks, 



hitherto supposed to be mace heads, but which 

 might be whorls or guards for the hand fire drill 

 and palettes of slate, which the author agreed with 

 Prof. Petrie in considering had been largely used 

 for grinding malachite or hematite for face paint, 

 in some of which traces of the colors remained. 

 These palettes might possibly have been em- 

 ployed primarily as amulets. Other objects de- 

 scribed were bangles in shell, articles in bone, 

 called " manikins," spoons, beads, a small stone 

 lion, pots or vases of diorite. and other orna- 

 mental stones; pottery, of which specimens are 

 mentioned of the red ware with black tops and 

 of the decorative class: and a series of finely 

 chipped implements in cherty flint. 



Belies of the Earlier Dynasties. An ex- 

 hibition made by Prof. W. M. Flinders Petrie at 

 University College, London, in July, included 

 stune of the results obtained by Prof. Petrie and 

 his company during the previous season for the 

 Egypt Exploration Fund and a prehistoric collec- 

 tion lent by Mr. Randolph Berens. The work of 

 the Exploration Fund had been on cemeteries of 

 various early periods, and in part at Deir-el- 

 Bahari. The principal discovery of the year was 

 that of the Libyan settlements in Egypt at the 

 close of the middle kingdom, about 2400 B. c. 

 The graves of these people are shallow, circular 

 pits, about 2 feet deep and 4 feet across, which 

 the excavators called from their form pan graves, 

 and into which the bodies were placed in a con- 

 tracted position, as in the prehistoric graves, but 

 not all in the same direction. The pottery was 

 like that of the twelfth dynasty and later, and 

 all the Egyptian pottery, kohl pots, and beads 

 found with these burials are of corresponding 

 age. From this circumstance it becomes pos- 

 sible to fix approximately the period of the Lib- 

 yan invasion. A peculiar feature illustrated in 

 the exhibition is the burial of skulls of domestic 

 animals. The backs of these skulls are cut away, 

 so that they can be hung up, like the Greek 

 bucrania. The facial bones are decorated with 

 spots and lines of red paint, put on with the 

 finger a custom which belongs also to the pre- 

 historic Egyptians, who are supposed to have 

 been mainly Libyans. From the prehistoric pe- 

 riod still unrelated were shown flint knives, 

 forked lance heads, ivory knobs, clay toys and 

 models, pottery, stone vases, beads, and other 

 objects. The collection also included of later 

 periods stone vases and kohl pots of alabaster, 

 basalt, serpentine, and blue marble; statuettes of 

 a lady Tasegt, a man Ranseut, and a youth 

 whose name is lost; and several bronze weapons. 

 A dagger is shown in photograph the original 

 having been detained in Cairo with ivory handle 

 and silver rosettes, inscribed with the name of 

 King Snazenra, of the fourteenth dynasty. Arti- 

 cles of pottery of the thirteenth to the seven- 

 teenth dynasties furnish a set of forms inter- 

 mediate between those of the middle kingdom 

 and of the empire, which completes, Mr. Petrie 

 says, " our view of Egyptian pottery, which we 

 now know from prehistoric times down to the 

 nineteenth dynasty." The loan collection con- 

 tains some of the finest specimens known of the 

 stone vases made in the best period of the pre- 

 historic age, among them three large vases of 

 shelly breccia; another of diorite, of later pre- 

 historic time; an alabaster cup with seven spouts, 

 assigned to the third or fourth dynasty; and a 

 number of prehistoric flints from both the high 

 desert plateau and the lower level near the Nile, 

 from which the inference is drawn that Palaeo- 

 lithic man continued in Egypt until the Nile was. 

 as low as its present level. 



