DISCOVERY 



35 



Directional recei\ing stations are now coming into 

 extensive use for another quite different purpose, viz. 

 commercial long-range point-to-point communication. 

 Three conditions are required for a paying commercial 

 long - range service ; first, high - speed signalling ; 

 secondly, duple.x working ; thirdly, freedom from 

 interference, and of these the second and third can be 

 obtained, to a great extent, by recei\'ing the messages 

 at a directional receiving station separated from its 

 sending station. This arrangement is now made for 

 practically all long-range ser\'ices throughout the 

 world. In duplex working, messages are sent and 

 received at the same time, the receiving station being 

 some miles distant from its sending station, and 

 arranged directively, so that it can receive from the 

 distant station without being interfered with by the 

 transmission of telegrams from its own sending station. 

 Similarly, freedom from interference from other 

 stations is materially assisted by the fact that the 

 receiving station, being directional, can only receive 

 well on the line, or prolongation of the line, between it 

 and the distant station from which it wishes to receive, 

 so that sending stations situated in other directions 

 will not interfere. Owing to the great amplification 

 in the strength of the current at receiving stations 

 made possible by the use of thermionic tubes, quite 

 small loops consisting of a number of turns of wire 

 wound on rectangular frames, about eight feet square, 

 are now the only aerials used at many of the high- 

 power stations in Europe for receiving commercial 

 messages from stations at great distances such as those 

 in the United States of America. 



A New Chapter in the 

 History of Egyptian Art 



By Ayhvard M. Blackman, D.Litt. 



About 200 miles south of Cairo on the west bank of 

 the Nile in the province of Asyiit lies the town of 

 Kuslyeh, the Cusse of antiquity. Once the capital of 

 the fourteenth nome or province of Upper Eg\-pt, it 

 has, in the course of centuries, dwindled into a place 

 of small dimensions and third-rate importance. In 

 the western desert, distant about a two and a half 

 hours' ride from Kusiyeh, is to be found the ancient 

 necropolis of that erstwhile famous city. It consists 

 of an extensive chain of cemeteries, occupying not only 

 a considerable stretch of the inner or western side of 

 the lower desert, but climbing half-way up the steep 

 limestone slope which terminates in the high desert 

 plateau — the great and mj'sterious Sahara. To the 



whole of this ancient site the not far distant village of 

 Meir has given its name. 



The poorer inhabitants of Cusae, like the local 

 felldhtn (peasants) of to-day,i buried their dead in the 

 lower desert. The high desert slope is honeycombed 

 with the burial-pits of the wealthier citizens, and here 

 also are excavated the tomb-chapels of the great feudal 

 lords or nomarchs of Custe, who flourished from about 

 2920 to 1900 B.C. 2 It is with the reliefs and paintings 

 decorating the walls of some of these chapels that the 

 present article is concerned. 



Not till well on in the Fifth D\-nasty, about 3050 B.C., 

 when, owing to the weakenmg of the centralising 

 power of the Memphite or Old Kingdom Pharaohs, 

 the feudal sj-stem had pretty fully developed, did 

 the provincial governors start to construct their 

 funerary? chapels near their respective seats of 

 government. Hitherto they had been so closely 

 attached to the court and person of the sovereign, to 

 whom they owed their positions, that they had always 

 been buried near his pyramid, w^hich was regularly 

 erected in the neighbourhood of the capital. By the 

 beginning of the Sixth Dynasty, about 2920 B.C., 

 these governors, who in the first instance had been 

 appointed by the king and exercised their rehgious and 

 civil fimctions solely as his representatives, had become 

 feudal barons, each hrmly entrenched in his own 

 domain and ruling over it by right of inheritance— 

 though to be sure, when a son succeeded his father, the 

 succession had anyhow in theory' to be ratified by the 

 Pharaoh. To this last-named period, the Sixth 

 Dynasty {circa 2920 to 2720 B.C.), must be assigned 

 the earliest sculptured and painted tomb-chapels of 

 the Cusite nomarchs at ]\Ieir, for the decoration of 

 which the local craftsmen employed the same subjects, 

 and rendered them in the same manner, as the court 

 artists at ^lemphis who adorned the royal funerary 

 temples and the tomb-chapels of the nobles, still to 

 be seen at Sakkareh, Gizeh, and Meidum. Both the 

 subjects and the manner of rendering them had been 

 stereotyped for centuries, and the same scenes and 

 groups of figures were reproduced over and over again 

 by the Old Kingdom craftsmen with verj- little variety. 

 The only difference between the work of the court and 

 provincial artists is that the latter did not make use 

 of such a variety of subjects as the former, while their 

 workmanship is decidedly rougher and clumsier. 



After the fall of the Sixth Dynasty the feudal lords 

 seem to have contented themseh'es with undecorated 

 tomb-chapels ; anyhow% none of Old Kingdom date at 



1 See W. S. Blackman, " Some Modem Egyptian Graveside 

 Ceremonies," in Discovery, vol. ii, pp. 207 foil. 



2 In accordance with the revised dating of Dr. Ludwig 

 Borchardt in his work, Die A mtalen mid die Zeitliche Festlegung 

 des alien Reiches der dgyplischen Geschichte. Berlin, 1917. 



