DISCOVERY 



A MONTHLY POPULAR 

 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE 



Vol. IV, No. 47. NOVE.MBER 1923. 



PRICE Is. NET. 



DISCOVERY. A Monthly Popular Journal of Know- 

 ledge. 



Edited by Edward Liveixg, B.A., 23 Westminster 

 Mansions, Great Smith Street, London, S.W.i, to whom 

 all Editorial Communications should be addressed. (Dr. 

 A. S. Russell continues to act as Scientific Adviser.) 



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Editorial Notes 



This month we are promised the excitement of a further 

 penetration into Tutankhamon's tomb. So the winter 

 and early spring will see a revival of interest in the life 

 and civilisation of the ancient EgA'ptians. Prosperous 

 city merchants will exchange remarks about the new 

 " finds " over their port in the club ; elderly dames will 

 attire themselves in dresses " with a touch of the East 

 about them " ; there is certain to be a Tutankhamon 

 Tango in honour of the " old boy," w-ho did himself 

 weU a few thousand j^ears ago, and for the benefit of 

 the dancing youth of to-daj-. If one of Mr. Howard 

 Carter's pet canaries dies during the exploration of the 

 tomb, certain spiritualists will be confirmed in their 

 belief that the shades of Tutankhamon have been 

 enraged ; and, in any event, the press wiU again 

 be filled with outcries against the desecration of a human 

 being's resting-place — however ancient it may be. 

 Meanwhile the sellers of Oriental novelties will rejoice 

 at their increased profits, and publishers wiU rub their 

 hands pleasurably as they launch books about the 

 ancient Egyptians on the expectant public and the 

 public shows its appreciation in cash. 



To persons with imagination these extraordinarily 

 successful excavations in Upper Egj'pt, described 



graphically in a lantern lecture in London last Sep- 

 tember by Mr. Howard Carter himself cannot fail to 

 appeal with unusual intensity. Instead of a few frag- 

 mentary remains, the finds are so extensive, rich, and 

 beautiful that, looking at photographs of them, one 

 begins to summon up picttires of the teeming life in the 

 Nile ^'alley of those bygone da}-s. That life has 

 altered little since Tutankhamon's time, despite a new 

 religion and the advent of Western forms of government 

 and officialdom. The Nile still flows through the 

 Libyan Desert and supplies the irrigated stretches 

 of vegetation on either side of it with fertile mud ; and 

 the sun continues to shine from blue skies throughout 

 the year, with the exception of an exceedingly few 

 rainy days. In city and country-side you encounter 

 customs and scenes which j^ou would have encountered 

 had you visited Egj^pt in the days before the Exodus. 



^ 4 :): * 4: 



Professor Xew-berty at the September meeting of 

 the British Association, speaking of the modem 

 EgAjptians, said that " in almost every circumstance ot 

 daily life we see the Old in the New\ Most of the 

 ceremonies from birth to burial are not Moslim, or 

 Christian, or Roman, or Greek ; they are ancient 

 Egyptian." In several past numbers of Discovery 

 we havepublished articles byMissBlackman on theways 

 and customs of modern Egyptians, and in this number 

 we print an article by her on Moslim Saints in Modern 

 Egypt, which amply bears out Professor Newberry's 

 statement. So many field anthropologists are nowa- 

 days turning their attentions — and rightly so — to the 

 study of sa\age races in the hope of rescuing their 

 religions and social customs from oblivion ere the 

 advent of the white man caused them to disappear, that 

 in recent years the modern Egj^ptian has been com- 

 paratively little studied — indeed he has never been ■ 

 studied in anything like the way that some of the 

 Central African tribes have been studied. Lane's 

 book on the manners and customs of the Cairene 

 Egj^tian still remains as the standard work on modem 

 Eg3T)tian life, though it contains no account of the 

 much more interesting fellahln, or peasants. " A 



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