212 



Dis(:ovi:«Y 



the first day of every week." ' A similar text, probably 

 of the Sixth Dynasty, runs as follows : " A ' coming 

 forth unto the voice ' for him in his tomb-chapc-1, at 

 the monthly and half-monthly festival, on the firsts 

 of the seasons, the firsts of the months and the firsts 

 of the weeks." » In later times this weekly offering 

 seems to have degenerated into a mere pouring out cf 

 water at the grave, to the recitation of formuhe, a 

 custom that still survives in Lower Nubia and Upper 

 Egypt.' 



Prt occasionally occurs in its funerary significance 

 without the following r-hrw, and it then seems aUvays 

 to be accompanied by the attribute i,/ ("great"), i.e. 

 " the great going forth," or, to use the modern equiva- 

 lent, " great (ala' ." For example, a man prays that 

 on the day in which he departs this life there may be 

 " a great going forth of my fellow townsfolk." The 

 same expression is found in the Canopus decree, where 

 it is employed to denote the annual commemoration of 

 the death of the deified Berenike.' 



In the Greek version of this last-mentioned inscrip- 

 tion, prt <;/ is rendered ftt'ya tto-^os, " great 

 lamentation," an indication that those taking part in 

 this " coming forth " wailed at the graveside, and 

 probably on their way there and back, as is indeed the 

 custom in modern times. 



In view of the evidence obtained from the meaning 

 of the names given to both the ancient and modern 

 rites, together with many similarities in the mortuary 

 ritual of the ancient and modern Egyptians, as well as 

 the interesting fact that " the going up " was in both 

 instances to the same desert, we have some justification 

 for supposing that the modern ceremonies are in 

 origin pre-Islamic — indeed, pre-Christian^and are 

 direct ritualistic survivals from the earliest period in 

 the history of this remarkable and interesting country. 



It may be of interest to readers of this article to 

 compare the representation of an ancient Egyptian 

 woman wailing at the tomb of a dead relation with the 

 photographs which I took of modern Egyptian women 

 similarly engaged (Fig. 4). 



' A. M. Blackman, Jottrn. Egyptian Arch., vol. iii. 1916, 

 P- 32- 

 ' Ibid. 

 » Ibid., ff. 

 ' H. Schiifer, Die Mysterien des Osiris in Abydos, p. 25. 



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The Parentage of 

 Invention 



By Herbert W. Horwill, M.A. 



That necessity is the mother of invention is one of the 

 most commonly accepted of our ancient saws. But 

 the inventors themselves do not all endorse it. " No 

 such thing 1 " declared Mr. Louis Brennan, in an 

 interview some years ago. " Accident is the mother 

 of invention in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred." 



The exact percentage would, jxjrhaps, be difficult 

 to reach with any scientific precision. There are many 

 instances that might be quoted to challenge Mr. 

 Brennan's dictum. Soviet Russia has been supplying 

 some of them. Mr. Arthur Ransome has told us how 

 the shortage of the usual material has led to the manu- 

 facture of matches with w^aste paper as a substitute for 

 wood, and with the grease that is left after cleaning wool 

 as a substitute for paraffin. The spur of necessity has 

 similarly stimulated the invention by the brothers 

 Chihkin, of the Centro-Textile factor}', ot three distinct 

 processes for combining flax and cotton in such a way 

 that the mixture can be worked in machines intended 

 for cotton only. In a measure even Lord Kehnn's 

 famous solutions of certain problems of navigation — his 

 improved compass, his flying soundings, and his modifi- 

 cation of coast lights — may be attributed to necessity, 

 for they followed his purchase of a cruising j-acht and 

 his consequent realisation of the need for some better 

 devices than those already in use. 



Mr. Brennan's generalisation, no doubt, was largely 

 inspired by his own experience in the matter of his 

 torpedo. He did not start by saying : " Go to ! Let 

 us find out how to make a torpedo that will beat any- 

 thing of the kind now on the market ! " Through his 

 observation, in an engineering workshop, of the be- 

 haviour of a frayed driving belt that was working a plan- 

 ing machine, he stumbled upon the mechanical paradox 

 that it was possible to make a machine travel forward 

 by pulling it backward. Ha\'ing discovered the 

 principle, he cast about for some object in connection 

 with which it could be practically utilised, and it was 

 not until he had thought of almost everything else that 

 the idea of a torpedo entered his head. Once the idea 

 did enter his head, the thing was as good as done. 



The history of the Brennan torpedo might be 

 paralleled in the career of numerous inventors. First 

 there was the observation of something that was either 

 unusual or commonly overlooked, and then the illumi- 

 nating flash that revealed how it might be turned to 

 practical account. Often the accident itself is in the 

 nature of a blunder or a misfortune. Carelesss workmen 



