DISCOVERY 



257 



of Akhenaton's death, after an ephemeral reign by 

 Sakere, who had married the King's eldest surviving 

 daughter, King Tutankhaton, who had married the 

 second, abandoned the Disk-worship and returned to 

 Thebes and to Amon-Ra. And thus, after a brilliant 

 life of only twenty years, the " Horizon of the Disk " 

 was given over to the sand, which in a few generations 

 ovenvhelmed it and so preserved it to be disinterred 

 by the inquisitiveness of the twentieth century a.d. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



Breasted, J. H. : A History of Egypt, Chapter XVIII. Charles 

 Scribner'sSons. New York, 1910. Price 305. (Admirable 

 general account of the revolution, with quotations from the 

 Hymn to the Disk.) 



Davies, N. de G. : The Rock Tombs of El Amarna, 6 vols., 

 published by the Egypt Exploration Society, London, 

 1903-1908. Price 25s. per vol. (Complete copies, with 

 description, of the scenes sculptured in the tombs of the 

 nobles, texts of the boundary stelae, and general matter.) 



Petrie, W. M. Flinders: Tell-el-Amarna. London, 1894. 

 (Account of Petrie's excavations.) Price 21s. 



Peet, T. E. : Excavations at Tell-el-Amarna, in Parts 3-4 of the 

 Journal of Egyptian Archizology, vol. vii. (Account 

 of latest excavations ; in the press.) Egypt Exploration 

 Society, London, 1921. Price of the two parts, 25s. 



Peet, T. E. : The Problem of Akhenaton, in Journal of the 

 Manchester Egyptian and Oriental Society, No. ix. Man- 

 chester University Press, 1921. Price 5s. (Popular 

 account of the problems connected with the revolution.) 



Mercer, Samuel : Was Akhenaton a Hlonotheist ? in vol. iiiof the 

 Journal of the Society of Oriental Research, Chicago, 1919. 



Miiller, W. Ma.x ; Egyptian Mythology. Marshall Jones Co., 

 Boston, 1918. Price 30s. (In the series The Mythology 

 of All Races, pp. 224 fl.) 



Borchardt : Miltheilungen der Deutschen Orient-Gesellschaft, 

 Nos. 34, 46. 50, 52. 55, 57. (Reports of the German 

 Excavations.) 



New Methods of 

 Criminal Investigation 



Poroscopy and Graphomctry 

 By G. Frederic Lees 

 POROSCOPY 

 Finger prints as a means of identification in criminal 

 cases have long been held to constitute evidence of 

 the most irrefutable character. For the intricate 

 pattern of cur\-ed lines we bear on our hands is never 

 identical in two different persons. You would not 

 find two dactylograms ^ alike, says Galton, one of 

 the most eminent of the founders of this branch of 

 science, if you were to examine a scries of 64.000,000 ; 

 and later criminologists, notably Balthazard, have 

 come to the conclusion that this is an understatement 



1 The technical name for finger prints. The subject is called 

 Dactylography or Dactyloscopy. 



of the truth. Moreover, from birth to death, the 

 finger prints of a human being never change. No 

 alteration is possible, either pathologically or by 

 deliberate choice. It is not possible for anyone to 

 hide his or her identity by destroying those multi- 

 tudinous patterns on fingers and palms by the use of 

 chemicals, by burning, or by constant rubbing — all 

 practices which are resorted to by the criminal classes. 

 Therefore the malefactor who leaves behind him on 

 the scene of his operations, as he rarely fails to do, 

 a single well-defined finger or palmary print, supplies 

 the police with as faithful a portrait of himself as it 

 is possible to have, and at the same time, presuming 

 he has been arrested on suspicion, an undeniable proof 

 of his guilt. 



Stated thus, theoretically, the problem of criminal 

 investigation and identification looks very simple, but 

 in practice all kinds of difficulties are encountered, 

 introducing an element of doubt which has had such 

 weight with some juries that they have rightly refused 

 to convict. The principle generally admitted among 

 judicial authorities is that identity between two 

 finger or palmary prints is incontestable when at least 

 a dozen guiding marks, consisting of the beginnings of 

 lines, bifurcations and islets, are in every respect the 

 same. To be able, however, to come to this clear 

 conclusion, it is necessary to have a fairly large portion 

 of a print under the microscope, and unfortunately 

 the traces which are so carefully collected by the 

 experts of police laboratories on the scene of a murder, 

 burglary, or other offence, are often very fragmentary. 

 Sometimes, too, they are partly obliterated by the 

 prints of persons who have arrived there before the 

 police. Or, again, the criminal may have taken the 

 precaution to cover his hands with gloves or cloth, in 

 which case he may leave but a very small number of 

 utilisable guiding marks behind him. 



Supposing that only a very fragmentary finger or 

 palmary print is under examination, showing no more, 

 say, than three or four points of comparison with the 

 print from the hand of a suspected person, is there any 

 other means of arriving at a proof of guilt ? Writing 

 in La Province Medicale as long ago as 1912, Dr. 

 Edmond Locard, the Director of the Police Laboratory 

 of Lyons, was the first scientist to answ^er this question 

 in the affirmative. " I believe it is possible, in many 

 cases," he \vrote in the course of a detailed statement 

 of this new method of identification, " to make up for 

 the insufficiency of the print considered from the sole 

 point of view of its guiding marks by studying in the 

 trace under examination the arrangement of the pores." 

 Here we have a method — brought to perfection since 

 1912, and only recently set forth by this distinguished 

 investigator in a work which ought to be translated 

 into every language — which is infinitely more fruitful 



