NATURE 



{Sept. 2 2, 1 88 1 



of a foreign invasion, and that possibly of the Assyrians, 

 whose arms had made great progress in Central Asia. 

 According to Brugsch Bey the twenty-second dynasty 

 was Assyrian, and he identifies the name of the monarch 

 with that race; but at all events they were never Assyrian 

 monarchs, such names as Shashanq or Shishak, Namrutha 

 or Nimrod, not having been found in the Assyrian annals, 

 although Uasarkan or Sargon, and Takelloth or Diglath 

 may correspond with Assyrian kings. 



From the El Assasif had been removed the mummy of 

 Taakan, also known as Skanenra, which was formerly 

 deposited at the Drah Abu-el-Neggah with its three 

 inscribed coffins, and which was intact at the time of 

 Rameses IX. about B.C. 1150. It was in his reign that 

 the quarrel of the Egyptian kings with the Shepherd 

 Kings commenced, and he is mentioned in the celebrated 

 Sallier Papyrus. The mummy of Aahmes or Amosis I. 

 in three plain cases was also found amongst the coffins, 

 but it is not known where this king was buried ; as he 

 succeeded Skanenra, his tomb was probably somewhere 

 in the vicinity. The mummy of Aahmes Nefertari was 

 also found, it is said, in three cartonages with paintings 

 on a white ground. Another queen, Aahhotep, daughter 

 of the King Aahmes, was also found, and it will be recol- 

 lected that this was the name of the queen whose mummy 

 and coffins, and gold and silver jewellery, and arms were 

 discovered by fellaheen at the Biban-el-Molook, a few feet 

 below the surface. She was wife of Kames and mother of 

 Aahmes, while the queen of the Deir-el-Bahari was the wife 

 ofAmenophis I. Themummy of Amenhotep I. or Ameno- 

 phis was found in a wonderful state of preservation, painted 

 and varnished, and with wreaths of flowers so exquisitely 

 preserved that they retain all their colour like recent 

 flowers kept and pressed between the leaves of books. 

 These flovvers, it will be remembered, are above 3000 

 years old, and their preservation is probably due to their 

 having been buried in hot sand, a mode still in use in 

 Palestine, by which means botanical specimens retain 

 their colour for a long time unchanged, a process perhaps 

 known to the ancient Egyptians, although wreaths and 

 flowers, even of the Roman times, from Egypt are brown 

 and semicarbonised. The tomb of Amenophis I. is men- 

 tioned as at the Drah Abu-el-Neggah in the Abbot 

 Papyrus, and the body transported thence of Thothmes 

 I., his son ; the mummy case, considerably mutilated, was 

 only found, and this had been appropriated by Pinotem. 

 The mummy of Thothmes 11., in three mummy cases, 

 was likewise discovered. That of Thothmes III., the 

 great and warlike monarch of the eighteenth dynasty, 

 was found in a single coffin much mutilated, his body 

 broken into three pieces and rifled in ancient times, 

 but with an inscribed ritualistic linen roll said to prove 

 the identity of the mummy. Of the other personages 

 of the eighteenth dynasty were the mummies and 

 coffins of the Prince Saamen, the Princess Satamen, 

 a princess and king's sister, but unmarried, named 

 Hanta-em-hu ; and a siinilar royal sister and queen 

 named Me-han-ta-emhu, child of Hanta-ena-hu, had been 

 removed at the time of the twenty-first dynasty ; another 

 unmarried queen-sister named Miramen, and Nebseni, a 

 priest or flamen of a Pharaoh. All these coffins of the 

 eighteenth dynasty have a certain similarity with each other. 

 Those of the nineteenth are Rameses 1., whose tomb and 



sarcophagus are at the Biban-el-I\Iolook. There is some 

 uncertainty in the different accounts which have come to 

 hand whether there are three coffins or one, and if the 

 mummy was deposited at the Deir-el-Bahari. The mummy 

 of Seti I., whose tomb is in the Biban-el-Molook and 

 alabaster sarcophagus in the Soane Museum of London, is 

 well preserved in one wooden coffin ; the mummy of one 

 of the Ramessids, apparently the twelfth, not the second, as 

 reported, in a plain coffin, the features not aquiline, but 

 the shroud, covered with lotus flowers, looking remark- 

 ably fresh ; this also came from the Biban-el-Molook. 

 These mummies, it is stated, were removed under appre- 

 hension of a foreign invasion. Then follow the cases 

 and mummies of the twenty-first dynasty. The queen, 

 Notem, mother or wife of Herhor, of whom there is a 

 papyrus in the British Museum, exhibited by H.R.H. the 

 Prince of Wales, in a badly-preserved but inlaid coffin ; 

 Panotem or Pinotem, high-priest of Amen, in three coffins 

 of the style called riclii by Marriette, and gilded faces ; he 

 was, besides high-priest, a saten sa Kitsh, Prince of Cush 

 or ./Ethiopia, according to the inscription in Lepsius' 

 Konigsbuch j the queen, Ramaka or Makarra, who 

 assumed the same prenominal title as Hatasu of the 

 eighteenth dynasty, who is in three coffins with the 

 youthful queen, called the " lady of the two countries," 

 or absolute queen-heiress, embalmed in a sitting posture, 

 either having died in a fit or at her birth, and named 

 Mutemhat ; the king, Pinotem II., hastily' deposited in 

 the coffins of Thothnes I., the mummy has been partially 

 unwrapped and the features exposed, which have a singu- 

 lar resemblance to those of Voltaire, with a sarcastic or 

 satiric smile or grin, a peculiarity also found on a hieratic 

 papyrus ritual in the British Museum, probably of the 

 same period ; the queen-mother, Hantau, whose ritual 

 had found its way to the Boolak Museum prior to the 

 discovery ; in three cases, the prince Masaharuta, son 

 of Pinotem II. in the same ; the queen Asemkheb or 

 Hesemkheb, in as many cases, who appears to have been 

 the wife of Menkhepcrra ; another princess called Nasi- 

 khonsu ; Tet-ptahaufankha in an appropriate coffin, and 

 four other priests and functionaries. Several other objects 

 were found in the pit : a leather tent embroidered with 

 names, boxes with royal names, boards with inscriptions, 

 and five rituals of the monarchs of the later dynasty ; 

 but the whole of the details — amulets, inscriptions, and 

 style of art — cannot be known until the mummies are 

 unrolled and all peculiarities carefully examined, for this 

 remarkable find will afford invaluable data for Egyptian 

 archaeology, especially the sepulchral division. 



TWO SPIDER BOOKS 



The Spiders of Dorset, with an Appendix containing 

 Descriptions of those British Species not yet found in 

 Dorsetshire. By the Rev. Octavius Pickard-Cambridge, 

 M.A., C.M.Z.S., &c. From the Proceedings of the 

 Dorset Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club, 

 edited by Prof. James Buckman. (Sherborne : L. H. 

 Ruegg, pp. 1-625, with 6 plates, 1S79-18S1, 8vo.) 



Stitdi sui Ragni nialcsi e papiiani. Per T. Thorell. III. 

 Ragni dell' Austro-Malesia e del Capo York, conservati 

 nel Museo Civico di Storia Naturali di Genoa. Pp. 

 1-720. 8vo. (Genoa, 1881.) 



IF we take down part 2 of vol. i. of the twelfth edition 

 of Linnif's "Systema Natura:" (1767) and refer to 

 that marvellously incongruous order Aptera, in which the 



