132 



NA TURE 



[December 3, 1908 



p. 212. It requires a Charles Kingsley to carry such 

 remarks off lightly. The Romans in Britain are 

 shown in the usual colours, but we must remember 

 that even the modern English are not loved as predom- 

 inant partners and invaders. The Mediterranean race, 

 however, here styled Picts, comes off fairly well, even 

 when invading-; but we fancy that too little credit is 

 given to it for moulding the so-called Celtic modern 

 Irishman. 



The spirited illustrations, bv Messrs. L. Speed and 

 J. F. Campbell, will favourably attract the eyes of 

 parents and guardians. The map of Britain opposite 

 p. 226 contains too great a mixture of languages, 

 and does not give a picture of any special epoch. 

 This, however, can be remedied in school libraries, 

 and we confess that we should like to conduct a 

 class through Mr. Scott Elliot's volume, with the 

 aid of a good atlas and a fortnight of excursions in 

 the field. Those would indeed be happv days for all 

 of us. G. A. J. C. 



THE ARCHMOLOGICAL SURVEY OF NUBIA. 

 n^HE objects of the archjeological survey of Nubia 

 -*■ which has been undertaken by the Government 

 of Egypt are, first, to ascertain the extent and value 

 of the historical material buried under the soil ; 

 secondly, to make this material available for the re- 

 construction of the early history of that country and 

 of itsrelations with the Nile valley. There is reason 

 to believe that in the pre-dynastic period Lower Nubia 

 formed with Egypt a single region of culture, and 

 possibly a single ethnological district. Later on the 

 northern lands developed more rapidly, and Nubia 

 failed to keep pace with Egypt. At any rate, when 

 the Egyptians pushed southwards under the twelfth 

 dynasty, some of the products of Nubian civilisation 

 are found closely to resemble, in technique and 

 material, products of the pre-dynastic age common 

 to both countries. The present survey aims at re- 

 constructing the culture development o'f some fifteen 

 centuries of Nubian civilisation which at present are 

 a blank. 



The first and second Bulletins, recently issued, 

 supply a preliminary account of investigations in the 

 district \vhich, owing to the re-modelling of the Aswan 

 dam, will now be permanently submerged. This 

 archaeological material would, in default of such an 

 inquiry, have been permanently lost to science. 



The survey illustrates the variety of races and 

 culture which prevails within this area. We have a 

 succession of interments starting from the archaic 

 period through post-Roman, Christian, and Moslem 

 times. The extensive denudation which has occurred 

 has exposed the burials of the earliest age. One 

 group of later graves contains a number" of male 

 negro bodies, most of whom met their death by hang- 

 ing or decapitation — doubtless the record of a tragedy 

 which followed one of the local revolts so frequent 

 during the Roman or Byzantine occupations of the 

 country. 



The survey of these cemeteries, conducted by Dr. 

 G. .A. Reisner, is supplemented by a very valuable 

 anatomical report by Drs. Elliot Smith and' F. Wood 

 Jones, which illustrates the complexity of the ethno- 

 logical materials now under detailed examination. 

 From the earliest predynastic times down to the early 

 dynastic, the whole region, according to Dr. Reisner, 

 was characteristically Egyptian in culture; and the 

 r,-ice occupying it is believed by Prof. Elliot Smith to 

 be pure Eevptian. .4t a later period the population 

 became isolated from Es:\'ptian influence, and there- 

 fore assimilated Negroid elements. We find some 

 contracted burials of the Egyptian predynastic 

 NO. 2040, VOL. 79] 



period, corpses of pure and half-bred negroes, 

 while the majority of the bodies examined conform 

 to a quite different physical type, the origin of which 

 we have to seek in Syria and the south-eastern shores 

 of Europe. The remains are in most cases excellently 

 preserved, being packed with salt and fruits of certain 

 plants not yet identified, and then wrapped in coarse 

 cloth. Some of these persons, even one who bore on 

 his _ arm a wooden cross as the emblem of the 

 Christian faith, had been circumcised. Other inter- 

 ments, again, appear from the anatomical evidence 

 to represent . family burial places, the structural 

 identity of the occupants being remarkably apparent. 

 In one ca.se, that of a young woman, the cause of 

 death was plainly appendicitis; in another, long- 

 standing pleuritic adhesions, and in a third osteo- 

 arthritis, so-called rheumatic gout, were identified. 

 This is the disease which shows itself with the greatest 

 frequency in the bodies of all periods. The older 

 skulls show no signs of dental caries, e.xcept in the 

 case of the " milk " teeth of three children, which 

 is believed to be the first recorded occurrence of dental 

 caries in an ancient Egyptian or Nubian under the 

 age of sixteen ; but this is common in the foreign 

 Christian group. The discovery of a case of tuber- 

 culosis in the Biga cemetery is exceptionally interest- 

 ing, the only other known early Egyptian instance 

 of this disease being that of a corpse of an infant 

 from the ancient Empire burying-ground at the Giza 

 pyramids, which presented the typical lesion of 

 advanced hip disease which may have been of the 

 tubercular type. But this is not quite certain, because 

 tubercle bacilli have not been as yet definitely traced, 

 and Dr. A. R. Ferguson is disposed to doubt the 

 diagnosis of tubercular lesions. The same is tho 

 case with syphilitic lesions. Dr. Elliot Smith has 

 never observed a case in ancient Egyptian bones, and 

 regards most of the instances hitherto reported a ; 

 due to the post-mortem destruction of the bones by 

 beetles. It is also remarkable that there is no occur- 

 rence of tattooing so common in modern times, nor 

 of the custom of skin gashing, which is almost 

 universal in Nubia and the Sudan at the present 

 time. 



The present Bulletin is intended merely to describe 

 some of the facts which have been elicited in the 

 course of a summary investigation of the great mass 

 of ethnological material unearthed by Dr. Reisner. 

 It will be followed by a detailed archaeological and 

 anatomical report, the appearance of which will be 

 awaited with interest. Meanwhile the anatomical and 

 craniometrical observations by Dr. Elliot Smith, and 

 Dr. Wood Jones's pathological report, supply a large 

 amount of fresh anthropological material. 



The Government of Egypt deserves congratulations 

 for the initiation of a most important survey, which 

 will supply abundant materials from which the 

 archaeological and ethnological conditions of a 

 hitherto unexplored region can be safely reconstructedr 



HIMALAYAN PHYSIOGRAPHY.^ 



T N response to a proposal made in 1906 by the 

 ■'• " Board of Scientific Advice " to the Survey of 

 India that a paper should be compiled " summarising 

 the geographical position of the Himalayas and 

 Tibet " for the benefit of travellers in those regions, 

 a series of papers on these parts has been issued 

 which is not only of great scientific value in itself, 

 but will surely answer the purpose of directing scien- 



1 " A Sketch of the GeoEr.-iphy and Geoloey of the HimaKiyan Mountains 

 and Tibet." By Col. S. G. Btirraid, R.E., F.R.S., and H. II. Hayden. 

 (Calcutta : Superintendent of Government Printing, 1907.) 3 Paris, price 



