THE EXCAVATIONS AT ABUSIR. EdYPT. 



By Prof. Dr. .\. Wikdkmanx." 



The traveler from Cairo ascending" the Mokattani mountains sweeps 

 his gaze westward and his vision is presently arrested by the great 

 pyramids looming upward in rigid conventional forms on the table- 

 land across the Nile as reminders of that old civilization of which they 

 are the best known surviving memorials. In ancient days they must 

 have been much more imposing than at present, for besides the few 

 structures now visible, there stood on the opposite elevation more than 

 loo pyramids, as well as numerous temples and monumental tombs, 

 while below them on the plain, where only isolated villages are now 

 seen, there spread out one of the larg'est cities recorded by ancient 

 history, Mennefer, "the beautiful place," Memphis of the Greeks. 

 The "city of the dead," to which for nearly four thousand j'ears the 

 inhabitants of this great city were carried to their last rest, is marked 

 b}" the pyramids. The width of this necropolis was not great, scarcely 

 exceeding 2 kilometers, but its length has been estimated at oO kilo- 

 meters. The size of the "city of the living" was in proportion to 

 the great necropolis, and under modern European conditions this 

 would indicate an enormous city, surpassing- in extent even the 

 city of London (about 22 kilometers). V\e must not forget, how- 

 ever, that we are in the Orient where the crowding of buildings 

 together is little in vogue, groups of houses being followed by 

 broad gardens and fields, then other clusters of houses, or wide 

 desert tracts, in checkered succession, so that a city is really 

 nothing more than a collection of several separated localities. Ori- 

 ental cities also frequentl}" change their location; some portions avv 

 abandoned or become insignificant suburbs, while new quarters spring 

 up by their sides. Such was the development of Cairo, where, by tlie 

 side of the important city of Babylon-on-the-Nile of tlie old Egyptian 

 and the Grseco-Roman periods, arose old Cairo, whicii soon surpassed 

 it. Then, farther north, was developed tiie modern C^airo. Old Cairo 

 has to a great extent gradually disappeared, while Babylon, as a small 



"i Translated from Die Ausgrabungen zu Abusir, von Pnjf. Dr. A. Wiedemann, in 

 " Die Umschau," Wocheiischrift ueber die Fortschritte auf dem (Jesamtgel)iet der 

 Wissenschaft, Technik, Litteratur und Kunst. H. Bechhold, Frankfort-on-the-Main. 

 Vol. VII, No. 26 (June 20, 1903), pp. 501-504, and No. 27 (June 27, 1903), pp. 582-53(5. 



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