BULLETIN 



OF THE 



BROOKLYN ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY 



Vol. XI April, 1916 No. 2 



THE TESTIMONY OF THE TOMBS. 



By R. p. Dow, Brooklyn, N. Y. 



In Egypt the surviving arts show that at the earliest known 

 periods there was the greatest degree of initiative, the widest lati- 

 tude of expression, the finest workmanship. Nevertheless sur- 

 viving records of all Egypt do not mention the economic aspect 

 of insects as extensively as the single chapter of Exodus regard- 

 ing the plagues sent to rebuke a faithless Pharaoh. No chronology 

 can bring nearer than, say, 6,000 B. C. the date of the first king 

 of the reputed first human dynasty, Menes, a physician, learned 

 in anatomy, and it is probably earlier than 9,000 B. C. That the 

 land was densely populated is proven by the great numbers of men 

 needed to build the great pyramids of about 4,000 B. C. The 

 remains of aboriginal culture are few, since agricultural Egypt 

 was always the favorite conquest of the warlike and less civilized. 

 The papyri date only from about 1,500 B. C. The monuments in 

 stone are the material for all that we know. From them the corps 

 of savants of Napoleon drew the information that made Egypt 

 known to the world. The best scholars of the time, 1797, searched 

 every discoverable record. The insect data were handed to Lat- 



The frontispiece represents the hand of a princess of a dynasty living 

 about 1,800-2,000 B. C. It is almost exactly life size. In 1868 a series of 

 royal tombs were discovered near Memphis. The severed hand, which is 

 clearly that of a young woman, was secured by Rev. Howard Crosby and 

 is now owned by Nicholas E. Crosby, Ph.D., of New York. The rest of 

 the mummy is in Cambridge, Mass. The texture of the cloth surrounding 

 the hand is clearly to be seen. The stone of the scarab itself is pale 

 green. The ring is of gold, a plain wire, wound on the upper half with 

 finer wire. 



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