212 REPORTS ON THE STATE OF SCIENCE.—1914. 
the sport of cock-fighting, common in Gaul before the Roman conquest, 
was carried on in the lake village of Meare, as well as in that of 
Glastonbury. 
The Committee are desirous that they should be authorised to act 
for the ensuing year on the part of the British Association, and that 
a grant of 20]. should be made in aid of the exploration that is mostly 
paid for by local effort. 
Physical Characters of the Ancient Egyptians.—Report of the 
Committee, consisting of Professor G. Exuior Smita (Chair- 
man), Dr. F. C. SHRuBSALL (Secretary), Professor A. KEITH, 
Dr. F. Woop JongEs, and Dr. C. G. SELIGMANN. 
Professor Elliot Smith’s Report. 
Tus report deals with two distinct series of anthropological material, 
(A) one from Saqqara in Lower Egypt, and (B) the other from the 
Southern part of the Kerma basin in the Sudan. Both collections 
are of quite exceptional importance from their bearing upon the 
history and the racial movements in the Nile Valley. 
(A.) The Committee was appointed primarily with the object of 
acquiring, studying, and, if feasible, transporting to England a valuable 
and unique series of skeletons of Ancient Egyptians, buried in mastabas 
of the Second and Third Dynasties at Saqqara, which Sir Gaston 
Maspero, Director-General of the Egyptian Government Antiquities 
Department, had placed at my disposal. The material was brought 
to light in the course of the excavations carried on for the Antiquities 
Department by its Senior Inspector, Mr. J. E. Quibell, who did 
everything in his power to facilitate and help me in my investigations. 
The cemetery in which the material was obtained is situated a short 
distance to the north of the Pyramids of Saqqara, and included the 
tomb of Hesy, from which the famous wooden portrait panels (now 
in the Cairo Museum) were obtained by Mariette Pasha many years 
ago. The tombs themselves are of very great interest, and will be 
described in detail in Mr. Quibell’s official report, a summary of 
which was read at the Dundee Meeting. They are the earliest known 
examples of elaborate subterranean rock-cut tombs, and range in date 
from the latter part of the Second Dynasty until well into the period 
of the Third Dynasty. At the Dundee Meeting of the Association I 
read Mr. Quibell’s account of this cemetery, from which the following 
extracts ? have been taken :— 
‘This is the area in which Mariette found most of his mastabas, 
from which much of the knowledge of the Old Kingdom has been 
obtained.’ 
1 Excavations at Saqqara, 1910-1911, Service des Antiquités de ]’Egypte. 
2 These extensive quotations, not published hitherto, are necessary to explain 
the importance and precise significance of the anthropological questions involved 
in the study of the material, to the consideration of which I shall return in the 
latter part of this report. 
