Explorations in Nubia. 13 



Cairo. There in the prehistoric cemeteries there were exposed 

 bodies buried thousands of years before, dessicated in the dry 

 sands, and in such an extraordinary state of preservation that the 

 bfain, the lens of the eyes, and the nerves were in many cases 

 easily demonstrated. A large volume was at the University full 

 of this research work. That night Dr. Smith was to tell them 

 something of life in Nubia, that very ancient country, the lower 

 part of which, extendmg from Assouan to Dongola, and as far as 

 Wady Haifa, was now incorporated with Egypt. Sir John Byers 

 said it was a long distance from Egypt to Belfast, and yet, apart 

 from those who had visited that wonderful country, their interest 

 in it had been maintained in former times by that most brilliant 

 Orientalist, Dr. Edward Hincks (his father, Dr. T. D. Hincks, was 

 classical head master in the Royal Academical Institution), who 

 from 1825 to t866 was rector of Killyleagh, where the famous 

 Hans Sloane was born. It is surely a most significant circum- 

 stance that a man living in the centre of County Down, who was 

 never in Egypt, first employed the true method of deciphering 

 Egyptian hieroglyphics, and simultaneously with Rawlinson dis- 

 covered the Persian cuneiform vowel system. Sir Gaston Maspero 

 told our distinguished Belfast Egyptologist, Mr. John Ward, that 

 he owed more to the teaching of Hincks than to that of anyone 

 else, and that as an indication of his gratitude he felt it incumbent 

 on him to erect a portrait bust of Hincks in the Cairo Museum. 

 Mr. Ward having supplied the necessary material for this to be 

 done, Hincks's bust is now in that wonderful collection of Oriental 

 antiquities. 



They all knew that it was common to call linen the staple 

 industry of the North of Ireland, and it was a remarkable fact 

 that one of their ablest and most respected linen merchants, Sir 

 William Crawford, had in his possession a piece of linen from an 

 Egyptian mummy, marvellously fine, made of flax, which when 

 examined microscopically was quite similar in fibre to the flax 

 used to-day. This linen was so thick in proportion to its fineness 

 that nothing similar had been woven in modern times. 



