Connecticut western news., 1894-07-12
A GREAT EGYPTIAN TEMPLE.
An Account of the Excavations That Bav
 Been Made at Deir ell Bahari-

An Account of the Excavations That Bave
 Been Made at Deir el BaharL
 Built for the worship of dead man, like all the great fanes on the left bank of the Nile at Thebes, the temple at Deir el Bahari has no progressive na- ional character. Successive dynasties have not altered nor enlarged it. It re- mains an expression of a single period, the zenith of Egyptian greatness Its history as building is comprised in the additions that the queen herself made to her own plan and the mutilation of her names and titles by order Of her vengeful nephew. The heretic Ameno- phis hacked out here, as everywhere, the figures and names of Amen-Ra here as everywhere, the inevitable Rameses II restored them in style unworthy of she first hand. In neglectful times the mountain was allowed to slip and break in roofs and fill up courts. A Coptic convent, built over part of the highest terrace, added its rubbish to the mounds formed already over the lower levels Hardly third of the whole temple was visible two years ago. and the rest seemed doomed to lie forever under 40 feet of earth and stone
 The Egypt exploration fund. howev- CT, came to the rescue in the early part of last year. and with 200 men and a Decauville tramway succeeded in clear ing the greater part of the highest ter race before the hot season began. The finds made in the process were as re- markable as unexpected The buried north end, instead of being symmetrical with the south, as Mariette had sup posed, upheld the general character of Egyptian buildings by being utterly un- symmetrical and abnormal To balance the small chambers of offerings" on the south there was found on the north large hall, in the inner part of which rose a high altar dedicated to Harmachis by the queen. The displaced stones have | been built in again now, and the great platform of brilliant white limestone, with its frieze of hieroglyphics and its | graduated ascent, stands almost as com plete as it ever did, the only such altar extant in all Egypt Beside 1t little itinerary chapel runs into the rock, its walls a marvel of brilliant coloring. During the present season operations have been carried on with larger staff, including two artists, to reproduce the sculptures for publication. Two hun dred and fifty men have been set to work on the great mounds under which the northern half of the central terrace was buried, and bit by bit they are being carried away in the Decauville cars to a deep pit quarter of mile away. Pillar | by pillar the graceful colonnade which ran round the north side and northwest corner of the terrace is emerging from the earth. Until this year not one per son in . hundred who visited Deir ell Bahari knew that it existed, and still fewer suspected that it ended in one of the finest painted halls in Egypt soon to be opened to light and air.
 It is always interesting to watch an excavation in Egypt at any stage of its progress, for so many treasures of so many kinds lie everywhere in the pre- serving sands Here at Deir el Bahari the diggers, drawn from Theban viii lages, have been tomb robbers to 8 man and have lynx eyes for small antiquities. Peoking away at the lower layers of the mounds, bney leC nAruiy Iu1uuec p<fss without picking up scarabs, amulets, beads or bits of that wonderful blue glazed ware which ranks among the finest products of the ancient world Here fragment of potsherd, inscribed with Coptic writing, slides down the earth slope; there rolls limestone chip covered with Demotic characters These are the archives and, it seems, also the library catalogue of the monastery built here in the early days of Christianity. Now and then a refuse heap Is reached, and bits of papyrus, Greek, Demotic and Coptic, are taken out in handfuls, together with broken objects of every sort and kind and many precious frag- ments of sculptured walls.-London Times.