Morning journal and courier., 1894-04-18
Defr RI Bahari.

lffom tne London Tmes
 Built for the vorship of e dead man. like All the great fanss on the left bank of the Nile at Thsbes, the temple at Dsir el Sahaf has no progressive national char aeser. Successive dynastiee have not al- tered nor enlarged Il; 1t remains sn sx- pression of a single period, the zenith of Egyptian greatness. Its history as 6 building is comprised In the additions that the qussn herself made to her own plan, and the mutilation of her names and titles by order of her vspgeful nephew; the hsretic Amenophis hacked out here, as every where, the figures and names of Amsn-Ra; here. as everywhere, the inevi- table Rsmeses II. restored them in a style unworthy of the frat hand. In neglect ful times the mountain was allowed to slip and break In roofs and fill up courts A Ooptic convent, huilt over part os the highest terrace, added its rubbish to the mounds formed already over the lower levels. Hardly third of the whole tenn. pie was visible two years sgo, and the rest seemed doomed 10 lie for ever under forty feet of earth and stones
 The Egypt Exploration fund, however, came to the rescue in the early part of last year, and with two hundred men and 6 Decauville trsmvay succeeded iu clearing the greater part of the highest terrace be fore the hot season began. The finds made In the process were ss remarkable as unexpected. The buried north end, in- stead of being symmetrical with the south, as Mariette bad supposed, upheld the gen. sral character of Egyptian buildings by being utterly unsymmetricsl and sbnor- nal To balance the small "chambers of offerings" on the south there was found on the north a large hall, in the inner part of which rose a high altar dedicated to liar msohis by the queen. The displaced stones have been built iu again now, and the great platform of brilliant white lime stone, with its fri'Es of hieroglyphics and It's graduated ascent, stands almost ss complste ss 1t ever did, the only such .l- tar sxtant in all Egypt. Beside 1t 6 little itinerary chapel runs into the rock. its walls a marvel of brilliant colorIng During the present sesson operations have been carried on with larger staff, inclu- ding two srtists to reproduce the sculp lures for publication. Two hundred and fifty men have bsen set to work on the great mounds under which the northern half of the central terrace was buried, and bit by bit they are bsing carried away in ths Decauville cars to deep pit a quarter of mile away. Pillar by pillar the grace ful colonnade which ran round the north side and northwest corner of the terrace is emerging from the esrth. Until this yesr not one person in hundred who visited Deir el Bshsri knew that 1t 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 ex- cavation in Egypt at any stsge of It's pro- gress, for so many treasures of SO many kinds lie everywhere In the preserving sands. Here st Deir sl Bshsri tLs dig gers, drawn from Theban villages, have been tomb robbers to a man and have lynx eyes for small antiquities. Psoking away at the lower layers of the mounds, they let hardly minute pass without picking up scarabs, smulets, beads or bits of that wonderful blue glszsd ware which ranks among the finest products of the sncient world. Here fragment of potsherd, in scribsd with Coptic writing, slides down the earth slope; there rolls @ limestone chip, ooverfd with Demot,c characters. These are the archives snd, it seems, also the library catalogue of the monastery built here h the early days of Chrisiisni- ty. Now and then 8 refuse heap is reached, and bits of pspyrus, Greek, De- motto and Coptic are taken out in hand fuls, together with broken objscts of every sort and kind and many precious frsg- ments of sculptured walls.