Martinsburg independent. [volume] (Martinsburg, W. Va.) 1875-1900, 1895-03-23
A GREAT EGYPTIAN TEMPLE.
An Account of tho Excavations That Have
Been Made at DER ell Bahari.


Been Made at Deir ell Bahari.
Built for the worship of dead man,
like all the great fanes on the left bank
Of the Nile at Thebes the temple at
DER el Bahari has no progressive ma
tional character. Successive dynasties
have not altered nor enlarged it. It re-
mains an expression of single period,
the zenith Of Egyptian greatness. Its
history as a building is comprised in the
additions that the queen herself made
to her own plan and the humiliation Of
her names and titles u order of Eer
yengeful nephew. The hereto Amonc-
phis hacked out laee as everywhere,
the figures and nasa, 81 Amen Ra; here
as everywhere, t,io iaey .bie Rameses
II restored them il Il . = ,.,.Tcrthy of
the first hand. Il X ..>etict ,iE.cs the
mountain was allowed - alip AID break
in roofs and FL 10 ccrfts. a Coptic
convent, bail5 ever p sstt the highest
terrace, added Its l..S-,. 10 the mounds
formed already c,sr 10 lesser levels.
Hardly third of tlcs i.-lo ;iaple was
visible two years a,s;I, and the rest
seemed doomed to lie forever under 40
feet of earth anl stone.
The Egypt exploration fund, howey-
CT, came to tho resero il tho carly part
of last year, and with 200 men and a
Decauville tr:i,lway succeeded in clear
ing the greater Part Of the highest ter
race before the hot season began. The
finds made III the process were as re-
markable as unexpected The buried
north end, instead of being symmetrical
with the south, as Marietta had sup
posed, upheld the general character of
Egyptian buildings by being utterly I'M
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 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 it q little
Itinerary chapel runs into the rock, its
walls 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
bred 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
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 q hundred who visited DER 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 DER ell Bahari
the diggers, drawn from Theban vii
lagos, have been tomb robbers to man
and have lynx eyes for small antiquities.
Picking away at the lower layers of the
mounds, they let hardly a minute pass
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 a fragment Of potsherd inscribed
with Coptic writing, slides down the
earth slope; there rolls a limestone chip
covered with Denote 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 refuse heap is reached,
and bits of papyrus, Greek, Denote
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.