The Savannah morning news., 1902-11-01
READING HISTORY OF
ADEAD RACE,

Regarded as Semitic-A People
That worked Precious Gems.
Ivory. and Metal, But Were Unable
10 Write.
From the San Francisco Chronicle.
DR.. George A. Reisner director of
the University Of California Egyptian
Expedition, sent out by Mrs. Phoebe
A Hearst, to spend five years in ex-
cavating for archaeological treasures
in the valley of the Nile, recently de-
Iiyered in San Francisco the first of a
series Of five lectures on his discover
les His visit to this country has been
specially to give to the constituency of
the California University the first au-
thoritative account of the remarkable
work of his expedition in unearthing
the rarest antiquities and establishing
facts concerning the life of prehistoric
Egypt that have hitherto been locked
scientific secrets.
The lecture was introduced by
general account of the Hearst eXpedi-
tion, which was sent out in 1899 to dig
persistently for five years. Besides DR..
Reisner, the scientists in the party
were A. NJ. Lythage Of Harvard and
F. W. Green of Cambridge, replaced
later by A. G. Mace of oxford, man
who already had spent four years in
Egyptian excavating. These schol-
airs superintendent a great band of ma
tive diggers, who worked first for two
months unearthing the cemetery of
Koptos 1t was found to be under
cultivation and could not be eXcavated
Next. the party directed its attention
10 the cemeteries of Der-el- Ballas I'M
Vii Of hn {Oh.
tenth dynasty, a town and a palace.
and at Bailas a prehistoric cemetery
dating beyond the first dynasty. In
the summer of 1900 the expedition GEN.
tered on El-Ahaiweh, where a prehis-
toric cemetery and one of the TWEEN
tieth dynasty were found. also a num-
Der of houses of the twentieth dynasty,
and fort of the twelfth dynasty.
From that date to the present time the
work has been carried on at Maya ed
Der, where cemeteries have been found
dating from the earliest prehistoric
periods down to modern Coptic
graveyard. The expedition has dug
the early prehistoric and those from
the first to the eighth dynasties 9th
ers have been marked down ready for
work, but have not yet been attacked.
DR.. Reisner's lecture proper opened
with a description of the Nile valley,
which he characterized in geological
language as "a double fault made in
Eocene limestone, Erosive forces had
worn down the faces of these two walls
that had been thrown up by the fault
ing, and the topography of the valley
b to-day consisted of three marked d.
Visfons-steep cliffs, banked by these
sloping plains, roughly speaking, the
'talus" of the cliffs. and these in turn
merging into the dark black alluvial
soil of the rivers flood lands Except
Tor the great temples of antiquity I'M
earthed by the Egyptian government,
and modern villages and towns, none
of the archaeological discoveries of
value are found in the river soil, which
has been worked over and used so re-
peatedly for agricultural purposes that
nothing of ineligible antiquity has
been left. 1t is in the sloping plains be-
low the cliffs as we'll as in the faces
and raVines of these cliffs, that mod
ern excavators have made their rich
discoveries.
The origin of the Egyptian race has
been and is still regarded as Semitic. -
said DR.. Reisner. Evidences in the
Egyptian language of the historic ne
Rod show 1t to be derived from a pro-
Yosemite stock But this invasion
from Asia, presumed to have taken
place in early times, could only have
occurred at period far beyond that
or which we have any record. One
lone trace of these first settlers has
been found in few Dalaeolithic flints
picked up on the plateau above the
Gins. No other evidences have been
discovered to piece out this meager
testimony.
For us Egypt begins at the prehis-
toric period, now Appropriated at 1000
Il. c. But up to ten years ago Egyp-
tian history began at $500 B. c., and
the fourth dynasty was regarded as
the limit of our knowledge, beyond
which 1t was generally believed that
we could never go. However, in 1894
Prof. William NJ. F. Petrie of Univers-
aty College, London, found a vast GEM
etery of antiquities of a character
never before encountered. These he as
signed enormously to a period between.
the sixth and twelfth dynasties. Soon
afterwards similar antiquities were
FOUND at Negadeh and Abydos by De
morgan, director of the Department of
Antiquities for the Egyptian govern
ment, and AmelineGu, a French rene=
gade These discoveries were immedi-
ately recognizedASy De Morgan as be-
longing to period previous to the
fourth dynasty. This was followed by
the discovery of the names of kings
from the first to the third dynasties
on inscriptions. Borchardt deciphered
on a tomb at Abydos the name of
the first king of the first dynasty. This
gave the archaeologists the beginning
OF prehistoric Egypt, and the work
since then has consisted in the filling
out OF the outlines OF that period be-
Tore the fourth dynasty and recovering
knowledge of the manners and Gus
toms of those early peoples 1t has
1allen to our lot to prove the hitherto
disputed fast that the prehistoric
Egyptians are anatomically the same
as the historic Egyptians.
The date and length of the prehis-
torlc period is also a difficult question
on which we have labored. The Egyp-
tians dated all their documents from
The year of the reigning king The
priests kept chronological, lists of the
successive rulers, but these would
have been long since lost had not a
priest named Menetho, in 275 B. C..
written history of Egypt, based on
these old lists. Menetho divided these
kings into the well-known thirty-one
dynasties, distinction based on their
family relationships. He carried his
account back to the first dynasty.
but until recently his early record was
regarded as a fabrication. Much of
his history, which was written in
Greek, is mutilated beyond identifica-
ton and this has hindered investiga-
tion. In recent years astronomical
data have been used successfully to fix
the dates as far back as the twelfth
dynasty, which is now determined at
11Ss 3. c. The first is placed approxi-
mately at something over 5000 B. c..
and the boundary of the prehistoric
period, as we now have it, is not earlier