The Savannah morning news., 1902-07-08
THE RoMANCE OFF DIGGING.
Mr. Flinders Petrie at WOrk-His
Method of Solving Egyptian Secrets.


Method of Solving Egyptian Secrets.
From the London Mail.
Prof. w. M. Flinders Petrie, the Ed
wards professor of Egyptology at Uni
versity College, London, has just re-
turned from his annual visit to Egypt,
where he devotes his life to pluck
ing out the heart of the mystery" of
the dead ages which lie embedded in
the tombs of the centuries
Life in the desert is full of inter
est, though naturally it is simple. The
party travel as near as possible to
their destination by rail@and then on
foot to the spot which they have de-
cided to eXcavate. If 1t is a long way
from a station, they have camels TO
transport them. There are generally
Ave or six Europeans, a hundred men
and boys who have been employed by
Prof. Flinders Petrie before, and per-
haps a hundred and fifty new boys
from the neighboring villages, SO that
the settlement is not so small as most
people would think
The first thing they do is to build
their mud huts, as they are more COM
Portable to live in than tents. The
sitting room Is generally Is feet by 10
feet, and the bedroom is feet by 10
feet. The size of the apartments is
governed by the fact that they have
to be in multipies of the four meter
boards which are bought in the coun-
ivy The roofs to these huts are of
board, with straw on the top to keep
out the sun. Each member of the
party has his own bedroom, with one
or two storerooms. but they invariably
take meals together.
Breakfast at Sunrise.
The days begins just before sunrise,
when breakfast is served; the next
meal is at noon; While dinner comes
an hour after sunset, the constituents
of all the meals being very much alike.
The native men live on dry bread IA
vored with an occasional onion, with
a scrap of meat perhaps once week,
and their only drink Is water On
this meager fare they can do an
enormous amount of work, even the
boys doing half as much again as an
ordinary English NAVY.
The ordinary day wage of the coun-
try is four pence to Ave pence a man.
but Prof. Flinders Petrie pays a much
better rate, so that he is able to COM
mand the best men in the district. lie
pays by the piece, and the terms he
offers are such that man may make
anywhere from SiXpenee TO shilling
a day. In addition, he pays a commits
sion on the things that are found. This
may work out at a halfpenny day,
or it may reach pounds.
Once he had two men VINO had not
been doing particularly we'll. He
thought he would give them a place to
dig which was hard to dig in, indeed
was quite a bay. The work had to be
done, hoWever and they knew some
one had to do it, so they turned to.
That day they brought out a very
large jar full of glass mosaic. 1t was
exceedingly valuable, and he paid
them $40.
One of the great difficulties In deal
ing with the native men Is to keep
them in hand. You have to watch their
characters all the time, for after two
or three years the man who have come
to be regarded as indispensable and
quite invaluable suddenly deteriorate,
and are no longer to be depneded upon.
Luckily, however. there is a sign which
invariably tells when this occurs. The
man gets reserved and dignified. He
goes about with an air of Importance,
and then you know that he has some
thing to conceal. These symptoms are
the signal for his departure.
Assessing Backsheesh.
Every evening all the workers are
assembled at the huts in row. Each
man places on the low wall of the
court yard of the settlement his bas-
ket of pottery and bones. Each lot is
looked at carefully, and the back
~sheesh" assessed. 1t is entered in the
wages book, for each man and boy
has his separate account with Prof.
Flinders Petrie, and the keeping of
those accounts is quite a task, for 1t
takes fully four hours 4 week, and
there are often 10000 separate entries
TO make in the season. Prof. Flinders
Pertie acts as banker to the men, and
they get their money whenever they
want 1T, and as they want Il, without
any trouble.
Within certain limits, the men work
in their own way; but they are allow
ed English tools as they need them,
the most commonly employed being
chisel-ended crowbars and pickaxes to
pick up the hard earth, and hoes for
the loose sand and dust. A good deal
of work, however especially the digging
out of graves, has to be done with the
hands. This is particularly trying dur
ing the first week, as the skin gets
worn through, and is all cracked and
bleeding from scraping in the sand and
grit. AS soon as it gets hard, however,
the work is not troublesome.
In eXcavating, trenches are generally
dug four feet apart so that everything
can be exactly located as it is found,
and its position marked in order that
1t may be accurately described. Accu-
racy, indeed, is the watchword of the
work, as a single fact accurately stated
will throw more light on the real con-
dition of the people than a hundred
which are only partially accurate. s.,