The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1906-01-11
LONG YEARS AT REST
BODY OF ANCIENT EGYPTIAN
MANY CENTURIES OLD.
Remains Of Prehistoric Man, Who
Must Have Lived Ages Before
Christ, Have Finally Found Place
In British Museum.

The Oldest known body Of any hu-
man being reposes in the Egyptian
gallery of the British museum. AL
that is known concerning 1t Is taken
from the inscription which was found
On the case containing the mummy.
This says: Body Of a man who was
buried in a shallow grave followed
out of the sandstone in the west bank
Of the Nile in upper Egypt. Before
burial the body was treated with q
preparation of bitumen and was ar
ranged in the posture in which 1t 10Y
lies, on its left side, with the hands
before the face and the knees drawn
up nearly on a level with the chin.
The grave, which has been roughly
initiated by the model here exhibited,
was covered with the slabs Of un-
worked stone, and in it, beside the
body, were disposed flint knives and
a number of vases, partly filed with
the remains Of funeral offerings. The
man probably belonged to a fair
skinned, light haired race, which may
be regarded as one of the aboriginal
stocks Of Egypt, whose settlements
were usually found on the west bank
of the Nile. The style of the flint in
struments found in the grave indicates
that the mar lived in the later neo-
lithic period of Egypt; that is. in re-
mote ages, long before the rule Of
Menes, the first historical king OF
Egypt"
A wandering Arab was the first M
to see this grave and he reported his
find to a British official, who immedi.
ately sent a couple of soldiers to guard
it day and night. The body is not a
mummy of the ordinary historic Egyp-
tan period, such as Rameses, the
father of the Pharaoh of the Exodus.
1t was never bound up in linen or
cased in a painted coffin. but al
merely coated with a preparation OF
bitumen, called by the Arabic word
mumia, hence our word mummy.
This man must have hunted along
the banks of the Nile before the time
Of the earliest mummied king which
the museums possess-before the time
of Menes, who was supposed to have
ruled Egypt about 1904 B. c. There
were previous to that time two pre-
historic races, one the conquerors and
the other the conquered, from which
sprang the Egyptian race Of the
earliest ~dynasties. 1t is with these
remote stocks that this man has to do.
Considering the condition in which
he was found it is evident that he vas
associated with a late period of the
new stone age of Egypt. He was
buried in a enthusiastically neolithic
grave and has neolithic pots and
instruments of flint about him. They
are like all other neolithic pots and
Clipped flint weapons and knives
found in other parts of the world. The
fine, thin flint knives were placed in
the grave as a part Of the funeral
ritual. They should be compared
with Egyptian flints Of a known his
toric age, and they will be found to be
almost identical with them. There
is, of course, no inscription of any
kind on the pots, knives or graves,
all having been made long before the
invention Of any written language.
Certain Egyptian documents of great
antiquity mention a rae called the
Trennennu. who had red hair and blue
eyes. This man has hair of a distinct
auburn shade.