The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1907-05-28
SOME STRANGE
FINDS IN EGYPT
Professor Flinders Petrie Lee
lures in London on Re-
cent Discoveries.

/ LONDON, May 11.-Prof. Flinders
Petrie delivered a lecture yesterday t.
the subscribers of the British School OF
Archaeology in Egypt on the hrs
months work last season at Gizeh and
the subsequent four months in the re-
gion of Assiut. He said the results rep
resented the First and to some extent
the Second and Third dynasties, as well
/ as a period from the Ninth to the
Twelfth
In the first month forty-nine graves
were found in the royal tombs of Aby~
dos. The objects disclosed showed that
the civilization of Abydos was of the
same character as that of Memphis
There were stone vases, bracelets, blue
glaze pottery and a long necklet indi-
eating that the people Of the house
hold wore ornaments similar to those
of the royal house but of a cheaper
kind.
There was slate palette for paint
ing. Wands were discovered with elab-
crate ivory carving and knives of the
First and Second dynasties. The work
had been mostly destroyed by the
Twenty-siXth dynasty, but in these
comparatively modern tombs there had
been unearthed stone vases of the ear
lier age. He had also found objects of
quartz and a long slab II by inches
made of flint with a sharp polished
edge, the use of which he was unable
to determine. 1t was highly finished.
He had seen nothing like it before.
Prof. Petrie said the season had been
particularly interesting, as objects of
I, ., \
whereas the origin of Gireh and hith-
erto been ascribed to the fourth. He
had also worked a way to a crowded
cemetery and brought home 1000 skulls,
which Prof. Karl Pearson was now ex-
aiming at Assault. Hundreds of tombs
from the Sixeh to the Twelfth dynasty
had been discovered. The most inter
esting finds were trays used for food
offerings, which had gradually de-
veloped till they became models of
dwellings, with staircases and porticos,
some of them two feet high. He was
thus able to ascertain what an old
Egyptian dwelling was like.
Very few of these objects were known
before now. He had found $50 in more
or less perfect condition. Sections OF
some of these were shown on a screen.
In some cases the house was two
stories high, one of an elaborate char
acter with a stairway and chambers be-
hind. A couch was placed below for
the sake of GOODNESS. The first essen
tial of an Egyptian house was the
portico which in the earliest stage
constituted the house being copied from
the temple which, of course, was re-
garded as the gods house.
One wooden tomb of the twelfth dy-
nastry was one of the finest that he
had ever seen. 1t was at the mouth of
the rock tomb of a chief and contained
five statuetteS and other objects. He
had often wondered at the size of the
rock tonbs, but concluded from what
he had seen of the unfinished ones
that they were used as quarries by the
chiefs to build houses they would in
habit in life. Then a space was quar-
ried out to be used for the makers
last long sleep of death.
He had found also two complete
models of boats and a black ganite
figure, seated, some fifteen inches high, |
which showed much anatomical
though the proportions We're
not always correct. Such figures were
rare in Twelfth dynasty tombs.