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Dynastic Egyptian Antiquities

Valuable Consignment Received At Boston

Forwarded by the Egypt Exploration Fund to be Distributed Among the Museums of the United States -- Expansion of Area of Cultivation in Egypt Threatens Loss of Priceless Archeological Treasures.

The Egypt Exploration Fund of England and the United States has forwarded to its headquarters in Tremont Temple, Boston, a valuable consignment of antiquities to be divided among museums contributing to the society's excavations in Egypt. These objects were displayed in King's college, London, during the exhibition recently closed, and represent the result of last winter's work conducted at Abydos, Enoaysia and Sidmant.

Abydos has proved an especially valuable site for exploration. Here Osiris and Isis had their chief altars, to which offerings were brought from the farthest borders of Egypt during the period of ever legthening centuries from the XVIIIth to the XXXth dynasties. At the same time, Abydos is a huge cemetery where the Egyptians liked to be buried from the earliest times down to the days of the Roman emperors. The predynastic era, the Ist, VIth and XIIth dynasties, the new empire and the Ptolemies——every time is represented here.

The main work, which was carried out under the general direction of Prof. E Naville, consisted of an attempt to clear finally the Royal tombs of the Ist and IInd dynasties; but much still remains to be done at this site and good results are expected from the continuation of the work next seasons. A great deal has been accomplished in the North and South cemeteries at Abydos. In the south cemetery the earliest graves found were those of the predynastic period. They had been afterwards disturbed by the sinking of shaft graves of the VIth dynasty over the same area. Further confusion was also introduced by the building above these of vaulted tombs of brick, probably in the XXXth dynasty.

From these excavations are slate palettes, jars and vases; ornaments of glaze, wood, stone, carnelian, amethyst and flint; flint razors, ivory carvings, beads, and pottery. The last [[obscured]]

by these expert wood carvers are as exact and realistic as art could make them.

These rare objects are ample proof that Abydos is by no means exhausted. Towards the end of the season, in widening the cemetery at the tomb of Zer, second king of the 1st dynasty, a number of finely made figures in mud were found. These figures represent Osiris as mummy. They lay in a bed of hard sand not far from the tomb of Zer, which we know was in later times worshipped as the tomb of Osiris. In this tomb we found the famous bed of Osiris, now in Cairo. The figures all lay face upward, with head to the West; two of them had blue glazed beads round the neck. Considerable light is thrown upon this curious find by the following reference to this very ceremony in the Book of the dead: "He who is on his sand." This refers to the dead Osiris, who has been killed by Set. The god has been mummified, his body placed in a coffin and deposited in a sandhill. The reading is found is found in hymns in which Thoth addresses Osiris and restores him to life by his "words of power."

A little more than a day's sail up the Nile from Cairo, just abreast of Beni Suef and ten miles from the river, is the site of the Roman Heracleopolis —— Ahnas el Medine, or Ehnasiya. The Arabs call the remains of the old town Umn el-Kiman, or "mother of rubbish heaps" Yet from that rubbish there have come many priceless relics. In 1904, ten years after the preliminary investigation of this site, the Fund unearthed at this spot a gold statuette of the tutelary divinity, Hersbef, the figure of a man with a ram's head the the head dress of Osiris. It is valued at $1,500.00; the Boston Museum of Fine Arts became its fortunate possessor. The work of Ehnasiya last season resulted in the discovery of glazed ware, lamps (among them one with a representation of St. George and the Dragon). wooden combs, sandals, late Roman and Byzantine glass, carved bone, shells, coins, pieces of embroidery, tops and parts of dolls, the hands of

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