Mummy Cloth
The mummy cloth of ancient times was made with the warp and woof of different thicknesses—the warp being thicker than the woof, so that it would hang and fold better. The piece of mummy cloth shown in [Plate XV], No. 3 is genuine, but the painting on it has been done recently, as one may be pretty sure from several signs. The painting has been put on with a brush, instead of having the design outlined with a reed and then painted. The colour has run, and shows beyond the edge of the design; and the cloth, being dirty, shows signs of where the paint has wetted it. It may belong to the twenty-second dynasty.
In ancient days the workmanship, however bad or however hastily executed, was always done according to fixed rules, and each line had its meaning.
This year, for the first time, I have seen copies of the long beads for which Egypt is so famous. These are probably made in Venice. The colour is beautiful, and mixed with the imitations are a few really old beads. The material used is glass, and can be easily broken between the fingers. The mode of selling these spurious beads is to have them made up in a pattern, and to have genuine beads made up with them. They are manufactured in various colours, but ladies especially admire the blue beads, and the men sell six of the blue colour to one of the other. I bought three lots, made up as seen in the illustration, [Plate XV], No. 2. Two were genuine, but the blue one was false. The price I paid was 3s. 6d. each, and the seller looked at me ruefully, and said, “You have got three pounds’ worth of beads there.” In the case of the forged blue beads the colour is equal all the way round. The old beads are made of a kind of composition; they are thicker, less regular, and there is usually one part upon which the colour has failed to be equal—that is the side upon which the beads were laid when fired.
No. 1 shows some glass beads supposed to be Roman, but they were made recently in Venice.
No. 4 is a string of imitation sacred cats with genuine old beads, used as a necklace.
There is a beautiful story, the humour of which would be spoilt by too searching an inquiry into its authenticity, about what is jokingly called “the predynastic mummy.”
The tale opens about the time when the predynastic graves were found in Nubia. There was a great rush on the part of museums all over the world to acquire specimens. It will probably be remembered that the bodies were placed in the graves lying upon one side, the legs drawn up, and one hand placed before the face. They were unembalmed, but the dryness of the climate had given the skin the appearance of light-coloured leather. Around the body were placed a number of jars and rough vessels. As the demand increased, prices rapidly rose. The Arabs vied with a Coptic antiquity dealer in finding and selling the graves, which were then taken whole to the museums. After a time the supply ran short, and the demand became urgent. The natives were hard put to it, but with their customary adaptability, they rose to the occasion; and it is said that they killed their business opponent, the Coptic dealer, and buried his body in the approved position. Under the peculiar climatic conditions obtaining in Nubia, a body often dries before decomposition can take place, so, some time later on, when a special request came from an important museum for a specimen of the predynastic burials, they “discovered” the grave in which they had buried their opponent, and sold the whole thing, pots and all, to the museum. But they could not keep their good fortune to themselves, and later on were heard in the village to boast that they had sold old Aboutig for £450.
The above story is almost too good to spoil, but what really happened, I believe, was that, when the supply of predynastic burials fell short, the natives took a body from a neighbouring cemetery and arranged it in one of the predynastic graves which was minus a body, and later sold the lot.
CHAPTER XI
A FORGED TOMB
I am indebted to Dr. G. A. Reisner for the following story and incidents, and for others which are incorporated in the earlier chapters of this book.
“It was in the summer of 1902, I think, that a couple of young men from the west bank of the Nile at Thebes visited a dealer in antiquities whose shop is in Luxor. After general conversation, coffee drinking, and so forth, they finally asked the proprietor if he wished to buy any antiquities.
“‘Certainly,’ he said, ‘if they are genuine.’
“‘Will you believe they are genuine if you see them in position in the tomb in which they were found?’ they asked.
“‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Have you got a tomb?’
“They said they had, and made arrangements to take him to it at midnight, two or three nights later.
“When the night and the hour came, they met at the appointed place and proceeded towards the tomb. On the road there was a fierce whispered alarm that the guards were coming, and the party scattered in all directions. The next night a second appointment was made, and this time the party reached the entrance to the tomb. The doorway was blocked up, except for a small hole, and sealed with what seemed to be ancient mud-plaster. They tore down this block and entered the tomb, a large rock-cut chamber, literally filled with antiquities—stelæ, ushebti, coffins, vases, and other objects, apparently covered with the dust of ages.
PLATE XIV.
A PIECE OF MUMMY CASE.
This is new wood made up to represent a part of a genuine mummy case.
“The party then adjourned to Luxor to discuss the price. The dealer finally bought the lot for something like £600, and was obliged to raise a mortgage on some property in order to get the money. After great difficulties in avoiding the guards, the objects were finally transferred from the tomb to the dealer’s house in Luxor. The summer passed in pleasant dreams of winter profits, and finally the first Museum buyer arrived on the scene. The dealer selected a stone from the purchased lot, and carried it round to the house of a friend where the Egyptologist happened to be engaged in negotiations for the purchase of some antiquities. The dealer called his friend to the door, and asked him to show the stelæ to the buyer. His friend smiled and said, ‘It is a forgery.’
“The dealer laughed in derision, and insisted on the stone being shown to the expert, who took one look at it and said, ‘Rank forgery.’
“The dealer, who had found this in what seemed to be an untouched tomb, now became thoroughly alarmed. At his request, his friend and the Egyptologist went to his house to inspect all the objects from the tomb. They were all forgeries, and the dealer had been swindled out of his £600 by a cleverly-planned trick of the west bank forgers.”
The Egyptians who are engaged in the making of spurious antiquities are now specialising. One man in Luxor has perfected the manufacture of glazed or faience vessels. Another at Qeneh has developed the cutting and inscription of stone scarabs. At Aboutig a forger makes woodwork and carved ivories, and somewhere in Egypt they are making stone vessels of all periods, apparently on a steam lathe, but copying the ancient forms with great success. A dealer in Cairo once showed me an enormous head of Amenemhat III., which he said was offered to him as coming from Tanis. This must have been the work of European stone-masons. It was cut from a single large boulder of sandstone, an exact copy of the existing portraits of that king, but the cutting had been done with modern stone-masons’ tools, the marks of which were plainly visible, even without a glass.
“On another occasion,” Dr. Reisner tells us, “I was once looking through the stock of a dealer, now dead. Suddenly I caught sight in the back of a drawer of what appeared to be a Babylonian object. The dealer, who happened to know that I have some knowledge of Babylonian antiquities, was very reluctant to show me the object, protesting openly that it was a forgery. I persuaded him, however, and he produced a dozen or more very beautifully made Babylonian sculptures, but all perfectly impossible. He said that he received them from a Persian, an agent who came through Cairo every year, and left him a certain number of pieces to sell on commission. I tried to buy one of these pieces, offering even as high as £5 for it, against the £40 he demanded, but he refused. When I came back in the spring, he told me with a grin that he had sold them all at his own price to various travellers.
“I afterwards learned the forger’s name, and that he lived in Baghdad, from an excavator who had been working in Mesopotamia. This man also forged cuneiform tablets, and I have seen examples of his work in other shops in Cairo besides the one I have mentioned. He first began his forgery of the cuneiform tablets by making moulds of the two sides, pressing clay into the moulds and sticking the two halves together before baking. These forgeries were always discernible by the shallowness of the little wedges of which the writing is composed. This seems to have been pointed out to him, for after a time he began going over these tablets with a pointed stick before baking, and thus deepening the wedges. Finally, with the practice thus gained, he even went so far as to copy tablets freehand; and I know of at least one large tablet in a European museum which he made freehand without any tablet to copy from. It has all the appearance of one of the great tablets from the temple at Telloh, but the writing has no meaning.”
CHAPTER XII
THE MAKERS AND SELLERS OF
FORGED ANTIQUITIES
As I have already said, the majority of the makers of forged antiquities are to be found among the very adaptable “up-river men.”
At Qus lives the maker of gold reproductions. Most of the wooden forgeries come from Gurna and the scarabs from Luxor. In the villages near to Deir-el-Bahari are made the porcelain vases and figures, whence come also the stone heads and statuettes. A number of composition figures are made in the Delta, and may be met with at Zagazig and Benha.
A few years ago the forgers used to make and sell their own work, but now that they are becoming rich and rising in the social scale they are content to leave the selling part of the business to others and themselves stay at home to carry on the making of further imitations.
In appearance they are tall, broad-shouldered men with keen, clever faces and long soft fingers, direct descendants of the ancient Egyptians, with very dark skins, thin lips and persuasive manners.
One member of the family usually leaves his village in the month of October, and with his bundles of carefully wrapped up reproductions drifts lazily down the Nile on a trading boat. Arrived at Cairo, he takes up his quarters with a friend, and the next day may be seen in one of the principal streets with his hands full of strings of beads and his pockets bulging with some of the results of the summer’s work.
Dressed in a dark blue galabeyah, with a white turban and red slippers, he makes an imposing figure. He has a smattering of various languages, in which “Real antīcas, gentleman,” looms large. Also he has an intimate knowledge of the various coinages and generally manages to come out on the right side in making a deal—at least, I never heard of one who owned to the contrary. He possesses largely the gift of perseverance and is like a sleuth-hound in tracking down a possible purchaser. In this he is assisted by the bowabs and servants, many of whom are his own blood-relations or friends.
It must be remembered that most of the servants in Egypt are Berberines, from Nubia, and as the cultivable land up the Nile is in places reduced to a few hundred yards, and travelling by boat is cheap, it will be seen that the men can easily get to know each other well even though miles of the Nile waterway may separate the villages.
But the “up-river man” is not the only itinerant seller of antiquities. A donkey boy may have found out that he can make more money by selling antīcas to his patrons than he can by running after his donkey, even though the bakshīsh be included; so he ponders over this until it becomes an obsession and fills his thoughts day and night. No longer will he remain a donkey boy, he determines; he has a good arbeyah or cloak and decent slippers, and a long black cloak will hide a multitude of unwashedness.
Visions of untold wealth spread themselves out before him. A man he has heard of got £12,000 for a papyrus, and £40 for a gold-mounted scarab is an ordinary price. By a merciful dispensation, Allah has given the Nazarenes into the hands of the Faithful. So he chooses riches; for, after all, money means strength and honour in his village, and perhaps—who knows?—one or more wives who will be beautiful as the houris of Paradise of whom he heard the Mullah discourse in the mosque only the last Friday. The prospect is dazzling and fills the boy’s brain. Rich and powerful, men will look up to him with respect, he will possess feddans of land and children will rise up around him.
He clasps his hands and looks at a donkey distastefully. Did he ever run miles across the desert behind such uncleanliness? Why, even Allah had named it “ass,” which means, as he has been told, “a fool” in the language of those who buy antīcas. Why had he slumbered and why had his eyes been shut in the past? Here was wealth, only waiting for him to seize it. It was not too late; he would force fortune to come to him.
So thinking, the boy sat gazing with unseeing eyes at the scene before him. Girls passed and giggled. “He hath seen an Afrit,” said one. “Nay, a woman hath cast her eyes on him,” said another. He heard and frowned, then bending forward, took up a stone and threw it at a passing dog. The yelp of pain brought him back from the dream world. His resolve was taken; he would become an antīca-seller and, “Inshallah,” might perhaps reap fortune at one swoop.
So the plunge is taken, the summer is spent in gathering together his materials and arranging to sell for others on commission; and the following season the erstwhile donkey boy, his pockets bulging with small tin boxes containing his wares, haunts the neighbourhood of the hotels where live the buyers of antiquities.
Genuine antiquities are few and not to be had without considerable outlay, so in the boxes mixed with the real fragments lie the imitations.
It was just such a boy as this who came to my notice some years ago, and one day I saw him arrested by the police and conveyed to the Caracol (police station). Upon making inquiries I was informed that he had been taken up for annoying people by pestering them to buy scarabs. Later in the day I saw him leaning disconsolately against a wall outside the Caracol.
“Well, how much have you to pay?” I asked.
“Fifteen piastres” (about three shillings), was his reply. “Or”—and he shrugged his shoulders—“or I stay three days in prison.”
“Have you paid the money?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I have none.”
Now this was untrue, for, otherwise, how could he give change to purchasers?—and these boys will rarely risk losing a sale for the want of change. This I pointed out to him, and spoke of the shame, but he shook his head obstinately. Prison has no taint for these men, it is merely an incident in the day’s work. On the following morning, when he was to surrender, I saw him again, his pockets no longer bulging, his clothes clean washed, his cloak brushed, and wearing his new red slippers. He was going to prison.
Calling him to me, I handed over the amount of the fine, saying, “Go and pay it at once and get to work again.” The boy looked sullenly at the three shillings; it was a lot of money to give to the prison authorities, and that was not the way to get rich. Then he saluted and walked away.
After three days he returned and asked to see me. Solemnly he produced a piece of dirty rag, untied it, and handed me back the three shillings.
“What is this?” I asked.
The boy grinned. “Well you see, sir, when I got to the prison, the officer who takes the money had gone away. I waited there for one day, and then he came back. When I pay the money I give him two shillings, but he look at a paper and say ‘Three.’ I say ‘No; three shillings or three days in prison. You were away when I come. I stop here one day, and here are two shillings.’ He say, ‘No, three.’ Then I wrap up the money and stay two more days in prison; after that I come out, and here is your money.”
Obviously there was only one thing to be done, and he departed with a broad smile and the conviction that he had done a good day’s work. One cannot help feeling that such a boy ought to succeed.
On another occasion I saw the same youth strolling about his village when I knew that he should have been in prison for a contravention of the law. Calling him, I inquired how this came about.
“I have business in my village,” he said, “so my brother he come to the prison and take my place. I give the policeman one shilling, I come out to do my business, then go back again.”
Let me say that this took place years ago, and I do not think he would get out of prison so easily now; but even quite recently I heard of a sale of antiquities running into hundreds of pounds, one of the parties to the transaction being in prison at the time.
Then there are the more prosperous sellers with their feet firmly set in the path to fortune, who combine the selling of forged antiquities with dealings in the real articles. Sometimes a dragoman varies his legitimate business by bringing before the notice of his party antiquities which he declares are genuine, or introduces a seller, who at the conclusion of the bargain hands over to the dragoman a fair percentage of the spoils. His part in the transaction may be limited to the introduction of the seller and the assurance that “This man very good man, dig in the tombs, lady. Don’t be afraid, he very honest.”
Lastly there is the polished seller, tired of mien, suave of manner and high in price, producing only upon pressure his store of treasures. Apparently casual about selling anything, he is probably the most dangerous, for if no business is done, one leaves him feeling very mean, and conscious of having committed an offence in doubting the authenticity of the articles shown by him.
Nor does the silence of your guide on the way home tend to relieve the feeling of oppression and smallness, until perhaps by some good fortune one meets a man who knows; then the feeling changes to one of relief at the escape and wrathfulness at the attempt that has been made to swindle you.
CHAPTER XIII
EGYPTOLOGISTS
It would not, perhaps, be out of place to make some special reference to the men who are doing so much to throw light upon the thoughts and lives of the old Egyptians; but here is need to tread as warily as may be, for these are a race apart. Charming companions they are, delightful hosts, brilliant guests, generous and painstaking to a degree when once you have presented your card and asked to be shown around. So clever are they that after a time one learns wisdom, and refrains from advancing theories in their presence as to how the old Egyptians cut and worked their diorite, granite, and other hard stones: what lights they used when making and painting the tombs in the Valley of the Kings: or what system of mechanics they employed in raising blocks of stone weighing many tons to the tops of the Pyramids, 480 feet up: if it was an inclined plane, cradles, or levers, or what it was? These men have seen many workmen hard put to it to pull a small granite statue weighing three or four tons up an inclined plane of less than 45 degrees. And yet what wonderful patience and courtesy most of these experts show to well-meaning but ignorant questioners, even when they are perhaps burning to be free to turn back more pages of hidden history.
There is something about them which seems strange to new-comers. Perhaps, indeed probably, it is the inhalation and absorption of the desiccated and pulverised remains of the ancient Egyptians which influences them. Every one knows that the dust from tombs produces irritation of the air passages, and possibly this also accounts for the divergence of opinion among them; for never yet have I known two Egyptologists agree absolutely upon a given subject. I have heard a story that two savants read an inscription, the one beginning from right to left, and the other from left to right, and both made sense of it.
PLATE XV.
BEADS AND MUMMY CLOTH.
1. Forged Roman beads.
2. Egyptian blue beads.
3. Genuine mummy cloth recently painted.
4. Sacred cats, with genuine mummy beads.
I was somewhat surprised recently by the remarks of a learned friend to me.
“You are getting more and more like an Egyptian. I notice the change every time I see you,” he said. It may be so, although the idea is startling. We know that Continents produce types, of which fact a good example is America. Then add to this the daily dose of ancient Egyptian remains, and the mystery is one no longer, but the effect becomes possible if not probable. Among the savants some of the old characteristics reappear to-day. Listen to the speech of Amenemhat to his son, Sesostris, during the twelfth dynasty.
“Hearken to that which I say to thee,
That thou mayest be King of the earth,
That thou mayest be ruler of the lands,
That thou mayest increase good.
Harden thyself against all subordinates;
The people give heed to him who terrorises them;
Approach them not alone.
Fill not thy heart with a brother;
Know not a friend,
Nor make for thyself intimates,
Wherein there is no end.
When thou sleepest, guard for thyself thine own heart,
For a man has no people
In the day of evil.
I gave to the beggar;
I nourished the orphan;
I admitted the insignificant,
As well as him who was of great account.
But he who ate my food made insurrection;
He to whom I gave my hand aroused fear therein.” (Breasted.)
The spirit of these sayings creeps into the work, and excavators may be trusted to keep their own counsel. They will take immense trouble and pains in their explanations, and endeavour to render into popular language the hieroglyphics, and the meanings of the dead past; but let the ignorant only intrude upon a piece of their sacred earth, and “ice is not in it with them.” Once, while going through some excavations, a friend pointed out a small blue bead lying on the top of one of the low mud walls which separate tomb from tomb. “Shall I steal it?” he asked. Knowing the ways of excavators, I whispered a warning, “Better not.” A few steps further on the excavator turned round and explained pointedly, “Every article found in the diggings is taken note of; even a small bead” (here he paused, and we felt uncomfortable) “is placed on the top of the wall near where it was found, and is catalogued in its turn.” After this little admonition upon righteousness, we walked thoughtfully along, and my friend edged up to me. “Good job I did not steal it,” he whispered. “I am perfectly certain he” (indicating the excavator) “did not hear what I said to you, unless he has ears as well as eyes in the back of his head.”
Excavators are, as a rule, extremely good judges of humanity. They know that an ancient predatory instinct is present in most people of the Anglo-Saxon race, and who knows how many short lectures on honesty that one small blue bead gave rise to. But even excavators, or perhaps it is more correct to say some of them, have their failings. They are apt to look down from an immense height upon an amateur digger as something too ignorant for words; and a pained look comes over their faces when you mention the work done by So-and-so, and the conclusions to which he has come. “What is the country coming to?” their expression seems to say.
But the excavators have their trials too. Sometimes a digger has been working for weeks at some deep burial pit. Suppose now that “something” has been found. Perhaps a door is about to be opened. At the critical moment, some tourists appear on the scene. The unearthing or opening must stop, for who knows what may be found, and the greatest care must be taken to get full notes and photographic records, that nothing may be lost. The afternoon passes, and night begins to come on. It is too late now to open the find, it must wait, strongly guarded from thieves, till to-morrow; and the excavator passes an uneasy night, pondering and wondering what he will find, and saying evil things about those who hindered him in his work.
I have been in the habit of showing my forged antiquities to Egyptologists, not bumptiously, but humbly, and with a due knowledge of my own colossal ignorance. The specimen would be passed across the table in silence, accompanied by a magnifying glass. The expert would frown heavily, but the specimen and the glass would, in the end, prove irresistible. As I produced scarabs made more perfect, a certain uneasiness would be shown, and the question asked me, “Is this genuine or not?” To this I would never reply otherwise than to say, “I should be glad to have your opinion on the matter.” A very careful examination of the specimen would follow, and the reasons for considering it to be a forgery would be explained in terse plain language.
There is a certain disadvantage in collecting spurious antiquities and getting expressions of opinion upon them; for after a time your association with these forgeries causes an inclination in the expert to condemn off-hand any specimen you may submit to him. To meet this occasionally I would hand over a genuine scarab, which would be detected, and inquiry made as to “what I was up to now, or whether I had really bought this as a fraudulent antiquity?” Occasionally remarks would be pointed, and expressed in the bluff way which “hides a heart of gold.” This I always accepted humbly, conscious of my own inferiority.
These experts were goodness itself, and would spend hours over a close examination of a specimen submitted to them. On one occasion, when showing the figure seen on page 54, the excavator demanded “where on earth” I had obtained it? Filled with the spirit of mischief, I refused to answer, but dropped vague hints about black granite statues, life size; at which he turned round, saying crossly, “Really, I believe you are in league with every disreputable person in the country.” Modestly I disclaimed this, and pointed out that I was actuated simply and solely by a zeal for science. I asked him if he would be kind enough to read the inscription upon the tablet before him. This he was unable to do himself, but he made a copy which he took away for a friend to read. Day after day went past, and the translation did not arrive. After about a week or ten days, I reminded him, but for some reason or other, the translation was not forthcoming. Weeks after, I learnt that my friend had been afraid to hand the inscription to the man whom he knew could read it, lest it should be a further trick on my part, and should contain nothing more than a message of thanks from a grateful patient.
On another occasion I made an experiment as to whether my association with modern forged antiquities would be sufficient to bias an expert in expressing his opinion as to the genuineness of articles of known antiquity submitted to him.
I obtained four specimens (see [Plate XVI]), of undoubted antiquity, although even these are examples made in or for Nubia about 3500 years ago of Egyptian Funerary objects of New Empire period (reign of Thothmes III).
The largest scarab is of very poor workmanship. The head, which took the unusual form of a sphinx, was badly made and proportioned, and was turned slightly to one side. The workmanship of the smaller scarab was also poor. The sacred eye was well made, of a beautiful blue, and looked as if it had only just left the workshop. The monkey was one of the most startling things I have ever seen found in an excavation in Egypt. The glaze was modern and the whole thing looked as if it had recently come out of a cheap bazaar. But there can be no question about the authenticity of these things, for they were found and taken out of the graves by the archæologists of the Nubian Survey.
PLATE XVI.
EXAMPLES FOUND IN NUBIA.
1. & 6. A steatite monkey made 3,500 years ago.
2. Cheap ornament made five years ago.
3. Sacred eye of beautiful colour.
4. & 5. Scarabs.
On the mantelpiece of a house in Egypt stood a cheap ornament. This appears in No. 2, side by side with the monkey found in Nubia. The ancient specimen is much the better work, but the likeness between the two is so strong as to be absolutely bewildering.
[When the ancient monkey vase was first found it was shown to an eminent Egyptologist, not in the ordinary way as a valuable antiquity, but a few matches were placed in it (see [No. 6]), and it was put quietly upon the table in front of him in the evening when the party were smoking. However, he was not to be taken in, but at once recognised it as a valuable antīca.]
Entering casually into conversation with my friend, I led up to the subject of antiquities. He was expressing his views freely, and I waited patiently. During a pause I slipped my hand into my pocket, brought out one of the specimens and pushed it across the table towards him. A scornful smile came over his face. “One of your forgeries, I suppose,” he remarked. I said, “I should like to have your opinion on the object.” He examined it carefully, and then laid it down. I passed another across to him, and then the remaining two. One by one he discarded them, giving it as his opinion that the large scarab was a forgery for the following very sound reasons, bearing in mind the excellence of the old Egyptians’ work. The inscription, he said, was not very well done: the two holes on the side were not usual in heart scarabs: the head was badly made and turned to one side; the work on the feet was clumsy. The small scarab he classed as imitation for the following reasons. The two antelopes are supposed to be alike, but one is larger than the other, and has a larger neck and ears. The branches of a tree over the back of the antelopes were irregular in size, one being small and one large. A round eye appears on the under surface of the scarab, which should have had a duplicate on the opposite side. The back and head, he decided, were very good.
The monkey, which was shown to him with a few matches placed in the receptacle before it, was declared to be a shameless fraud, and he wondered that I should take up my time in collecting such obvious imitations. When he was shown the photograph which had been taken of a common vase from the mantelpiece of a house, and compared it with the specimen he was examining, he sarcastically inquired if I bought all my antiquities in a cheap Jack’s booth at home. Meekly I produced the sacred eye, which he would scarcely deign to look at, contemptuously pushing it aside on account of a small white mark in the blue. “Have you got any more?” he inquired. Modestly I said that I had not, when, with some muttered remarks about the strangeness of the pursuits taken up by people with more time on their hands than sense, he strode away.
There had gathered round us a little silent group of listeners who seemed rather to sympathise with me, although, of course, thinking that I had brought all this upon myself.
Presently one of these bystanders said: “Does not a monkey appear in Plate 72, Vol. I., of the ‘Archæological Survey of Nubia?’” There was a dead silence, and many inquiring eyes were turned upon me. I said, “That is so.” Then another man said, “It is described as a steatite monkey holding a kohl pot, for I remember reading it with great interest. And the sacred eye is shown in Plate 79, Vol. I.” Now the interest became intense, and smiles began to appear on the faces of the bystanders. It was all true. The small scarab is shown in the second volume, and the large scarab is illustrated in the second report of the “Archæological Survey of Nubia.”
It was, perhaps, an unkind experiment to make, but yet it was necessary to know whether one’s association with admitted forgeries were sufficient to bias the mind of a clever man in giving his opinion on specimens submitted to him.
Ten years ago, when discussing with an eminent excavator the excellence of the fourth dynasty work, I said: “Here we have the climax, so to speak, of Egyptian culture—the period of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, which is so marvellous for the mathematical exactitude with which it is built. But where are the evidences of the evolution which preceded this period, the time when they were trying their dawning ideas? No architect would have dared offer to build Cheops a pyramid, the base of which should be thirteen acres in extent and 480 feet in height, were he not absolutely certain of his ability to overcome those mathematical and mechanical difficulties which would be met with in lifting heavy blocks of stone 480 feet. And then the sides face due North and South, East and West. Where is the period of evolution which preceded this excellence?”
The excavator’s reply was startling. “I do not believe that there was one,” he said. “The demand was made and met: the same would be the case to-day if a similar need arose.”
Perhaps this explains why Egyptians, without preliminary tuition in sculpture or painting, are copying the old work in such a way that only the most experienced are able to tell the real from the false.
Most excavators, however, have a sense of intuition which tells them if a thing is false or not. Not that they depend in any way upon this, for they weigh up the evidence in a strictly scientific manner, and give their decision backed up by reasons which are difficult to dispute.