The romance of excavation

by David Masters

For forty years the search went on. Other tombs were found, but that of Tutankhamen still eluded discovery, until the autumn of 1922. The digger always has hopes of finding a certain thing, but as often as not he comes across something else.

Before a pick is stuck into the ground, the digger will spend several days on the spot, going over it carefully, and noting any irregularities. Long experience teaches him many things. What the ordinary man cannot see, even when it is pointed out to him, may be quite plain to the trained eye. A slight depression may indicate to the expert the site of a buried building, a tiny bank may tell him where the sand of the desert has blown against a wall and gradually accumulated until the wall is covered beneath the drift. It is invisible, but there is the slight slope to prove that the sand has been heaped against something, to show that its path has been stayed by some object. These are some of the things which help the experts to select the spot on which to dig. The man who prospects for gold knows what signs to look for, and the scientist prospecting for relics of past ages is equally proficient in reading the signs. The gold prospector digs a hole, and washes the contents to find a colour of gold; the seeker for relics prospects by digging a trench to see if he can find a bit of brick or stone showing traces of man’s handiwork.

Egypt happens to be a particularly happy hunting-ground, inasmuch as it not only possessed an extremely ancient civilization, but also enjoys a wonderful climate, which preserves the relics of the past. The sun is always shining, and rain falls so seldom that things are preserved almost indefinitely from damp and mildew where in other countries they are destroyed in a few years.

The ancient cities of Egypt were founded on the banks of the Nile, just as are the modern cities. Away from the river, life is insupportable. It has often been said that the Nile is Egypt, and Egypt is the Nile. This is true, for the cultivable land of Egypt above the Delta is just a green strip a mile or two wide on each side of the river all along its course. On the margin is the encroaching desert, which only the waters of the Nile prevent from overwhelming the land. Where the waters of the Nile flow into the little irrigation canals and feed the fields, there abundant crops of cotton, sugar-cane, and other things are raised. Beyond, are the arid hills, and the cruel sands where the rock in summer becomes so hot that it is possible to bake bread by the heat of the sun.

The people living in lands that are blessed with an adequate rainfall can have no conception of what the Nile means to Egypt. The drought which occasionally affects our own country brings home to us the importance of rain to the land. Our whole country-side soon begins to complain about lack of water. Wells begin to run dry. Water has even to be carried to some villages by train.

A traveller spent a night at an old inn on the Sussex downs, and found an inch of chalk sediment at the bottom of his small jug of shaving water in the morning. Crops which should have been 4 feet high had struggled up only a few inches. There was no moisture to help them to develop. Fields of heavy land were all ploughed up, but before the farmer could harrow them and prepare a fine tilth for the seeds, the clods were baked as hard as iron, so hard that it was impossible to do anything with them, and the fields carried no crops at all. A succession of such seasons would have a profound effect on the life of this country, and compel our people to live where water could be obtained.

That is why the Egyptians were—and are—chained to the Nile. The floods fed the land. When the river failed to rise, and the water was confined within the banks, there was famine. No wonder those ancient Egyptians worshipped the Nile. Their lives depended on it.

They watched the river anxiously to see what it was going to do, scanning the chocolate-coloured waters as they went flowing by. They wondered whether the river was going to condemn them to starvation, or whether it was about to scatter plenty over the land. Far away from Cairo, up at Khartoum, the rise began about the end of April, but so great is the distance that no perceptible increase was to be noticed at Cairo until the end of June.

As the water rose, so did the spirits of the natives. We can imagine with what joy they saw the flood break over the banks and sweep into the fields on either side. Stone pillars were put up to measure the rise. They were marked off in cubits, and the officials would watch the water stealing up and up. If it only reached 12 cubits there would be wailing throughout the land, for the people knew that famine would overtake them, that the life-giving water would not reach their fields. Another 3 cubits would suffice to feed them until the next harvest came round, if they exercised care and were not unduly wasteful, while 16 cubits, or 28 feet, would fill their granaries to overflowing, and every one would have enough and to spare.