The romance of excavation

by David Masters

When this ancient man hunted on the banks of the Nile, he gazed upon a very different land from that which exists to-day. The river was wider and shallower. It overflowed its banks for greater distances. The banks of gravel which show where the waters of the river lapped in bygone centuries still exist, but they are far removed from the river, and a hundred feet or so higher.

In all the thousands of years that have elapsed since then, the Nile has been cutting a deeper and deeper channel for itself. In all the years that it has been bringing down the mud in solution, flowing over the land, some of the mud has sunk to the bottom and remained; much of it has been carried from the Delta to the sea. The mud that sank has got deeper and deeper. The river has added to the deposit inch by inch, until there is now a wonderful layer of alluvial soil: just the mud of the Nile, between 30 and 40 feet thick on each side of the stream.

This deposit itself has helped to give scientists an idea of the age of the earliest human remains that have been found. The rate at which the river leaves the mud behind has been carefully measured, and men have learned that in a century the Nile will add 4 inches of soil to the fields by flooding. Test holes have revealed the present depth of the alluvial, and if roughly about a yard of deposition is allowed for one thousand years, and about 10 or 12 yards are allowed for the depth, then the age of the deposit is fixed at ten or twelve thousand years.

In some quarters this time is considered as absolutely accurate and definitely fixed, but there are so many factors to be taken into account that we should hesitate to regard them as unalterable. The Nile, it is true, has been depositing mud at the rate of 4 inches to the century in modern times, but this is no proof that it has always deposited mud at this rate, and there may have been considerable changes in the rate at which the mud banks have grown on each side of the stream. We know the floods vary considerably, and the rate of deposition must vary similarly. There seems at least the possibility that it took twice as long as the accepted estimate to deposit the mud on each side of the river, that is twenty thousand years. For aught we know, it may have taken two hundred thousand years.

It will be seen how difficult it is in dealing with the lapse of such ages to mention any definite dates. This is why the men who are digging up the past in Egypt refer to Dynasties, starting with the First Dynasty, and working up to the last or Thirtieth Dynasty.

A great deal has been done towards discovering the names of the various kings in the different Dynasties, but there are still many gaps to fill in. Most of our information in this respect has been given us by a list of names compiled by a priest named Manetho, who lived about two thousand one hundred years ago. Manetho undoubtedly based his names of kings on more ancient lists which have totally disappeared, but that he was fairly accurate is borne out by the Turin papyrus so far as it has been translated. The difficulty with this papyrus is that it was discovered in a number of fragments, and some parts of it are missing. However, the parts that remain have been most carefully pieced together, and seem to verify Manetho’s list, which starts with Menes, who is looked upon as the first king of the First Dynasty, and is thought to have reigned about seven thousand years ago.

Throughout the ages that followed the reign of Menes, there grew up those religious beliefs and quaint burial customs which have done so much to unfold to us the life of the past. At first sight there seems to be no reason for all the statues, the tiny figures, and wonderful wall inscriptions to be found in the ancient tombs of Egypt. It seems incomprehensible that the dead should be buried with food and flowers beside them, that all this artistic talent should be wasted in this manner. Yet some such customs exist in all lands, and survive to this day, for we still place wreaths of flowers on the graves of our departed in memory of them, but actually the giving of a wreath is based on a custom that recedes so far back that all trace of it has been lost.

The Egyptians believed that there was another world, to which the soul journeyed after death. But the journey was long and hazardous, and the soul faced many perils on the way. In order to protect the soul from danger, the Egyptians used to paint an image of the Sun God within the tomb, thus placing the soul directly under the protection of the god, and the soul would wander over the heavens in the company of the god, immune from all harm, so long as the daylight lasted.

Directly darkness fell, all the evil spirits would come forth from their retreats, and try to trap the soul as it stumbled blindly through the labyrinths of the lower regions. All night the soul would fight against these perils, struggling continually towards the dawn. Then, as the sun came up, the soul would escape from the evil demons, and wander free of danger through the heavens once more until darkness fell.

Every human being was also considered to possess a perfect duplicate, a double, and the Egyptians were taught that the life of this double depended on the survival of the body, and if the double had no body to return to, the double would become extinct and die for good. Such a thing was too terrible to contemplate, and had it happened it would have signified eternal disgrace to the living, as well as obliteration to the dead. Consequently the body was embalmed, so that it would be preserved for all time as a place of refuge for the double.