The romance of excavation

by David Masters

The following year he returned to the mounds. His first task was to find a shelter. He had barely done this when he noticed two stones lying just outside. He stooped and turned one over, to find it was a proclamation of the long-lost city of Naukratis carved in Greek characters, a city which men had eagerly sought, a city the very existence of which some men doubted. It was a sudden revelation, a mighty discovery to spring from a little alabaster statue, and it provides one more indication of the genius of its discoverer.

Perhaps the weirdest experience in all Egyptology was Petrie’s discovery of the noble Horuta at Hawara down a well 40 feet deep. Here in a flooded chamber, amid impenetrable blackness, he and his labourers wrestled continually with mighty blocks, in order to get to the stone sarcophagus which he suspected was there. They found it at last, with the lid barely peeping above the surface of the icy water.

For days they strove to shift it, but it was immovable, so he decided to cut the sarcophagus in halves in order to get at the inner coffin. Weeks of fatiguing labour saw this gigantic task accomplished, and there was another desperate fight, with men working up to their chests in water, to get it out.

Instead of the coveted head-end of the sarcophagus, the foot-end came to light. It was a terrible disappointment. The coffin still remained in the other half, and was apparently as far off as ever. The Egyptologist, groping in the murky water, fought with it, strove to shift it with his hands, with his feet. It was firmly fixed.

Still he was not beaten. After a sustained effort lasting several days, he and his workers managed to raise the lid of the other half of the sarcophagus with wedges, until the inside of it was a few inches above water-level. Then he wriggled inside, and for hours in the darkness he sat astride the coffin and struggled to loosen it. The top of his head touched the lid of the sarcophagus, he had hardly room to move at all, the water came up to his mouth and compelled him to breathe through his nose. More than once in the course of his tremendous exertions he took in a mouthful of the nauseous water. The sand clung to the coffin as though it were set in a bed of cement. He tried scraping away the sand with his feet, he prised at the coffin with crowbars. All his efforts failed to shift it a fraction of an inch.

Few men would have continued under such hopeless conditions; most would have acknowledged defeat and betaken themselves to an easier task. But Flinders Petrie was possessed of a determination that would not be denied. He set to work drilling holes in the coffin—a most difficult feat. When this was done bolts were inserted, strong ropes were attached, and the men went along the passage and hauled away with all their strength. For a time it was like heaving at a mountain, then the coffin stirred slightly, moved more and more. Backs were bending under the strain, arms almost cracking as the men taking part in that fantastic tug-of-war with a dead man finally triumphed and dragged the water-blackened coffin out of the depths.

Breathlessly they opened it, found the mummy of Horuta, “wrapped in a network of lapis lazuli, beryl, and silver.... Bit by bit the layers of pitch and cloth were loosened, and row after row of magnificent amulets were disclosed, just as they were laid on in the distant past. The gold ring on his finger which bore his name and titles, the exquisitely inlaid gold birds, the chased gold figures, the lazuli statuettes, the polished lazuli and beryl and carnelian amulets finely engraved.”

Forgotten were the herculean labours of the past months, forgotten the icy water that froze their bodies, the blackness that blinded them, swept away by the sight of the treasures disclosed to their delighted eyes, the treasures for which they had endured so much and fought so long. The recovery of the mummy of Horuta is one of the epics of the Nile.

The world-famous tablets of Tell el Amarna were accidentally discovered by an Arab woman, who happened on them while searching the ruins for trifles to sell to tourists. The tablets were letters sent by the King of Babylon to the King of Egypt, written in the usual cuneiform characters on slabs of clay, and they disclose much concerning the life of that time. A remarkable thing is that in one of the letters, the King of Babylon mentions that he is sending a present of some couches to the King of Egypt, and the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen has brought to light what appear to be the very couches which were presented to the King of Egypt nearly four thousand years ago.

Professor Petrie has little doubt that the strange lion-couches are of Babylonian origin, and that these are the couches referred to in the Tell el Amarna letters. The couches found in Tutankhamen’s tomb are secured with bronze clasps. The Babylonians secured their furniture in this way, but the Egyptians never did, for in the Nile valley the furniture was held together with wooden pegs; so the evidence distinctly favours the view that these are indeed the Babylonian couches mentioned.