Nowhere else on this earth are the past and present so intermixed as at Thebes. Here extreme antiquity may be seen side by side with modern science, motor-cars passing asses, and electricity illuminating the ancient tombs. The mummy of Seti II lies with an electric light above his head, so that visitors may have no difficulty in gazing on his features!
The remarkable paintings in the tombs are executed so skilfully, the outlines are drawn and coloured so correctly, that the possibility of doing such work in the darkness of an underground chamber has often been questioned. More than once it has been said that the light of torches or candles would be quite inadequate, and it has been suggested that the Egyptians may have anticipated modern science by using electric light thousands of years ago.
That the Egyptians were clever is beyond all doubt, that they may have known things of which we to-day are ignorant is more than possible, but the decorations of the tombs are no evidence that they were conversant with the use of electricity. The ancient methods of lighting the tombs so that the artists could see to work were after all quite simple. The artists worked by the light of the sun. The sun might be perhaps a hundred feet or more away along a passage, yet a white garment would serve excellently for reflecting the light into the tomb.
Professor Flinders Petrie has worked wonders with the lid of a biscuit box, and in bygone days a man might often have been seen holding a tin lid at the mouth of a tunnel leading into a tomb, deflecting the ray of light right into the tomb, to enable the Egyptologist to take photographs. If the lid of a biscuit box happened to be missing, then a turkish towel was made to serve the same purpose. The actinic qualities of the sun in the Nile valley are indeed remarkable.
Many things have turned up under the spade in Egypt, wonderful stone vases, jars with faint traces of perfume still pervading them, slate palettes on which the people mixed the paints with which they touched up their eyes and faces. While the Ancient Britons were painting themselves with woad, the Egyptian ladies were sitting at their dressing-tables making up their eyes in quite the modern fashion, the Egyptian children were playing with toys such as the children play with to-day. The Egyptian forerunner of Pepys carved his diary on a piece of ebony, one page to a whole year!
Glass was in use in Egypt thousands of years before it was heard of in Europe; Egypt taught the world the use of bronze; and the flint implements found on the banks of the Nile are finer than any others so far discovered in the world. Some of the knives of the best period are simply marvellous and disclose extraordinary skill on the part of the Egyptian flint workers. There are stone knives in the British Museum with teeth as regular and as fine as those of a modern, machine-cut fret saw, teeth so minute as to be almost invisible to the naked eye. One masterpiece of a flint knife, cleverly flaked in the most remarkable manner, has about fifty tiny teeth to the inch, and it is astounding to think that such amazing hand work was performed by the Egyptians of the Stone Age. Probably there is not a living man who could duplicate such work.
Now the treasures of Tutankhamen grip the imagination and dazzle the eye. Tutankhamen made a priceless, a magnificent gift to posterity, yet it is to Ptolemy v. that we owe the greatest gift of all. The gift is merely that broken stone in the British Museum, the stone which was dug out of the ruins of Fort St. Julian in 1798. In causing that stone to be carved, Ptolemy presented us with the key to the knowledge of ancient Egypt.
By courtesy of the British Museum
THE FAMOUS INSCRIPTION OF KING DARIUS AT BEHISTUN, IN PERSIA, FROM WHICH SIR HENRY RAWLINSON WRESTED THE LONG-LOST SECRET OF CUNEIFORM WRITING. AT THE EDGE OF THE NARROW LEDGE ON WHICH THE ARAB STANDS, THE ROCK DROPS SHEER FOR 300 FEET TO THE BOULDER-STREWN FOOT OF THE CLIFFS