COLLECTION IN LONDON.--The collections of sculpture, painting, faience, etc., which Mr. Flinders Petrie brought back from his excavations last winter at Tel el-Amarna have been placed on view at 4 Oxford-mansion, Oxford-circus, W. Their special interest is that they reveal an hitherto unknown form of art, remarkable both for its originality and for its spirited rendering of natural objects. The resemblance to some of the finest objects of Mycenaean work is very striking. The exhibition remained open until October 15.--Academy, Sept. 24.
ETHIOPIA.
NORTHERN ETBAI.--EXPEDITION TO THE NORTHERN ETBAI.--A recent scientific expedition to northern Etbai or northern Aethiopia, by the order of the Khedive, is the subject of a very interesting paper by Ernest A. Floyer, in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for October.
The chief investigation of the expedition was devoted to the remains of certain large mining stations which proved to be doubly interesting, as giving evidence of two distinct periods of the mining industry.
Mines have been opened over almost the entire surface, and the remains of numerous towns mark the dwelling places of the miners.
Not only in the mines is found evidence of two methods, one very ancient and another less ancient; but in the settlements above were discovered remains of Ptolemaic construction, together with the stone huts of a race probably aboriginal, and preceding or contemporaneous with but not unknown to the ancient Egyptians.
The Ptolemaic miner seem to have employed the ancient methods to a great extent, so that it would seem that there could never have been any complete cessation of mining for a very long period.
The miners of Rameses' time, too, used methods of great antiquity. In the Wadi Abba stands a rock temple with hieroglyphic inscriptions stating that Sethos, father of Rameses the Great, had discovered gold mines in this region. Golenischeff believes this temple to have been erected by the Ptolemies. At the mines of Sighait is an hieroglyphic inscription recording the visit of a royal scribe and a mine inspector. This is faintly inscribed on the face of a steep rock. At the emerald mines of Sikait may be seen a number of Greek dedications over rock-cut temples. Near the Wadi Khashat, where topazes are found, there stands a square enclosure, the platform of a temple, and numerous ruined structures of apparent Greek origin. It would appear from these remains that the Ptolemies examined all of the ancient mines and reopened a certain number--here they erected their temples, houses and barracks for slaves, here they constructed high roads for their carts and oxen, with caravan service, and post houses built at intervals.
Beside these Ptolemaic ruins are found some traces of the prehistoric miners, and in a few cases as at the mines of the Um Roos these exist alone. The most important traces are the stone huts built of large stones in two lines, and of uniform irregularity. In connection with these huts there is not a single mark or inscription of any kind which might lead to a solution of the problem with regard to their origin.
Their implements, quantities of which are found at Um Roos were as crude as their abodes, in fact the use of some of them cannot be determined. The mines, though extensive, are little more than burrows, and in a few cases it is not known for what mineral they were excavated. The writer, after dismissing the Æthiopians, the Kushites and the ancient Egyptians, as the probable pre-Ptolemaic miners, suggests that the Etbai was peopled by a negroid tribe of natural miners, the possible ancestors of the copper miners in the mountains north of Kordofan.