CHAPTER III.
NAUKRATIS.
1885.
Before beginning work in the end of 1883 I visited Gizeh; and, as usual, many small antiquities were offered to me by the Arabs. Among such was the upper part of an alabaster figure of a soldier, wearing a helmet and armlets, which was plainly of archaic Greek or Cypriote work. I at once gave the man what he asked for it (never run risks in important cases), and then enquired where he got it. ‘From Nebireh,’ was his answer, and that was somewhere near Damanhur. So, a month or two later, I took an opportunity of going down to that region, and, after some mistakes and enquiries, I at last reached the place, in course of a twenty mile walk, and having only half-an-hour to spare before going on to the train. There I met a sight which I had never hoped for,—almost too strange to believe. Before me lay a long low mound of town ruins, of which all the core had been dug out by the natives for earth, thus baring the very lowest level of the town all over the middle of it. Wherever I walked in this crater I trod on pieces of archaic Greek pottery; soon I laded my pockets with scraps of vases and of statuettes, and at last tore myself away, longing to resolve the mystery of these Greeks in Egypt. Up to that time no Greek remains earlier than the Ptolemaic age, and Alexander, had been found in the country, and to step back two or three centuries, into the days of black-figured and rosette-ornamented vases, and archaic statuettes, was quite a new departure.
23. Cypriote Soldier.
24. Dedication of Statue to Heliodoros, by the Naukratites. 1: 6.
That season’s work was already laid out, and I was bound to go to Tanis; but the next season I returned to this curious site, determined to understand its history. The only place that I could find to live in about there was an old country house of a pasha; and, while looking at it, I noticed two blocks of dark grey stone by the side of the entrance. Turning one of them over, I there saw the glorious heading ΗΠΟΛΙΣΗΝΑΥΚΡΑΤΙ ...; a decree of the city of Naukratis was before me, and the unknown town now had a name; and that a name which had been sought for often, and far from this place, and which was one of the objects of Egyptian research to discover and truly assign. All that day ‘Naukratis’ rang in my mind, and I sprang over the mounds with that splendid exultation of a new discovery, long wished for and well found. In England, some hesitated, and some doubted, but none denied it; and after the season’s work there was no longer any question. The next year I continued the excavations along with Mr. Ernest Gardner, and was soon able to leave the remainder of the clearing in his hands, while I moved on to fresh discoveries, on the east of the country.