92. Set of Tools, Vases, and Mirror. 1: 8
Not only do we in this town drop into the midst of the daily life and productions of this early age, but the documents of the time also remain. In various chambers papyri were found; some carefully sealed up and put by, such as the wills of Uah, and Antefmeri, but mostly thrown aside as waste paper. One of the largest is a hymn of praise to Usertesen III: some pages of a medical work, some of a veterinary papyrus, and innumerable parts of letters, accounts, and memoranda make up the collection. As only five papyri of this early date were known before now, this is a wide addition to our resources.
Another subject has quite unexpectedly come to light. Marks of various kinds are found on pieces of pottery-vessels here, some put on by the maker before the baking, but mostly scratched by the owner. These marks are many of them derived from the Egyptian workmen’s signs, corruptions of hieroglyphics. But, as we shall see in the next chapter, the discoveries at Gurob point to these having some kinship with the Western alphabets. They are therefore the venerable first step in adopting marks to represent sounds, irrespective of their primitive form and significance.
93. Clay Toys, Twelfth Dynasty.
That these marks were known not only to Egyptians, but to foreigners here as well, is probable from the discoveries of Aegean pottery in this place. Intermixed with, and even beneath, the rubbish mounds of the twelfth dynasty are pieces of pottery which appear to be the forerunners of what we know as Greek pottery in later ages. The ware, the motives of the decoration, belong to the Aegean, and not to Egypt; either Greece or Asia Minor was their home, but long centuries before any specimens that we yet know of from those countries. The weights found here also testify to foreign influences, the greater part of them being on the Phoenician, Aeginetan, and Hittite standards.
Some later times have left their traces in this place, although the bulk of it is purely of the twelfth dynasty. A wooden stamp of Apepi was found, probably of the Hyksos king; and if so, the only small article yet known of that dynasty. A small papyrus of Amenhotep III was found, rolled up, and placed in a pottery cylinder: also a splendid ‘hunting scarab’ of that king, recording his slaying 102 lions, which is of brilliant and perfect blue-green glaze. A broken papyrus of Amenhotep IV was also left here. But the main prize was a family tomb, probably of the end of the nineteenth, or early twentieth, dynasty. A cellar cut in the rock, belonging to one of the houses of the twelfth dynasty, had been found at this later date, and used as a sepulchre. More than a dozen coffins were piled in it, each containing several bodies, all the wrappings of which were reduced to black sooty dust. I stripped for the work, and for hours was occupied in opening coffin after coffin, carefully searching the dust inside each, cataloguing everything as I found it, overhauling the pottery and stone vases heaped in the chambers, and handing everything out to the one native lad whom I took down to help me. At last I finished the place, and came out much like a coal-heaver or a sweep, so that I had to go to the nearest pond to wash all over. Though none of the interments were rich, yet there were interesting