STORY OF THE AGES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 66, 19 March 1931, Page 20

STORY OF THE AGES.

RELICS IN LONDON CELLAR. HALF A CENTURY OF EXCAVATION Half a century of excavations by Sir .Flinders Petrie lias resulted in the accumulation of a vast quantity of relics, for whicli in London there is no home. At the age of 77, Sir Flinders is the greatest revealer of ancient civilisations to the modern world. He spent a Christmas and New Year holiday in Palestine, * carrying out further researches. "As a result of 50 years' incessant labour," he relates, "I have accumulated relics by which it is possible to trace the history of civilisations from 5000 B.C. to A.D. 68, and yet in London, greatest of modern pities, there is no museum in which to display these relics. I have reason to hope that this incredible defect will soon be remedied. Until then this story, of the ages remains stored m a cellar at the University College, London." Digging at Tell Ajjul. At Gerar, where Abraham and Isaac lived more than 2000 years before Christ, Sir Flinders Petrie hopes to find something that Avill throw further light on the lives of the patriarchs. He remarks that while much of interest has been unearthed, nothing has been revealed which can definitely be associated with Abraham. "To-day," he adds, ''the mound where ancient Gerar stood is known as Tell Jemmeh. Nearer the coast is another very important mound, Tell Ajjul, where the latest remains to be discovered were of the Hyksos —the Shepherd Kings who ruled in Egypt and Palestine before the Pharaohs and after the Neolithic period. "Several of my party, which numbers fourteen in all and includes Lady Petrie, will dig at Tell Ajjul. By continuing down through the Bronze Age I hope it will be possible to complete the connection already established with the Neolithic Age. If this is accomplished it will be something to mark the jubilee of my Egyptian researches, which I began at the pyramids of Gizeh in November, 1880. "At that time there was nothing known in Egypt itself older than the Great Pyramid. There was no link with the West before the Greek traditions, and we knew no objects of the most usual material civilisation. Our understanding of Palestine and Babylonia was in even worst plight. Gap of iooo Years. "In the 50 years since then the mist of our ignorance has been rolled back, stage by stage. Contact of Egypt with the West has been traced through all the ages of prehistoric Greece. In Egypt itself the whole course of recorded history is before us and the beautiful things of the early monarchies are much better known than those of the Saxons in England. Four successive civilisations, whose records were unwritten, are now known in detail, and a fifth has come to view. The same widening of our vision lias extended into Palestine, whose history we can now link with three prehistoric ages of Egypt. "There is but one gap which remains to be filled. It is the period between the Neolithic Age and the arrival of tli? earliest Shepherd King in Palestine. 1 have both Neolithic and Hyksos relics, but there is, roughly, a thousand years to be accounted for. I hope to unearth the necessary clues this season in Palestine. If I succeed, we shall have a continuous history of the ages and civilisations in this part of the world from 4000 years before Christ down to the present dav."