Bath-towels and Powdered Hair Known in Ancient Egypt

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 152, 24 December 1932, Page 6

Bath-towels and Powdered Hair Known in Ancient Egypt

Perfume made from aromatic woods was a toilet accessory of the welldressed woman 4000 years ago, it would seem from the annual report of the Metropolitan. Museum's Egyptian expedition for the season 1930-31, which was published recently.

Nor is th-e Turkish towe; a. modern invention, for the museum's expedition found in a tomb 4000 years old remnants of "towels extraordinarily like our bath towels of to-day," H. E. Winlock, director of the museum and curator of the institution's Egyptian department, saya in his report of the expedition's work.

The towels "appear to have been Biade about 52 centimetres (one cubit) long and 45 centimetres wide," Mr, Winlock writes, "but when they wore but along the edges the housewife cut off the frayed selvages and hemmed them. In some cases the whole surfaco was iraiformly covered with knots. The towel from the soldiers' tomb shows this same all-over pattern of knots, like our modern dotted Swiss, but the best of the three examples we now know of pias alternate zig-zag and straight lines of knots for its whole length.

"We got more than one peep into the dressing-rooms of-those days," Mr. Winlock reports. ."Tho dead usually took with them a mirror—we found parts of the handles, but the copper mirrors themselves had generally been stolen for the metal. Arid we often found boxes for Kttle alabaster perfume bottles or pots £or eye paint. "These new tombs, however, contained something' we had not noticed before. In ono tomb we found a piece of the knotty biranch of some hardwood tree about as long and as thick as a person's finger. Both ends had been rubbed off simooth—but for what purpose there was never a hint.

"Then we found three more such pieces'of wood'lying with a toilet box, a perfume vase, and a mirror handle, where some ancionit thief had thrown them out into a toiiib court. Finally, beside the entrance of another plundered tomb, we unearthed several bundles of false hiair and two little baskets ■containing more of theso bits of knotty branch, some berries, lichen, roots, a coil of grass, and some unground malachite for eye paint, wrapped in a bit of cloth.

"Twice wo had found those bits of wood with articles of the toilet, and the lichen and berries with them the second time suggested that the wood had been aromatic. It is obvious that the lady of the Eleventh Dynasty bought theso little sticks of sweetscented wood for perfumes, which she made by grinding off tho ends and collecting the powder' from them to sprinkle in her dothics or hair."

■ How an Egyptian style of hairdressiug has survived 4000 years is also related by Mr. Winlock. "Most of the Eleventh Dynasty tombs1 at Thebes contained dolls. Some of them undoubtedly represented dancing girls, and were put'in., the'-tomb in order that their spirits might while away. the time of the Theban grandees in the tedious hours of eternity. Others look more like children's toys and actually had seen hard use—although they, too, may have found a burial as representations of dancing girls rather than as children's playthings. "They are barbarous-looking things whittled out of thin paddles of wood, gaudily painted, and with great mops of hair made of strings of little beads of black mud ending in elongated blobs. Strange as they may look, howover, they are not one whit more uncouth than a modern doll bought this year at Amada in Nubia, which has each thin. plait of. hair tipped with a blob of clay. And these blobs of clay are. no childish fantasy, for the Welldressed woman of Der, the capital of Nubia, ends off every one of her coalblack tresses with just such a lump of yellow clay. The styles of Thebes 4000 years ago are still to bo met with in Nubia to-day." The season of 1930-31 completed 25 years of continuous work by the Metropolitan Museum's Egyptian expedition, during which important discoveries have been made, writes a foreign exchange. During parts of ten seasons the expedition has worked in tho great temple at Deir el Bahri, adding substantially to the known- history of the great structure. "There does not seem to be much likelihood that any appreciable area of the temple remains to be dug," Mr. Winlock Teports. _ During the past season the expedition spent much time piecing together fragments of statues that had been discovered in earlier digging. Important additions tx> the museum's Egyptian collection from this temple are two gigantic kneeling statues, which have been placed with other discoveries from the Kite in the newly-arranged fifth Egyptian room at the. museum.

As a result of excavations in the Christian necropolis in Khargeh Oasis and the discovery there of unopened tombs,' Walter Hauser, who was in charge of this part of the expedition's work, suggests, tentatively, '' that the date of the beginning of the necropolis must bo pushed back further than has hitherto been thought, possibly into the middle of the third century.". Anibros Lansing has been appointed director of the museum's Egyptian expedition to succeed Mr. Winlock, whoso duties as director of the museum, prevent his continuing in active cnarge of the Egyptian •excavations.