HOW THEY LIVED

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 11, 14 January 1933, Page 12

HOW THEY LIVED

OLD EGYPT'S FARMERS

More will be known now about the home life of the Ancient "Smiths" and "Joneses" and what they were doing and thinking while tho pyramids were being built. After all these years in which the archaeological spotlight has • been monopolised by tho mummified kings and Poobahs of the great civilisations along the Nile, the humble residents of Egypt get their, deserts as a result of the research of George A. Beisner, German scientist, says the "New York Times." Beisner's work, compiled for tho University of California, constitutes an additional report on the'Hearst Egyptian Expedition.' It is dedicated to°the memory of Mrs. Phoebe Apperson -Hearst, mother of the publisher. From the bones and burial relics of the little agricultural village of Naga-ed-Der Eeisner has resurrected much of the story of tho Egyptian farmer. He and his kind were mostly too poor to afford the cost of being mummified. They lived in the periods of Memphis's most brilliant history, when that city was the "product of the greatest of the ancient 'civilisations of the world." Main street of long ago had its moments and life was not entirely drab, nor were all its residents. Take Meryt-Yetes, for instance. She was one of the king's favourites. Then there was Hather-em-Hat and a woman named Seshenet; .also a king's clanswoman named Mererit. They must have been comely, although perhaps a trifle vain, for small copper mirrors, whose handles once were wood, were found buried with them. There were small toilet boxes, with faded red painted plaster inside and out. Bronze bracelets frequently adorned each wrist. Then there were pearl shell bracelets, earrings, glass beads, shells of gold, a blue-glazed frog, and a baby's bracelet made of ivory. But as a whole Eeisner conceives his villager as a typical rustic, "travelling once a week to the local market." ■ "He paid his ferry fares with loaves of bread,',' he said, "and haggled the .day through with' some merchant exchanging grain or other produce in small quantities for cloth, pots and pans, leather sandals or baskets. . "The men heard tales, no doubt, told by the casual passer-by, and perhaps some had been carried off to Memphis to work on the heavy jobs of pulling and hauling."But the products of the great arts and craffe were not for the people of our - village. They found the crude brick of:their ancestors sufficient for their needs and held to the old materialism that placed in the burial chamber the objects used in life together with actual food and drink " .