BURIED HERMOPOLIS

Greymouth Evening Star, 7 May 1931, Page 3

BURIED HERMOPOLIS

MiYSTER-lOUS TAMARISK PLAIN.

• Excavations have often been carried out i® Egypt on the sites of towns ,wfa!ieh, like Tell el-Amarha, Were only inhabited for a short period. The excavators at Hermopolis, in Lower Egypt (anciently Khmunu, and now El Ashm»Hie») sought, however, to ■throw light on the ruins of a town wh?ieh was inhabited for ffiariy thousands of years, ruins covering a large tract and having many strata. It is impossible, t-o clear completely an area two kilometres in length and 1.5 kilometres in width without many years, of very hard work.- For this reason, thd method of excavation chosen was thdt nsed v for prehistoric dwellings in Europe? that is to say, trenches were dug through the ruins of the town, do-frn to the water level, and the growth of the town was ascertained by analysing the strata. The excavatioii& were conducted by Professor Dr Roedqr, assisted by the prehistorian, Dr Bersu, and an architect, Dr Noldeke;

The excavators were especially interested in a small plain which lay somewhat lower than the surrounding town and was overgrown with tamarisks. This contained the Temple of Seti 11., but to what deities this was dedicated is not known. The plain did not actually belong to the Egyptian town, but . occasionally houses were built upon it, or an oven for the baking of pottery, or it was used for a burial-place for the dead. In the 19th Dynasty, however (thirteenth century B.C.)'-, a temple was built on this grotfod, which until then had been Without a place of worship. This temple was dug up accidentally, in 1904, by some fellahin. The' excavators have now succeeded in freeing those parts of the temple which were beneath the shrfaee. and are the only ones that have Survived the' destruction done to the buildifig during the New Kingdom. Later on it will, no doubt, be possible to name the deities to which it was dedicated. Like all Egyptian temples, it possessed treasures bl gold arid- silver. These,, unfortunately, have been stolen —probably in Christian times, when the temple was destroyed and houses were built’ on its rtfins. The sricred precincts were surrounded by a brick wall sofrie 1 15 metres thick. The date of tins temple arid the adjoining strata can how lie determined by the fact that a bakirig-oven of the New Kingdom had to be disturbed to build tire foundations.

In the sacred precincts took place those scenes of the festivals in which the stoty of Creation represented according to the theology of Khmuriu (Hermopolis), which held that the origin of the world was that the first livirig creatures appeared on a hillock in the primordial Ocean. The Gerfrian expedition also worked in the south of the town, and the unearthed twjo gigantic statties of Raineses 11, which stood in front of a terhple. This structure also had suffered complete destruction, the history of its- razing could be ascertained. The careful freeing. of the ground surrounding the statues resulted in the discovery of a Coptic House, which was built, round the statues, so that they became part of its walls.