BURIED CITY OF AFRICA.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3294, 12 August 1911, Page 10

BURIED CITY OF AFRICA.

WONDERFUL FINDS AT MEROE.

An exhibition of antiquities, recently discovered at Meroe by Professor J. Garstang, of Liverpool, in the course of his systematic exploration of tire ancient Ethopian capital, has been opened in London, says a correspondent’of the “Standard.” The fame of Meroe in ancient legend was clearly not without a substantial basis. The ruins of the city, indeed, were noticed as long since as 1772 by the noted traveller, James Bruce, but it was not till three yearsago that Professor Sayce, in the course of an official inspection on behalf of the Soudan Government, recognised that, unquestionably, they were the remains of Meroe, and invited Professor Garstad, then at work in Egvpt, to undertake the excavation. The doors the city opened, as it were, one by one before his ordered and methodical attack. Great temples, royal palaces, and public buildings emerged gradually from the sands; the city walls, and gates, and quays stood once more in their places; colossal statues, altars and public monuments disclosed their whereabouts; the tombs yielded up their secrets; and numbers of small artistic remains were in the busy sieves. The sterling value of the golden hoard is almost the oost of the last expedition, whilt the Roman head (referred to below), if it were on the market, would readily reach .a' price three or four times the total outlay on this work. The first experiments were made in the tombs and isolated knolls, as being the most accessible sources of information ais to the character of ordinary Meroitic objects. The tombs, being of unknown type and securely cemented down, for some time baffled the excavators, but at last the secret was won, and the workers succeeded in bringing to light some thousands of vases—found, in some instances, as many as thirty or forty in a single tomb chamber. They were all of a style new and peculiar, without the least trace of Egyptian influence. In the tombs furthest to the north vases of a special and rare kind were recovered, made in colors (the subjects being animals, trees or natural features), or with designs stamped upon the clay. In addition to pottery vessels there were in these tombs a variety of objects, nolt merely funeran- in character. ETHIOPIAN BURIALS. In obedience to primitive instinct, the dead was laid to sleep on his bed in his ’subterranean chamber, surrounded by the things which would be to him the most useful upon his awakening. The soldier had his weapons (sword, lance, dagger, etc., all of iron), the huntsman his bow and arrows; even the dogs were sometimes sacrificed with him. The women had equally their beads and their jewels. In a few cases, the frame of a decayed wooden bed might be traced; and in every tomb the vases and dishes seem to have contained drinks and food. It is even possible that originally one of the doors was left so that it might be opened for the regular renewal of the offerings. At the time that this experiment was in progress the excavator began the task of uncovering the great temple of Anion. He found the entrance to be a pylon in the Egyptian style, and, following the direct path, he came eventually to the great wall of the city (one of the few visible pieces of masonry in the site(, which thus proved, indeed, to be the end of the temple at its western extremity, giving it a length of more than 130 yards. The central aisle leads through a series of columned halls to the sanctuary, in the middle of which there is still to be seen the high altar carved in a single block ot stone, dcorated in relief with the figures of gods and of the king in his character of chief priest. At the foot of the altar were found the last votive offerings where they had been laid just previous to the destruction of the city. Two small temples in the neighborhood gave further information. The one was dedicated to the Egyptian goddess. In this ruin two buildings were superposed, and in tlie foundations of the latter one (which was built for the most part out of the mins of the earlier statues of columnar form, representing the King and Queen of Ethiopia. The upper building did duty at a later time as a Christian church the only indication of our religion in the locality.

TEMPLE OF AMON. With 500 workers the excavators laid bare in a month, all the splendid (temple of Amon, with its five-ooiumned courts and numerous other chambers. They found an obelisk inscribed on four sides with Meroitic writing; a throne with three steps decorated with a design' of captives; also in the pavement of the groat avenue of the temple a special place for the sacrifice of animals. As for objects of art, there was found during the first year a glass cameo representing the King in the character of Amon, and this year a small exquisite cameo, carved in stone, with a design of galloping horses—one white and the other black—pure Greek in style. They also finished excavating the temple of the Sun, of which the whole buildings and the court are now clear of debris. On the south side was found the funerary chamber of which we have already spoken, where there still remain vases full ox bones and charcoal, tangible evidence of the human sacrifices mentioned by Heliodorus. On the walls there may be noticed also sulptures, now much clearer, wherein one secs The victims dragged up. the slope to the temple by a rope attached to the leg, and- goaded on by the Lances of the soldiers. Of great interest is a representation of the temple carvea -.m its own walls, ‘because with the measures and details of the architecture ascertained it would be now possible to reconstruct the whole. Several other smaller buildings Pave been included in the season’s explorations —tempels, houses, baths, chambers for workers in metal, the furnaces for pottery and bricks, and all the evidences of the active life of a great city of the East. But let us pass on to the citadel and the royal palaces. Follo-.v-ing under the surface the great wait, which all the time was the centre of these investigations, it was found tnai; it continued with the same width of five or six yards for a length of more than 300 yards. At last, instead of turning towards the east, and thus including the Temple of Amon, it turned at each corner to the west, and enclosed a space of 150 yards wide.. 'On the west side, without doubt, it touched the river in ancient times’ —a fact which corresponds with tradition —and here the excavators remarked specially-built terraces to resist the action of the water, as well as a place of disembarkation, and a quay communicationg with the interior. THE GREAT BRONZE HEAD. Inside there were two prominent mounds. That to the north covered a great columned hall with frescoes of the king and queen painted on the walls, and in good preservation. In the middle there had been at a second period, a massive pedestal, as if for an equestrian statue, with its foundations as

high as the original columns. In front of the entrance interred in a pocket of clean sand, there was found, on the third day of the excavations, a massive bronze head. It is a wonderful specimen of lloman art, in perfect condition, and clearly work of the ago of Augustus, at the end of the first century B.C. The eyes are of alabaster with the iris and pupil inlaid; while the eyelashes are in bronze. It is twice life-size. It is possible that this head represents Gerinaniucs, who is known from the Annals of Tacitus to have mode a voyage by the Kile to Aswan. Lastly, towards the end of the season, operations were begun in the palaces covered by the southern mounds. In a rubbish "well were found pieces of glaze-work, on which were the names of seven or eight royal personages of Ethiopia, the date probably towards the sixth or fifth century B.C. In another place a piece of a big scarab gave the name of the Queen Tiyi, who in the eighteenth dynasty of Egypt was concerned in a religious reformation and the establishment of the cult of the Sun. 'Finally, towards the end of the work, there were found two jars of pottery full of gold (22 carats) of sterling value nearly £2OOO. They were without doubt part of the traditional treasure of the Ethiopians ;they must have been stolen in ancient times from the treasury, which was found destroyed to the very last stone and the thieves had hidden them in the place where the excavators’ spades have now disclosed them. It would seen} that the traditions concerning Meroe were well founded.