SURPRISES OF ANCIENT EGYPT.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3345, 11 October 1911, Page 8

SURPRISES OF ANCIENT EGYPT.

PROFESSOR PETRIE’S EXPLORATIONS. Two thousand years of science and the competitive emillation of modern color manufacturers has apparently not sufficed to place modern artists in possession of pigments as enduring as these used by undertakers’ craftsmen in Egypt at the time of the Roman occupation. In Professor Petrie’s exhibition of antiquities at the University College (Gower-street) there were shown a number of portraits, painted on canvas, and originally forming part of the adornment of mummy cases made between A.D. 100-250, in many of which the colors were as fresh as the clay on which they were painted'. The irony of the matter is that they were not produced with the idea- of being permanent. These cases served in lieu of coffins and were used to contain the embalmed) relics of the dead. They were not buried at once,- as in our modern fashion, but retained by the relatives of the deceased in their houses, where they were suffered to remain until the memory of their dead) occupants had ceased to, interest tlie living. Then they were buried in the orthodox way. Hie painters who produced ~ these posthumous portrait® thus knew that their work would only he required' to endure a comparatively short time—perhaps only a few months, or perhaps a score or more of years. It is a curious feature of Professor Petrie’s researches at Hawara, Gerzeh, Mazghuneh, and Memphis, that the majority of articles he has brought to light are tilings of all ephemeral character'—the everyday odds and ends of civilisation buried for long centuries. They serve to bring th© past more vividly beforo us than do the great monuments. and historical records. Among the relics shown were a collection of toys' —a doll, a model couch, and miniature pieces of pottery .belonging to an Egyptian girl of the twelfth dynasty which would have delighted an English child of the present day ; then there were picnic baskets forgotten by some careless excursionists, who were, perhaps, haying an outing at the time that Boadieea was rallying the British in rebellion against Rome. The neck of a bottle containing a cork was another object which aroused much interest; but what perhaps awakened the most sympathetic thrill of all were some caricatures which a naughty schoolboy had scrawlel on th© canvas cover of_a mummy. A multitude of other relics were included m the exhibition, many of a far greater archaeological interest than those enumerated. Professor Petrie is doing a great work in his explorations; the .pity of it is that his . own countrymen do not aid him more liberally, and that, consequently, a large proportion of the treasures he has discovered will have to go abroad in return for the assistance which has been afforded Mm by more appreciative foreigners.— The Connoisseur. >: •