EXCAVATING IN SUDAN.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 1 November 1924, Page 12

EXCAVATING IN SUDAN.

FORTRESS BUILT IN 2000 B.C. News has been received from Cairo that Mr A. Rowe, formerly honorary custodian of the archaeological collection of the South Australian Musetnri, and now chief assistant of the Harvard University and Boston Fine Arts Museum joint expedition in the' Near East, has just returned to Egypt' after excavating in the Sudan. The expedition has been working on two enormous ancient Egyptian frontier fortresses of Samna and Kummeh, erected in the time, of the 12th Dynasty, about 2000. B.C. These places, which lie one on either side of the entrance to the Second Cataract, are about 40 miles camel journey froih Wady Haifa, and about 850 miles south, of Cairo. They are'right in the midst o-f that terrible rocky desert known, to th© Arabs as or “Belly of Stone.” During the last two months of the season Mr Rowe was in complete charge of the work on both forts. Inside the huge walls of Kummeh is a temple erected by Thothmoa 11., of the 18th Dynasty, while inside those of Semna, the larger' of the two\citadels, are two temples, one set up by mes 111. in honour of Senwesret 111.* the builder of the forts, and the other by Tarhaqa—the “Tirhakah King of Ethiopa”. mentioned in 11. Kings, xix., 9, as the ally of Hezekiah, King of Judah, in the f war against Sennacherib of Assyria. It is interesting to note that in the Nicholson Museum of the University of Sydney there is a statue of a wife or daughter of this very Tarhaqa. Since leaving Australia, where among other things he compiled archaeological catalogues for the* South Australian and Victorian Museums, and worked on the famous Shellal Mosaic, and for the Australian War Museum, Mr Rowe has been constantly engaged in excavation work in Palestine, Egypt and the Sudan. While with the Philadelphia University expedition he worked two seasons in Northern Palestine at the site of the Biblical Beth-Shean, and was present at the discovery there of most important ancient Egyptian monuments, and the famous sarcophagus of Antiochus, the first cousin of Herod the Great. At Girga (Egypt), which represents parts of the site of This, the capital of the -first Dynasty about B.C. 3600, he was in charge for some time. It is expected that after the ensuing excavations at the cemetery near the ereat pyramid of Cheaps at Gizeh, Mr Rowe will return early next year to the Sudan to continue excavations on the Egyptian fortresses.