SOME EGYPTIAN CURIOS.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 5, 3 December 1932, Page 2

SOME EGYPTIAN CURIOS.

CURIOUS NEW FACTS ON EGYPT AND ITS STORY. (By F. W. Christian.) The Palmerston North Public Library has recently received a collection of 55 ancient Egyptian curios, dating from over 4000 B.C. to the later Coptic and Roman periods. They have arrived per s.s. Mongolia, despatched by Professor Brunton from Mende, near Cairo. They are of some intrinsic value, and considerable antiquarian interest, and come from a large mass of materials collected at Matmar in the ABsiut Province of the Land of the Pharaohs. The most remarkable of the consignment in the list subjoined are the ancient alabaster vases, some coins and beads, and several quaint scarabs or representations of sacred beetles, the underside of which is beautifully worked in Egyptian hieroglyphs, most skilfully carved in intaglio. The later Coptic shoes, beads and bangles have also a particular appeal of their own, as they are the handwork of the descendants of the early native Christians of the country, the purest representatives of the ancient Egyptians. They number some 700,000, and a’re shy, secretive and crafty, the natural consequence of centuries of oppression by foreign masters. Their literature, outside the Scriptures, written in a peculiar dialect, is made up mainly of apocryphal lives of the early Saints. The famous St. Anthony was a Copt. A very remarkable sidelight on the fondness of the early Copts for the hermit life is shown in Kingsley’s “Hypatia.” Some curious facts are connected with the names “Copt” and “Egyptian.”—The name appears in the Arabic “Kupt” or “Kubt,” and, likewise, in the ancient Greek “Ai-Guptos,” or “Aia-Koptos,” the “Land of the Copts,” as their country was known to early Western nations. The Hebrews called Egypt “Mizraim,” or “The Two Mizars,” i.e., Upper and Lower Egypt. In modern Arabic today, the country is knov r n as “Misr,” from Port Said, right down to Kano in the Haussa-land. The old Egyptians called their own country “Khem,” a name transplanted into Spain by the early Arab physicians, and applied to the science of drugs, the study of alchemy, and the healing art in general, in which the Egyptians were supposed to possess much mysterious knowledge. Hence our word chemistry, derived from the Middle Age Latin word “Chemia,” originating in the early medical schools of Spain and Italy. There is yet another very remarkable thing about Egypt and its people, well worth noting, in its peculiar application to that strange nomadic folk the Gypsies, who fell so frequently under displeasure of the law in Queen Elizabeth’s times. In the old warrants for their apprehension as vagabonds, they are set down as “Egyptians.” The habit of ascribing an Egyptian origin to a strange, dark-complexion-ed folk, reputed to be possessed of magical powers, was long persisted in by Holy Church and old English statute law. This view, although long supported by legal and ecclesiastical authority is, nevertheless, completely erroneous. The Gypsy tongue, tested by modern methods, clearly reveals its North-Western Indian origin, in its close resemblance to the common Hindustani. One can also clearly see an admixture of Persian and East-ern-European words which they picked up in their migrations on the way. Furthermore, they called themselves “Romany” because they dwelt for centuries in the two Danubian subprovinces of Moldavia and Wallachia, which form the old Roman province of “Roumania,” where their caravans halted apparently about the twelfth century on their leisurely and devious way westward. Thus has passed away a very curious and persistent, popular error. With regard to the (real) ancient Egyptians, their story has always retained an intense fascination for Western students in the haunting mysterv of the shadow of a vast antiquity, in the hoards of treasure-trove from time to time unearthed by scientific excavations, and in this marvellous skill, thus revealed, of this truly -wonderful people, so great in its architecture, its sculptures, its painting and its artists’ work. This consignment of Professor Brunton from Mende is a gift of abiding interest to the present and to succeeding generations of the people of our city. Even in these hard, utilitarian times, it speaks to old and to young, who have eyes to see and ears to bear its messages across the great gulf of ages dividing the Present from the Past with all its strange romance and mystery, its wonder and its ancient glories. EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES FROM BRUNTON EXPEDITION. MATMAR, ASSIUT PROVINCE, 1931. 400, Roman glass bottle; 400, Arab olive glaze lamp; 400, Arab coin; 400, Arab scrap of apple-green glaze vessel; 500, VII-VIII. limestone vase; 500, XII Alabaster vase; 500, Arab coin; 506 IX-X. beads; 531 VI. model tool, beads; 586 VI. copper spear-head; 1000, XIX. piece of limestone stela; 1000, XIX two clay sealings; 1105, XIX. beads; 1108, XIX-XXII. bfeads; 1300, IX-X. pottery offering table; 1300 VII-VII. alabaster vase; 1313, VII-VIII. pot beads, whetstone; 1317, VII-VIII. pot; 1704 XXIIXXV\ beads; 1710 XXII-XXV. Scarab; 1718, XXII-XXV. beads; 3001 IX-X. beads; 3007, Predyn blacktoDPed pot; 3011, IX-X. beads; 3015, IX-X. beads, scarab; 3054, VII-VIII. beads, two scarabs; 3058, VII-VIII. alabaster vase; 3122, Predyn. Part of fish-tail flint knife; 3200, V. bowl; 3200 Arab five coins; 3214, V. mirror; 3239’ Coptic shoes, beads, bangles; 3250', V. pot; 3314, VI. beads; 5000, XVI-XVII. amethyst and two green glaze scarabs; 6200, Roman lamp; 5200, Roman coins; 5302, V. beads; 5337, VIII. bond; nn. Roman bronze toggle-pin.