GOVERNOR’S MORNING BATH

Taranaki Daily News, 16 October 1930, Page 9

GOVERNOR’S MORNING BATH

THREE THOUSAND YEARS AGO.

How an Egyptian, Governor in 1300 B.C. took his morning bath, and how his wine-cellar was destroyed by fire, were among the many interesting revelations at the exhibition of the British School of Egyptian .Archaeology, held in University College, Gower .Street. London. ' The exhibition coincided with the half-century celebration of Sir Flinders Petrie’s researches. > . , It contained a wealth of antiquities of the Hyksos and Philistine ages, Neolithic remains and relics from the city sites of Beth-Pelet, on the Egypt-IPales-tine frontier. Many of the exhibits were the result of the excavation of the Residency of the Egyptian Governor, carried out last seSaon. . Plans and drawings on- view showed that the Governor’s bedroom had a raised recess for the bed, with bath-, room adjoining. To bathe the Gover-. nor appears to have stood on a porous flooring, while a servant ' drenched him with water from an elevated tank. Great destruction was wrought to the city by a fire started by raiding Midianites, and the Governor’s wine-cellar was wrecked, the cedar roof, beams collapsing on to the pottery wine jars. The excavators found the floor strewn with potsherds which had contained Syrian wine. The clay cappings of the jars bore seals, and were engraved with the figure of a Syrian deity standing "on the back of a lion. a Many of the exhibits were found in tombs dug in the’ slope of a great trench of the Hyksos period, their entrances concealed under 25 feet of sand drift. Half a dozen large tombs were unusually intact and yielded gold ornaments. There were about fifty smaller graves. The discoveries made here show that the Egyptian colony Were making and using bead necklaces, amulets and daggers, while the Philistine population of the same date were bringing in Cretan decoration for their own use. Besides the objects of personal decoration made by the Egyptian resi-. dents, there were on exhibition scarabs, bronze daggers and pottery of these people, as well as of the Shepherd Kings of 2200 B.C. One fragment of pottery, resembling a small dumbbell, was a child’s rattle —heavy arid clumsy by comparison with the rattles of to-day, but just as capable, no doubt, of turning to laughter the cry of some little Egyptian or Philistine