A Corpse Eight Thousand Years Old.

Taranaki Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 11635, 16 March 1901, Page 5 (Supplement)

A Corpse Eight Thousand Years Old.

In the mummy room of the British Museum may now be seen what is probably the oldest corpse in the world. It comes from a prehistoric cemetery in Upper Egypt, 'on the west bank of the Nile, some miles below Assouan, and its appearance in^ England is due to the energy of Dr. Wallis Budge, the keeper of Egyptian antiquities at the Museum. On bis last visit to Egypt he heard that the cemetery in question had been uncovered, and hastening to the spot, was able to note the position and surroundings of the body before its reradyal ' These details are as nearly as possible reproduced in the exhibit. The body lies in a shallow oval pit scooped put of the sandstone rock, a task of great difficulty, when it is considered that only stone tools can have been employed, the pit being covered by sandstone slabs laid transversely across it. Round it (says the Pall Mall Gazette) are arranged some dozen pots of 1 burnt clay, which, we know from M. Amelineau'« discoveries at Abydos, were .used to contain the food supposed to be necessary for the d«ad in the next world.' Ready to his hand, too, are his weapdns, in the shape of four flints, shaped and polished, of which one at leaat seems to have been used as a spear head. The body itself is scarcely more than skin and bone, most of the flesh having apparently been removed through incisions made in the skin shortly after death. It has been also soaked in some preparation of bitumen, no doubt obtained from the naphtha springs found not far from the place of burial. There are still some tufts of reddish hair adhering to the skull, and even allowing for the change of colour likely to be produced by infiltration from a soil full of salts of sodium, there can be no doubt that the dead belonged to a fairhaired race. He must have been when alive about sft 9iu high, with the aristocratically small hands and feet, and of the dolichocephalic or Eng-headed type most common among the ruling European races. The forefinger of the right hand has lost two of its joints, but except for this there is no distinct trace of wounds. The attitude of the corpse is very curious. He lies on his left side with the knees drawn up upon the breast, and the body so twisted that the spi.ie is uppermost. The head is bent slightly forward, and the left hand is under it, while the right is held before the face. Much ingenuity has been Bpent in explaining this attitude; but it seems on the whole most likely that it was copied from that o£ a person sleeping under a rug or skin of small dimensions, and therefore anxious to get as much of his body covered as possible. In the present instance it has a peculiarly horrible appearance, and would at first sight suggest the idea that the body had been buried alive, and was struggling under the mass pressing upon him. Luckily the occurrence of this attitude iin all the prehistoric graves noted by M. de Morgan at El Amran and elsewhere negatives this supposition. As to the age of these relics, no very precise indication can be given. The dead was evidently no mere savage, but belonged to a community that had reached a relatively high level of culture, as is shown by the finish of the weapons and the forms of the pots found in the grave. These last are all copied from vegetable shapes, such as the gourd and the like, and are made not on a wheel but by hand, and then baked by being placed mouth downward in the ashes, as the black rims still to be seen round the edges sufficiently show. Hence they do not belong to the later neolithic period, when such pots were often decorated with figures of animals and other designs, and then placed within a large pot heated to a white heat. The care taken in the burial also shows that ' the community believed in a future stato, and possessed a religion which taught that the life of the dead in the next world would be influenced by the rites performed by his family in this. Yet this must have been long before the coming of the Egyptians of tho historic dynasties, who always buried their dead stretched out at full length and swathed in bandages, and were, mcreover, from the very earliest times, acquainted with the use of metals and the art of writing. The latest date that, can be assigned to this corpse is about 6000 B.C.