THE OLDEST MAM IN THE WORLD.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 12902, 13 February 1906, Page 7

THE OLDEST MAM IN THE WORLD.

The: oldest known body of any human being reposes in the Egyptian gallery of the British Museum. . All .that is known concerning it- is taken from the inscription which -was found-, on -the case containing the mummy. This says :—"Body of a muni who was buried in a shallow grave hollowed out of the sandstone on the west| ; bank of the Nile in Upper Egypt. Before buiial the body -was 1 treated with a preparation of bitumen and was arranged in the posture in which it now lies, on its left .side, with the lands before the face aria ithe knees drawn up nearly on a- level with the chin. The grave, which-has been roughly imitated, by the model here exhibited, was covered with the slabs of unworked stone, and' in it, beside the body, were disposed flint knives and a number of -vases, partly filled with the remains of funeral offerings. The man probably belonged to a fair-skinned, light-haired race, which nay be regarded as one of the aboriginal stocks of Egypt, whose settlements were .usually.; found -on-the west bank of the Nile. The style of the flint instruments found in the grave indicates that the in the later neolithic period of Egypt; that is, in remote ages,' long before the rule of Menes, the first historical king of Egypt." A wandering Arab was the first one to see this grave, and he reported his .find to a British official, who immediately sent a couple of soldiers to sguard it day and night. The body is not a mummy of the ordinary historic Egyptian period such as Barneses, the father of the-Pharoah of the Exodus. It was never bound up in linen or cased in a painted coffin, but was merely coated with a preparation of bitumen, called by the Arabic word mumia ; hence our word, mummy.

This - man must have hunted along the | banks of the Nile before the time of the earliest mummied king which the museums possess—before the time of Menes, who was supposed to have ruled Egypt about 5004 B.C. There were previous to that time two prehistoric races, one the conquerors and the other the conquered, from which sprang the Egyptian race of the earliest "dynasties. It is with these remote stocks that this man has to do. . Considering the condition in which he was found, it is evident that he was associated with a late period of the new stonE age of Egypt. He was buried ih a characteristically neolithic grave, and has neolithic pots and instruments of flint about him. They "are' like all other neolithic pots and chipped flint weapons and knives found in other parts of the world. The fine, thin flint knives were placed in the grave as a part of the funeral ritual. They should be. compared with Egyptian flints of a known historic age, and they will be found almost identical with them. There is, of course, no inscription of any kind on the .pots, knives or graves, all having been made long before the invention of any written language. Certain Egyptian documents of great antiquity mention a race called the Trennennu, who had red hair and blue eyes. This man has hair of a distinctly auburn shade. v