CRIME OF 3500 YEARS AGO.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9304, 3 August 1908, Page 2

CRIME OF 3500 YEARS AGO.

+ HOW A DEAD KING'S TOMB WAS ROBBED. Mr Theodore Davis, one of the best known American Egyptologists, has reached London, and in an interview | with an "Express" correspondent, described, the result of his excavations in Egypt during tho past winter. .ft will be remembered that just before Jio left Egypt Mr Davis announced his discovery on. March 6 of the tomb of Hor-eni-heb, the last king of the eighteenth dynasty. The tomb was reached by cutting through three .hundred feot of solid rock, work in which a ; hundred diggers took part. ! I7icidontafiy Mr Davis, by close.observation, proved himself a greater detective than even Sherlock Holmes, j for ho discovered indisputable evidence i of a robbery from the tomb some 3500 years ago. ' ' My diggers reached the tomb of Hor-em-heb just before, my departure, i and just us I was about to give tip | operations for the summer season," said Mr Davis. "We had for some time been engaged in cutting through esolidi rock into tho side of the mountain when we struck the tomb corridor, eight feet I wide, seven feet high, and fifty-eight feet long. " Tho first tiling that struck my eyes on entering^ the tomb was the magnificent sarcophagus — in fact, one of the most magnificent 1 have ever seen — of carved red. granite, and splendidly decorated with figures on the hewn- sides representing the festival of thft god Osiris. By the side of the sarcophagus were the bones of Hor-em-heb, and. not far away the bones of three persons which experts declare to be women. All the bodies ha-d been mummified, but tlvero were many evidences that they had been hastily unbandaged by robbers, who. as near as I can calculate, entored the tomb some fifty years after Hor-em-heb's funeral, and took every precious jewel and all the g^old and other treasures that were buried with Egyptian, kings. The robbers were in such a hurry that they did not even take time to put the dead king's body back in the sarcophagus. Not far from the latter we found several exquisitely beautiful canopic jar heads, wnich, as you know, are portraits of human heads. These particular heads must represent the Egyptian officials of some 3600 or 4000 years ago, as the symbol of office — a long goatee — is reproduced on each. About the walls of the tomb were beautiful paintings in colours representing various gods. Experts are now photographing and carefully examining the bodies found in the tomb, after wnich they will be reburied. -All the other articles found, including: the canopic heads, will be placed in the Davis room of the musuem at Cairo." 4.n irritated throat is quickly soothed, by Zymole Trokeys. They increase the throat secretions and strengthen the vocal chords. Nothing better for > public speakers. 20