Explorations in Bible lands during the 19th century - H. V. Hilprecht

6G
EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
Vienna and Berlin. This sensational find was followed by
a second, which was also made in the nome of Crocodilopolis.
I mean those wonderful and masterly Hellenistic portraits,
which were placed on the faces of the mummies, and
Portrait painted in
( From the Fayum )
Wax
which passed into the
possession of the Viennese
carpet dealer Th.
Graf. 1
These discoveries at
once attracted the attention
of scholars to the
Fayum, which up to
that time had been somewhat
neglected. This
was probably the reason
whv Petrie began
working on its
different
sites.
Two important questions
have long been
asked in connection
with the Fayum :
first,
as to the site of Lake
Mceris, and second, as
to the site of the Labyrinth.
Herodotus says
that an ancient Egyptian king named Moeris ordered a
large lake to be dug out in the neighborhood of Crocodilopolis,
the circumference of which was 3600 stadia, and
which was 300 feet deep in its deepest part. In the middle
of this lake stood two pyramids, the total height of which
1
Who sold many of them to museums and art amateurs in Europe and
America. Two of them are in the Egyptian Section of the Archaeological
Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. The portrait here given is one
of the latter. — The Editor.