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

DURING l'jni CENTURY: EGYPT Gil
of this earliest period of Egyptian history as mythical personages,
or at least have come to the opinion that the lists
of the kings were nothing but artificial
compilations.
Little by little we are gaining more light upon this dark
period. The honor of having opened up this field of research
belongs again to the untiring Flinders Petrie. In
the beginning of the year 1895, with the assistance of his
pupil Ouibell, he discovered many cemeteries on the western
bank of the Nile, between the districts of Naqada and
Ballas, the contents of which differed considerably from
those of other graves in Egypt, and which he therefore regarded
not as Egyptian, but as belonging probably to a
Libyan race. While the bodies in the Egyptian tombs —
with only few exceptions — are generally found lying on
their backs or on their sides at full
length, these bodies were
found doubled up, the knees drawn up, the hands before the
face, and lying on the left side.
In some graves, which had
not been ransacked, some members of the body were found
broken from the trunk, or else the whole body mutilated.
The funereal objects were also peculiar. Among the
many pots placed with the dead, most conspicuous are
some red painted polished vases with a black rim, light
brown pots with wavy handles, pots with red-brown paintings
(boats, goats, ostriches, spirals, and undulating lines)
on a light brown ground ; black bowls with ornamentation
scratched on them and filled in with white. Besides these
better specimens there were found also some quite rough,
which, like
the majority of the others, had been made not
on the wheel, but by free hand.
Especially numerous are stone vessels of various materials
(such as breccia, alabaster, and diorite), wrought with
wonderful skill, and polished. The same perfection in the
artistic shaping of stone shows itself also in the flint weapons
which have been discovered in these graves, and which
surpass everything that is known up to the present in works