In his article on the “Ten Temples of Abydos” in Harper’s Magazine. Professor Flinders Petrie tells of his discovery of a statuette of ivory more than 6500 years old, and how he managed to preserve it.
“Groping in the thick brown organic mud of this rubbish hole,” says Professor Petrie, “I lifted out one by one the priceless examples of glazed work and ivory of this earliest age of great art— an art of which we had never understood the excellence from the traces hitherto known. The ivory was sadly rotted, and could scarcely be lifted without dropping asunder in flakes. So when I found that I had touched a piece it was left alone, and other parts were cleared, until at last a patch of ground was left where several pieces of ivory had been observed. Cutting deep around this I detached the whole block of sixty or eighty pounds of earth, and had it removed on a tray to my storeroom. There it dried gradually for two or three weeks, and then with a camel’s hair paint brush I began to gently dissect it and to trace the ivory figures. Not a single piece was broken or spoilt by thus working it out, and noble figures of lions, a bear, a large ape and several boys came gradually to light. Suddenly a patterned robe and then a marvellous face appeared in the dust, and there came forth from his 6000-year sleep one of the finest portrait figures that have ever been seen. A single photograph can give but little idea of the subtlety of the face and the expression, which changes with every fresh light in which it is seen. Wearing the crown of Upper Egypt, and clad in his thick embroidered robe, this old king, wily yet feeble with the weight of years, stands for the diplomacy and statecraft of the oldest civilized kingdom that we know. No later artist of Egypt, no Roman portrait maker, no Renaissance Italian has outdone the truth and expression of this oldest royal portrait, coming from the first dynasty of Egypt.”
Passaic City Record, Passaic City, NJ, December 12, 1903