For the first time the whole history of one of the great national sites of Egypt has been opened before us; dating from the beginning of the kingdom and ending with almost the last of its native kings—from Mena, about 4700 B. C. to Nekht-hor-heb. 370 B. C. History is here laid out before us in strata, from which the past can be read as we lift them away one from another.
In order to read, however, one must know the alphabet of the subject, and that has lately been learnt, from the pottery, the flints, the beads, which show, each, the age to which they belong. Excavation on a site with a long history is mere destruction if each stratum is not read and interpreted intelligibly as it is opened; unfortunately, this has never been done before on any such site. On the earliest sacred site of Abydos, the first capital of Egypt, temples had been piled one on the ruins of another until ten ages of building stood tacked together in about twenty feet depth of ruins. Each temple had become partly ruined after a few centuries, and then at last was pulled down, leaving a foot or two the walls and foundations, and a new temple of a different plan was then erected on the ground. America is not old enough for this to be done even once, but London stands on a mound of over twenty feet of ruins, from which its past will some day be read as we now read that of Egypt.—Professor Flinders Petrie, in Harper’s Magazine.
Passaic City Record, Passaic City, NJ, December 12, 1903