Posted inArchaeology Travelers' Tales

“Antiques” Made to Order

Header for the article, featuring forged examples of a canopic jar, scarab, and figurings of a cat, dove, and fisherman in a boat.

The fabrication of forged antiquities has become one of the most profitable industries of modern Egypt. Every year more and more wealthy American and European tourists go to the sunny and salubrious land of the Pharaohs. Practically every one of these tourists wishes to take away some relic of the ancient Pharaohs as a souvenir. To supply this demand the modern Egyptians are working night and day making very attractive articles in the ancient style. The Egyptian law now requires that every person finding antiquities shall report the fact to the government, which reserves the right to purchase them. This law really favors the antiquity forgers, for they represent to their customers that they are offering them contraband goods, which offer usually has the effect of whetting the appetite to buy.

Posted inArchaeology Mysteries & Unexplained

Carter Undaunted by Pharaoh Ghost

Howard Carter, standing holding a book.

LONDON, October 3.—Howard Carter, the American Egyptologist, left for Luxor and the Valley of the Kings today to resume his excavations at the tomb of Tutankhamen. The scientist said he had not the slightest belief that any occult influence was responsible for the death of Earl Carnarvon, who succumbed to fever after discovering the tomb, and that he had no fears for himself in that direction.

“It is rather too much to ask me to believe that some spook is keeping watch and ward over the dead Pharaoh, ready to wreak vengeance on any one who goes too near,” Carter said.

Posted inArchaeology Mysteries & Unexplained

Expert Laughs at Pharaoh’s Curse

Cairo — Belief in “curses’’ attached to certain antiquities is ridiculed by Mr, R. Engelbach, keeper of the Cairo museum and one of the world’s greatest authorities on ancient Egypt.

Latest of the ‘‘accursed” remains to be returned to Egypt is a piece of bone, claimed to be part of Pharaoh’s skeleton which has been blamed for a series of accidents which have befallen Sir Alexander and Lady Seton, of Edinburgh.

Posted inArchaeology Travelers' Tales

Egypt’s Tombs and Temples

Thousands of Tourists Make the Egyptian Trip Since Howard Carter Discovered the Tomb of King Tut Ankh-Amon. Scene of the Carnarvon Expedition. Riches of the Tombs.

BY GIDEON A. LYON

Photographs by the Author.

It would be interesting,” said a fellow traveler to me at our hotel in Cairo on the evening of our arrival at the Egyptian capital, “to know how many thousands of tourists have been drawn to Egypt since 1922 as a result of the discovery of the tomb of King Tut Ankh-Amon by Howard Carter. It would be even more interesting to know how great a treasure has been brought to this country through tourist expenditures here in consequence of the finding of that tomb and its rich contents.”

Howard Carter, discoverer of the tomb of King Tut-Ankh-Amon, descending the steps of the tomb to carry on his work.

That thought recurred to me a few mornings later when I stood in front of the tomb of Tut Ankh-Amon and saw Howard Carter descend the steps leading down to the entrance. The tomb was closed to visitors, for Mr. Carter was engaged in superintending the removal of the remaining treasures. So all I got of King Tut’s last resting place was this glimpse of the back of the man who restored him to fame. Yet it was with a lively sense of the service Mr. Carter has rendered to Egypt that I saw him go down into the depths to carry on the work begun by him eight years ago.

Unquestionably many thousands of people have been attracted to Egypt by the discovery of this tomb. And practically all of them make the journey up to Luxor and across the Nile to the west bank and through the rocky defiles of the Valley of the Tombs of the Kings to the scene of the work of the Carnarvon expedition. They have, with few exceptions, seen nothing of the tomb itself. But they have had the satisfaction of glimpsing the forbidding area chosen by the monarchs of many centuries ago for the reposal of their mummies and the riches of their burial equipment.

Posted inBiographical

A Glimpse of Ancient Egypt with Two Egyptians

Flinders Petrie and Hilda Petrie in 1903

London, July 7.

History is made hand over hand so rapidly in this year of grace and destruction that human energies are overtaxed in keeping up with it. The transition from one century to another has offered ironical contrasts between Christendom organized at The Hague in a diplomatic campaign for the reduction of armaments and for minimizing the evils of war, and Christendom harassed and perplexed by the battle between white races for supremacy in South Africa and by the conflict between civilisation and barbarism in the Far East. There is enough in the rapid march of events during these distracted and momentous crises in current history to sober and appal reflective minds; and one puts aside his newspaper every morning with the conviction that the world has grown too serious, and that too much has happened over night. History has not always gone with so precipitate a rush. Explorers from the great Libyan desert have found cumulative evidence of the slowness and deliberation with which the earliest stages of human progress have been approached and passed. Burrowing deep in the sands, they have sampled the crude arts and deciphered the records of bygone centuries buried in oblivion. So true Is it that, although the changes and evolution of decades or generations may now be compressed within the compass of a single week or month, a thousand years are but as yesterday, or a watch in the night.

It is with a feeling of relief over evidence that the world has not always been in so driving a hurry as it is now that a visitor loiters in the classrooms of University College, where Professor Flinders-Petrie has collected the antiquities excavated at Abydos during his recent season of work. One table is devoted to relics of the early kings in the first Egyptian dynasty, and three tables and a window seat are covered with prehistoric objects antedating 5000 B. C. Seven of the eight kings of the first dynasty are represented in the collection, and two of their predecessors of even earlier antiquity, whose names are not yet known. There are fragments of the royal drinking bowls, bits of slate and alabaster once used on kings’ tables; a piece of a crystal vase once handled by Mena, the founder of the Memphite monarchy; worked flints, stone vases, carnelian beads and arrow heads tipped with red: and examples of the carving and metal working of seven remote reigns. To these fragments from the first dynasty are added stout jars, clay sealings and other pottery from the prehistoric period which preceded the line of the mysterious Mena.

Posted inTravelers' Tales

Sunset at Egyptian Resort Brings Greater Activity

THE TERRACE OF THE WINTER PALACE HOTEL AT TEA TIME IS THE SMARTEST RENDEZVOUS IN EGYPT

Comical illustration of westerners having tea at the Winter Palace Hotel.

By Karl K. Kitchen

You can tell how long any one has been in Luxor by the spot where he takes tea on the terrace of the Winter Palace Hotel. A new arrival invariably hugs the edge to get an unobstructed view of the Nile. The visitor who has been there several days is content to sit farther back, while the winter resident prefers to take his tea in the garden on the other side of the hotel, or if he happens to be an American, to replace tannic acid with cocktails at the bar.

The tea hour is “the” hour in Luxor. It is then, that the hotels—of which the Winter Palace is the most important—are at their liveliest. All the tourists are back from their excursions to the Valley of the Tombs the Kings, Medinet Abu, Karnak and the other glories of the past, and tea is not only an appropriate social function but a welcome stimulant after a tiring day in the broiling sun.

The Winter Palace is the rendezvous for all the foreign colony of Luxor at this hour. On its spacious terrace, which flanks the Nile for the entire length of the hotel, or in its beautiful gardens are to be found the most famous travelers, the greatest Egyptologists and archeologists and world celebrities who have come to Luxor to pay homage to King Tut.

Posted inArchaeology Travelers' Tales

Temples and Tombs of the Egyptians

Another Article on the Ancient Buildings of the Nile Country.

BY GIDEON A. LYON
Photographs by the Author

A general view of the Temple of Karnak, Luxor
A general view of the Temple of Karnak, Luxor

RETURNING to Luxor from the west bank of the Nile, after visiting the tombs and temples of the ancient “City of the Dead,” one sees in its fullest proportions the Temple of Luxor, earliest, it is believed, of the great religious structures of the east bank. It presents from this point of view more the aspect of an architectural unit than dees its greater and more celebrated neighbor, the Temple of Karnak. Yet it is sadly ruined and is, more over, marred by the intrussion within its very precincts of a mosque that, standing on higher ground, dominates the scene with its incongruous outlines.

According to accepted hypothesis, ancient Thebes, on the east bank, was regarded as the city of the living, while the Thebes of the west bank was known as the city of the dead. Thus the tombs are on the west bank, while the temples, with a few exceptions, such as the Der el-Bahri, the Medinet Habu and the Ramesseum, are on the east side of the river. Western Thebes was a necropolis, while Eastern Thebes was the city of splendor, of ceremony, of wealth, of active power.

Posted inArchaeology

A Statuette 6500 Years Old

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…
Posted inArchaeology

Ten layers of History

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…