Science: Diggers

U. S. gentlemen rove abroad to dig with native muckers for pieces of old civilizations. The pieces go into museums, where historians patch up history's gaps, where the populace gapes a holiday, where eager young women copy decorations for the gewgaws of applied art. Finders, keepers and users they all are.

In Egypt. Cheops, builder of the Great Pyramid, 4,800 years ago was the first great Pharaoh of Egypt. Harvard men under Dr. George A. Reisner have put together much history of his line. His father was Snefru, his mother Hetep-Heres I. Cheops loved her greatly. When her first tomb at Dahshur was robbed, he secretly reburied her at Giza, close to his pyramid. Cheops had four queens and several children. One of these, Chephren, built the second pyramid. His doughtiest daughter was Hetep-Heres II, a biological curiosity. Other Egyptians were swart and black-haired. She was blonde with reddish hair, probably inherited from foreign ancestors on her mother's side. She married her brother Kawa'ab, a dumpy, coarse man. He died. She married another brother, Radedef. He died. For her third husband she took Ankh-ha-ef, a nobleman outside the family. By Kawa'ab she bore Meresankh III, who grew up to be a small, black-haired woman. Hetep-Heres II also outlived and buried her daughter. It was Meresankh Ill's tomb that Dr. Reisner's party recently discovered. Pictures and inscriptions therein related the family's affairs and filled a long gap in Egypt's dynastic history.

As humanly interesting was Professor Breasted's Luxor Expedition discovery of what seems to have been the private apartment of Rameses III. A large hall contained a dais for his throne. Adjoining was his bedroom with private bath. Alongside his was his queen's suite, and three rooms with private baths for his concubines.

Tethmosis III quarreled with his stepmother Queen Hatshepsut over her doings in her temple at Dier el Bahri (Thebes). Angry Tethmosis took all the temple statues, smashed them to bits, threw the debris into a quarry pit, where diggers have found them and assembled some into the original shapes.

In Palestine. Whenever an archaeologist digs up something ancient in Palestine there is joy, whether the object corroborates a Biblical story or whether it indicates a pre-history which the Biblical reporters knew nothing of.

At Beth-Shemesh, Dr. Elihu Grant of Haverford College has found jugs and vases which represent a bronze age culture.

At Beisan, Alan Rowe of the University of Pennsylvania found drain pipes, a grist mill, a circular silo, all indicating a busy city life 3,200 years ago. Pagan temples, tools, utensils, seals and jewelry were signs of Beisan's wealth. It was of such civilization that Jeremiah complained: Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead the dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven [Ashtoreth], and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods that they may provoke me [God] to anger.—Book of Jeremiah VII, 17-18.

Near present Hebron, the American School of Archaeology has found Kirjath Sepher, which the Israelites captured in the time of Joshua. Interesting are the remains of a wool-dyeing factory, a small household altar of Samuel's time.