DOI Artikel:
Griffith, Francis Ll.: Progress of Egyptology, [1]: Hieroglyphic Studies, etc.
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.10055#0022
II.-PEOGBESS OF EGYPTOLOGY.
A.—HIEROGLYPHIC STUDIES, &c.
Egyptology continues to move forward with rapid strides : the field for
work is inexhaustible, and each year new means of cultivating it are
provided, and new labourers are attracted in numbers that far out-
balance the loss by death or defection. The land itself also holds a vast
quantity of treasures in store for the spade of the excavator, who, unless
he be engaged in a scientific search for such antiquities as are likely to
be disturbed by the native diggers, has to be adjured to hold his hand
until the monumental crop above ground has been safely gathered in.
There is, however, a black cloud overhead which threatens to burst
immediately and utterly destroy the harvest that we hoped for from the
land of Lower Isubia. Whatever alleviation of the calamity may be
effected by the Government and by private surveys and excavations of
the threatened ground, the Aswan dam will be the cause of a more rapid
and wholesale destruction of antiquities than has ever before been
known; and, as such, it must be contemplated with horror by all
Egyptologists, to whom this year is likely to be one of painful memory.
The happier aspect-of the scheme—the material benefit to the country—
must not be insisted on in these archaeological pages, and as our Society
has already done all that it can to obtain a reconsideration of the
question, we may leave it, and turn to the record of work done.
Excavation and Exploration.
The excavations of our Society at Der el Bahri have been already de-
scribed in M. Naville's Eeport. Prof. Flinders Petrie spent the season at
Coptos, working chiefly on the site of the destroyed temple of Min.
A.—HIEROGLYPHIC STUDIES, &c.
Egyptology continues to move forward with rapid strides : the field for
work is inexhaustible, and each year new means of cultivating it are
provided, and new labourers are attracted in numbers that far out-
balance the loss by death or defection. The land itself also holds a vast
quantity of treasures in store for the spade of the excavator, who, unless
he be engaged in a scientific search for such antiquities as are likely to
be disturbed by the native diggers, has to be adjured to hold his hand
until the monumental crop above ground has been safely gathered in.
There is, however, a black cloud overhead which threatens to burst
immediately and utterly destroy the harvest that we hoped for from the
land of Lower Isubia. Whatever alleviation of the calamity may be
effected by the Government and by private surveys and excavations of
the threatened ground, the Aswan dam will be the cause of a more rapid
and wholesale destruction of antiquities than has ever before been
known; and, as such, it must be contemplated with horror by all
Egyptologists, to whom this year is likely to be one of painful memory.
The happier aspect-of the scheme—the material benefit to the country—
must not be insisted on in these archaeological pages, and as our Society
has already done all that it can to obtain a reconsideration of the
question, we may leave it, and turn to the record of work done.
Excavation and Exploration.
The excavations of our Society at Der el Bahri have been already de-
scribed in M. Naville's Eeport. Prof. Flinders Petrie spent the season at
Coptos, working chiefly on the site of the destroyed temple of Min.