DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.17531#0011
NAUKRATIS, 1903.
Ill
found any clear evidence of the existence of a Great Wall of any kind. As
Mr. Petrie's benchmarks were no longer recognizable, and his plan had been
somewhat roughly made, I could not lay down on my own chart the position
of the invisible corner with any precision ; and I had to make wide casts
for it from various sides. I first tried to hit the outer face of the north
wall of his ' Temenos' by a series of pits pushed up from the north : then I
tried to get the inner faces both of that wall and the western wall by a
similar method from within the ' Temenos ' : then I tried for the outward
face of the western wall, beginning far outside the possible area on the west,
and advancing eastwards. In this way I have no manner of doubt that I
completely traversed in several places the lines on which both the north and
west walls ought to have been. But I never found any solid mass of brick-
work of one-fourth the dimension ascribed by Mr. Petrie to his ' Great Wall.'
What I did find was a much ruined complex of buildings, the lower of which
were made of bricks of the dimensions recorded by Mr. Petrie in his Temenos
Wall ; while the upper, surviving as one upstanding block in the very centre
of the line in which the north wall of the Temenos was to be looked for,
showed beneath their lowest courses a belt of earth containing pottery
(including a few bits of Greek wares) not earlier than the fifth century B.C.
The broadest wall actually lighted upon in these trials was one running
north and south, measuring sixteen feet across : it formed the west side
of a group of chambers, which had the character of a dwelling house. On
every occasion on which I found a wall, chambers eventually opened on either
hand of it, before a quarter of the requisite solid breadth had been revealed.
Since the cemetery mound on the south-west, which Mr. Petrie believed
to be a surviving part of the Wall, was still there to guide me, it is not possible
that I can have missed altogether the line of both the west and north walls
of the Temenos as plotted by Mr. Petrie. Nor can it be supposed, in view of
the antiquity which Mr. Petrie claimed for his Temenos Wall, that I was
digging below its original site, and opening out chambers antecedent to its
foundation. Therefore, with all diffidence (for it is almost impossible in such
a case to prove an absolute negative), I must state my conviction that
(for once) Mr. Petrie was mistaken in the nature of certain masses of
construction, which exist on three sides of the area called by him the
' Great Temenos '; and that these represent not a solid wall of brickwork,
but an aggregate of house remains, piled up round a lower area, wherein
lay the Egyptian temples and public buildings, of which one contained the
Nectanebo Stela, and another was excavated by Mr. Petrie himself and regarded
as a Greek fort. This area was, in fact, the central area of the town, Pi-emro.
I make this suggestion with the better assurance since it does not appear
from Mr. Petrie's own narrative that he ever tested the nature of these masses
of construction by systematic digging. He seems (p. 24) to have relied
mainly on the statement of local Arabs that there had been within their
memory mounds on three sides of this area, as high as that surviving mound
on the south-west, which he did not excavate for fear of disturbing modern
graves. These other mounds, he says, were already reduced in 1884 to the
Ill
found any clear evidence of the existence of a Great Wall of any kind. As
Mr. Petrie's benchmarks were no longer recognizable, and his plan had been
somewhat roughly made, I could not lay down on my own chart the position
of the invisible corner with any precision ; and I had to make wide casts
for it from various sides. I first tried to hit the outer face of the north
wall of his ' Temenos' by a series of pits pushed up from the north : then I
tried to get the inner faces both of that wall and the western wall by a
similar method from within the ' Temenos ' : then I tried for the outward
face of the western wall, beginning far outside the possible area on the west,
and advancing eastwards. In this way I have no manner of doubt that I
completely traversed in several places the lines on which both the north and
west walls ought to have been. But I never found any solid mass of brick-
work of one-fourth the dimension ascribed by Mr. Petrie to his ' Great Wall.'
What I did find was a much ruined complex of buildings, the lower of which
were made of bricks of the dimensions recorded by Mr. Petrie in his Temenos
Wall ; while the upper, surviving as one upstanding block in the very centre
of the line in which the north wall of the Temenos was to be looked for,
showed beneath their lowest courses a belt of earth containing pottery
(including a few bits of Greek wares) not earlier than the fifth century B.C.
The broadest wall actually lighted upon in these trials was one running
north and south, measuring sixteen feet across : it formed the west side
of a group of chambers, which had the character of a dwelling house. On
every occasion on which I found a wall, chambers eventually opened on either
hand of it, before a quarter of the requisite solid breadth had been revealed.
Since the cemetery mound on the south-west, which Mr. Petrie believed
to be a surviving part of the Wall, was still there to guide me, it is not possible
that I can have missed altogether the line of both the west and north walls
of the Temenos as plotted by Mr. Petrie. Nor can it be supposed, in view of
the antiquity which Mr. Petrie claimed for his Temenos Wall, that I was
digging below its original site, and opening out chambers antecedent to its
foundation. Therefore, with all diffidence (for it is almost impossible in such
a case to prove an absolute negative), I must state my conviction that
(for once) Mr. Petrie was mistaken in the nature of certain masses of
construction, which exist on three sides of the area called by him the
' Great Temenos '; and that these represent not a solid wall of brickwork,
but an aggregate of house remains, piled up round a lower area, wherein
lay the Egyptian temples and public buildings, of which one contained the
Nectanebo Stela, and another was excavated by Mr. Petrie himself and regarded
as a Greek fort. This area was, in fact, the central area of the town, Pi-emro.
I make this suggestion with the better assurance since it does not appear
from Mr. Petrie's own narrative that he ever tested the nature of these masses
of construction by systematic digging. He seems (p. 24) to have relied
mainly on the statement of local Arabs that there had been within their
memory mounds on three sides of this area, as high as that surviving mound
on the south-west, which he did not excavate for fear of disturbing modern
graves. These other mounds, he says, were already reduced in 1884 to the