Science: Diggers

Uncovering forgotten things in refound places, assiduous men have recently seen, done the following:

Grecian Main Street. In 160 A.D., Corinth, classic city, throve lustily. Pausanias was its Baedeker. He described a street running from the market place to the theatre. In 396 A.D., Alaric the Goth devastated the city. Ancient Corinth disappeared under tons of debris and earth. Little by little the old town is being unearthed. Theodore Leslie Shear, one of Princeton’s archaeologists, has returned to the U. S. after four years of digging there. He announced the discovery of the Pausanias-chronicled street, the theatre with seats for 20,000.

Hiram of Tyre. At Jebeil, Phoenicia, industrious Germans unearthed a statue of heroic proportions. After much learned controversy, the diggers agreed that the statue must be that of King Hiram I of Tyre, who reigned as a contemporary of Solomon, 480 years after Moses had led the children of Israel from the wilderness and a diet of manna. King Hiram was something of an entrepreneur for his time: Solomon needed aid for the building of his temple, the mighty House of the Lord; Hiram had certain supplies and many artisans. They bargained. The outcome was that Hiram sent Solomon hewed cedars of Lebanon, gold and many an artisan. In return Solomon paid Hiram 20,000 measures of wheat and 20 measures of pure oil per year. (Seven years were required for the building of the Temple.) The subjects of Hiram were evidently gratified at the business acumen of their king, for they built him this new-found statue.

Grecian Restoration. In 1687, Turkish Janizaries, conquerors of southeastern Europe, were besieged at Athens by the Venetians. During the battle a great store of powder blew up inside the Parthenon, scattering columns, frieze and architraves. Townsfolk used blocks of Parthenon marble for doorsteps and pigpens. A hundred years ago Lord Elgin stole great masses of the sculpture for the British Museum in London, to save them from “local vandalism.” Byron berated him. The Greek Government, belatedly renascent, is now reconstructing the torn Parthenon in the semblance of its periclean perfection.

Egyptian Brooders. Although the dynastic Egyptians lacked artificial light with which modern poulterers perform fake sunrises to make their hens lay overtime, they used incubators to hatch out eggs. The old time hatcheries were cone-shaped mud huts heated by burning chaff. An attendant always sat within to warn against temperature too hot or too cold. Of a clutch 95% hatched successfully. William D. Mann, U. S. assistant commercial attache at Cairo, found out about the ancient Egyptian brooders when he was seeking an Egyptian market for the latest type of U. S.-made incubators.

Etruscan Hero’s Tomb. Princess Luciano Bonaparte owns land at Vulci, Etruscan community near Rome. Etruscan tombs underlie the whole vicinity. Recently, watching her peasants plowing, she saw a yoke of oxen sprawl into the ground. After extricating the animals, searchers found a series of unknown, unrifled tombs. Chief among them was that of an Etruscan hero, shrouded in blue and white gauze, with his little possessions around him, even a branch of laurel, still green. A coin in the tomb dated it about the 3rd century B.C.

Kish, one of the first cities to be founded after the waters prevailed upon the earth and Jahveh ordered Noah and his entourage into the ark, has given up more of its interments: the Field Museum-Oxford University Joint Expedition found the traces of the tribe of the Elamites, descendants of Elam, son of Shem, grandson of Noah. The Elamites had a fearsome custom of burying alive the attendants of a dead king. The explorers found oldest known examples of civilized pottery and sculpture, about 6000 B.C. Kish is in Mesopotamia, near Ur of the Chaldees. Researches have shown that burial customs of the two peoples were similar. From the Elamites descended the Sumerians, some of whose painted terra-cotta statuary has been recovered. Between 4000 and 3000 B.C. the Sumerians, a higher type of civilization, gave up burial alive. The diggers also discovered traces of Nebuchadnezzar’s restoration work on the temple of Harsgakalemma, and a baby’s rattle in the form of a hollow clay hedgehog with a hardened mud marble.

City of Sin? Sodom, so wicked that the Lord rained brimstone and fire upon it, was thought found by Father Mallon of the Pontifical Bible Institute of Jerusalem, on the plains of Jordan. A few vases, flint instruments, broken pottery, the ruins of an ancient wall were found, all covered with a thick layer of ashes. The evidence pointed to inhabitancy during the Bronze Age (2000 B.C.).

Angora, capital of new Turkey, formed the base of the Hittite Expedition of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. From there to Alishar is a day’s journey by train and horse. At Alishar, rare and well-preserved examples of Hittite culture were unearthed in a mound twelve layers deep, one dead city atop its dead predecessor. Out of the dusty ruins were dug instruments for which the diggers could find no obvious use. The peasants thereabout still living in a partly Stone Age condition solved the difficulties by exhibiting some of their own utensils of husbandry—flint-pronged threshing boards, wooden water jars, grain cradles, grinding stones. The relics, some of them beautiful in glaze and form, with an estimated age of 4,000 years, point to an ample trade with Egypt. They go automatically into the possession of the Turkish Government.

Despoiled Queen. At Thebes, near the Valley of the Kings, where Lord Carnarvon found Tutankhamen, Herbert E. Winlock of the Metropolitan Museum of Art expedition unearthed the mummy of Meryet-Amun, more than 3,000 years old, despoiled by robbers, but still in a decent state of preservation. Queen Meryet-Amun (1480-40 B.C.) died soon after her coronation. Her body was prepared and wrapped in many thicknesses of bandage. The inner coffin which covered her corpse was decorated, according to Egyptian ritual, with a replica of her body. On the forehead was the tenon hole which had held the stolen vulture-head coronet, symbol of queenly power. The outer coffin, masterpiece of joiner’s art, at one time encased in gold sheets, lying undisturbed for centuries in the dark crypt, “created an eerie effect” on Digger Winlock.

Egyptian Forts. Dr. George Andrew Reisner, Harvard Egyptologist who looks like the late Theodore Roosevelt, brought back six cases of relics from his shoveling ground in Egypt. They came from a series of eight sand-hidden forts built 5,000 years ago along 50 miles of the Sudan, to guard caravans of precious metals, spices, Ethiopian slaves, ivory from desert raiders.