(1) Service des Antiquités de l'Egypte Catalogue Général des Antiquités Egyptiennes du Musée du Caire (2) British School of Archaeology in Egypt

Abstract

(i) PROF. ELLIOT SMITH'S studies of mummification, the result of work carried out during the years he spent in Egypt, have been brought to a fitting conclusion by the issue of this sumptuous catalogue of the royal mummies in the Cairo Museum. The work forms an exhaustive supplement, from the anatomical side, to Sir Gaston Maspero's monograph on the same subject. We meet with many old friends, but there is scarcely one about which the author has not something new to tell us. The earliest and perhaps the most tragic of these dead kings is the seventeenth dynasty Pharaoh Seqenen-Ra, whose agonised hands and battered face and skull bear witness to a violent death uoon the field of battle. We note that Prof. Elliot Smith supports Maspero's view that the body was hastily mummified on the field, not transported to Thebes and subjected to partial decomposition, as Dr. Fouquet would have it. Another interesting mummy, or rather skeleton, is that of the heretic King Akhenaten, which was found five years ago by Mr. Theodore Davies in the tomb with Queen Tii's furniture, and was at first supposed to be that of the queen herself; we are glad to have the anatomical evidence as to age, &c., set forth in greater detail. (1) Service des Antiquits de l'Egypte. Catalogue General des Antiquites Egyptiennes du Musaee du Caire. Nos. 61,051â61,100: The Royal Mummies. By G. Elliot Smith. Pp. vii + 118 + 103 plates. (Le Caire: Imprimerie de l'Institut Franais d'Archaeologie Orientale, 1912.) (2) British School of Archaeology in Egypt. Studies Series. Vol. iii. The Formation of the Alphabet. By Dr. W. M. Flinders Petrie. Pp. iv + 20 + 9 plates. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., and Bernard Quaritch, 1912.) Price 5s. net.