With the Diggers

There follows a summary of archeological progress in the Old World* since last recorded in TIME (Jan. 7).

Egypt. At Luxor, "stalemate" (TIME, March 10) is still the most accurate description of the case of Carnarvon & Carter vs. Egypt. The Government appealed in the Alexandria Mixed Court of Appeals from the decision of Judge Crabites, of Cairo, who found in favor of Carter. The Alexandria court upheld the Government. The American minister, Dr. Morton Howell, who, with Dr. James H. Breasted, had been seeking to persuade the Egyptians to return to its compromise agreement, was ignored by the government. Dr. Breasted has now withdrawn from the case entirely. Sir John Maxwell, acting for Countess Carnarvon, left Egypt in disgust. Carter sailed for an American lecture tour. The tomb has been closed, and no further action is expected before next Fall.

P: Three mummies were found in the vicinity of the tomb of Ramose, vizier of Akhnaton (Amenophis IV), the great king of the 18th Dynasty who attempted to change the religion of Egypt to monotheism. The discovery was made by Dr. Robert Mond, English archeologist, in the region called Sheikh-Abd-el-Qurna, in the Valley of the Kings. Two of the mummies, excellently preserved, were the bodies of a goldsmith and a priestess, his wife. The woman's clothing was wrapped with the body and was found to be practically identical with that worn by the Fellaheen women today.

P: Dr. James H. Breasted, in the spot-light for his thankless task of peace-making in the TutankhAmen controversy, has published through the New York Historical Society a bulletin on an Egyptian papyrus of 1600 B. C., owned by the Society, the oldest scientific book in America. The roll is over 15 feet long, 13 inches high, and written on both sides. It deals with the medical and surgical practice of the Egyptians. The author was not a quack or magician, but a serious medical scholar. The deciphering of the papyrus by Dr. Breasted was made doubly difficult by technical terminology, used by medicoes then as now.

Palestine. Prof. R. A. Stewart Macalister, continuing his excavations at Jerusalem (TIME, Dec. 31), found a cave with a shaft leading down to a spring, the significance of which was explained by Prof. James A. Montgomery, of the University of Pennsylvania. It was part of one of the most amazing engineering triumphs of ancient times --the water system of Jerusalem. In the reign of David and before, this very arid region was believed to have been wholly dependent for water on the Spring of Gihon, near the base of the hill on which the ancient city was built. Pumps were then unknown. Underground canals carried the water to other points, at one of which a dam formed the pool of Siloam. At intervals shafts led down to the canals, through which the inhabitants drew up water in buckets. Elsewhere were inclined tunnels down to the canals, through which men could walk. By them David's men entered the city when they captured it from the Jebusites.

P: The Jewish Palestine Exploration Society, under Dr. Slousch, excavated the so-called tombs of Absalom and Jehoshaphat, dated about the 4th Century B. C., in the ancient cemeteries east of Jerusalem. Orthodox Jewish fanatics opposed the work until a wall collapsed exposing the fac,ade of the tomb of Jehoshaphat.

Asia. Dryopithecus, a big forest ape that lived in the Siwalik hills of India in Miocene times, before the Glacial Age, is the common ancestor of man, the gorilla, the chimpanzee, and other primates. That is the conclusion of the staff of the American Museum of Natural Hostory, after more than a year's study of three fragments of the beast's jawbone discovered for the Museum by Barnum Brown (suspicious cognomen).

The chief evidence on which the opinion is based is the patterns of the teeth. The elevations are identical with those of the Neanderthal and other primitive men, and nearly so with those of the Australian blacks and certain Indians, the most primitive of living races. Civilized men, after thousands of years of a soft, mainly agricultural diet, have a very different kind of dental pattern. In the Dryopithecus, the cusps had already expanded so that they met over the grooves, causing "tunnels," which are the potent causes of tooth decay in modern man.

Six scientists representing different branches, contributed to a symposium on recent researches in the origin of man. The upshot of it was that man's nearest living relative is the gorilla, though man is not directly descended from him. Dr. Frederick Tilney, the neurologist, comparing cross-sections of the brains of apes and monkeys, showed that the size and complexity of the brain is directly proportioned to its ability to use its hands for handling objects, rather than for locomotion. The gorilla has retrograded in some respects. Once it was an arboreal ape, and walked nearly erect. But its increasing weight (300 pounds) drove it from the trees to the ground to seek fodder on the surface; its hind legs were not able to support its body alone, so now it uses its arms as crutches, more like a quadruped.

Mesopotamia. At Kish, near Bagdad, the Oxford and Field Museum expedition (TIME, July 9), has found a magnificent Sumerian palace; a library of cuneiform tablets, containing grammars and dictionaries of the Sumerian and Babylonian languages; a bone stylus six inches long, the oldest known pen; and a solid gold earring and other jewelry from a clay coffin of the time of Nebuchadnezzar. Kish was one of the oldest Babylonian capitals, already the seat of four great dynasties before the age of Sargon I (2700 B. C).

P: French archeologists discovered at Saliyeh in Syria a buried Greek city founded just after the death of Alexander the Great and abandoned in 273 A. D. It contained a parchment written in 189 B. C.,"said to be the oldest Greek manuscript extant," and important mural paintings.

Europe. Complete Stone Age village was laid bare near Vannes on the coast of Brittany, when a recent tidal wave swept away the sand. French archeologists are excited over the prospect of further revelations.

P: General Henri Gouraud, bearded, one-armed hero of the poilus and doughboys, was elected to the French Academy in the section of archeology. While commanding French forces in the Near East he created an archeological service which facilitated the excavations at Byblus, Tyre, Sidon, etc.

P: A gold brooch of the Viking period was scratched up from the mud of a pond in the province of South Bergenhus, Norway, by a flock of geese in charge of a small boy. The curator of the Stavanger Museum pronounced it a genuine antique.

P: A Neolithic boat, 11x3 feet, hollowed out of an oak trunk, was found in marshes near Sittingbourne, Kent, England (on the route of the Canterbury pilgrims). It is at least 5000 years old.

*Recent archeological progress in the Americas wu recorded in TIME last week.