Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 August 1893 — FOUND ON THE UPPER NILE. [ARTICLE]

FOUND ON THE UPPER NILE.

Evidence Showing that Photography of 1 Kind Was Known 6,000 Years Ago. “I have spent much time in traveling in India, Borneo and on the Malay peninsula,” said William Huntington to a San Francisco Examiner man a few days ago, “and I have also traveled a good deal in other lands. I think, on the whole, that the jnost interesting experience I ever had was in an ancient city on the Nile in upper Egypt. I am not going to quote any guide books nor more than allude to anything that is not well known, but I want to say that to even a well-informed man tho things he sees on the upper Nile will stay with him forever. I may be permitted perhaps to remind you that these cities are more than 6,000 years old, and that some of them had as many as a million inhabitants each. Indeed, some of them had more. Well, when I was there a year ago, and men were digging among the ruined temples, some curious things were brought forth, and these I regard as the strangest of things seen in all my wanderings. In an old tomb was found a curious iron and glass object, which on investigation proved to be a photographic camera. It was not such a camera as is used now, or has been since our photography was invented, but something analogous to it, showing that the art which we thought we had discovered was really known 6,000 years ago. “Another thing discovered there in the sands of the Nile was a plow, constructed on the modern plan. It was not of steel, but of Iron, and it had the same shape, the same form of point and bend of moldboard as we have now. Yet another thing was brought forth, showing that they were expert astronomers. It was a lens, constructed in such a way as gave evidence to the fact that they knew the distance from the earth to the sun and moon, and had many of our modern ideas in regard to the science. I saw where the Mohammedans had razed and attempted to totally destroy those cities, but many of the buildings, or at least parts of them, are yet in a good state of preservation. The stones are largely granite, and there never was a better expression than the term ‘imperishable granite,’ so far as they are cqpcerned. These things start men To thinking and convince us that civilization may, after all, move in a circle and the things which we call new are often as old as the mountains. America and California are new to me, but already I find here you refer to your lost civilization, meaning, as I take it, more particularly the civilization of the Aztecs and Toltecs. I don’t know whether you will find a common plow, an astronomical instrument and camera or not, but I would not be surprised if someone should find as remarkable things in this country as they have in Egypt,"