Rensselaer Republican, Volume 14, Number 1, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 22 September 1881 — Mummies in Thebes. [ARTICLE]

Mummies in Thebes.

New York Tribune. Tiie finding at Thebes of thirty-nine, mummies of Egyptian royal and priestly personages, which baa been hailed Sn Europe as the greatest arcbielogical liscoivery since Sir Henry Liyara’S rfe* searches in Nineveh, grows iu importance. Two-thirds of the mummies are now identified by means of the inscriptions upon their cases, and the manuscripts found. They are, for the most part, Kings and Queens, with their children, ranging through sou! dynasties, beginning with the seventeenth aud ending with the twentyfirst, or, stating it ir Highly, from 2,000 to 1,700 B. C. The mummy of tht? Pharaoh of Isiael is among these lb a perfect state of preservation, and the mummy of Thomas 111, in whose reign the obelisk that stands in Central Park was first erected. The imagination fa rly falters iu the attempt to realize that these figures have been brought back from the vast shoreless sea of Egyptiau aD tiqulty to our own day, and our very doors. Lotus flow- i ers that look as ii they been {ducked a few months ago,” are found ying in the wrappings of Kings who : v*ere dead centuries- before the Pharoab of Israel was born,and the passage of nearly 4,000 years has not dimmed the beauty of the colors of the inscriptions aud penciling?, “which are as bright and fresh as if tbe artist had touched them bu* yesterday. This is a wonderful prize for arcbteological science, the full meaning of which scholars probably are just beginning to appreciate.