May 30, 1914
This item is a copy of an item entitled "Strabo's Well" and Tomb of Osiris" which was located at http://www.btinternet.com/~bounduk/london8.htm. The site also contained many other interesting articles. Unfortunately, it no longer exists at this address, and all attempts to locate it have failed. If you are the owner of the site or know where it has moved to, please email me so that a link can once again be established, and this copy deleted.
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May 30, 1914 |
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The excavations made
during this winter at Abydos by the Egypt Exploration Fund, under the direction
of the present writer, assisted by Professor Whittemore, from Boston, Mr.
Wainwright and Mr. Gibson, have given quite unexpected results. They have led
to the discovery of a building which at present is unique in its kind, and
which probably is one of the most ancient constructions preserved in Egypt: a
great pool with porches and the tomb of Osiris. |
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| It consists of a
rectangle, the inside of which is about a hundred feet long and sixty wide. The
two long sides are north and south; east is the side of the temple of Seti;
west the doorway with the lintel, fifteen feet long, which had been discovered
in 1912. The enclosure wall is twenty feet thick. It consists of two
casings: the outer one is limestone rather roughly worked; the inner one is in
beautiful masonry of red quartzite sandstone. The joints are very fine; there
is only a very thin stratum of mortar, which is hardly perceptible. Here and
there the thick knob has been left which was used for moving the stones. The
blocks are very large - a length of fifteen feet is by no means rare; and the
whole structure has decidedly the character of the primitive constructions
which in Greece are called cyclopean, and an Egyptian example of which is at
Ghizeh, the so-called temple of the Sphinx. This colossal character is even more striking in the inner part. It is divided into three naves or aisles of unequal size - the middle one being wider. These naves are separated by two colonnades of square monolithic pillars about fifteen feet high and eight and a half feet square. There are five of them in each colonnade. They supported architraves in proportion with them, their height being more than six feet. These architraves and the enclosure wall supported a ceiling, also of granite monoliths, which was not made of slabs, but of blocks, like the architraves more than six feet thick. It had been calculated that one of the few of them remaining weighs more than thirty tons. Unfortunately, in one corner only has the ceiling been preserved. The whole building has been turned into a quarry, especially the inside, which was entirely granite. Pillars, architraves, ceiling, everything has been broken and split with wedges, traces of which are seen everywhere, in order to make millstones of various sizes. Several of them weighing seven or eight tons, have been left. |