Several times in these columns of late it has been presented that one of the probable results of the new reign in Turkey would be the advancement of the Gospel message. The San Francisco “Examiner” in its issue of Sunday, June 13, announces that “the great revolution in Turkey and the downfall of Sultan Abdul Hamid will have far-reaching results over the world of religion, science, archeology, and culture.”
It seems that great fields of antiquarian treasure of the East are now for the first time to be thrown open to thoro research. Previously it has been very difficult to get permission from the Sultan for archeological research within his dominions. When permission has been given, it was under what was called a firman which usually expired in six months or a year, and placed the guarantees under onerous conditions and costly terms. Furthermore, blackmailing Turkish governors and local officials gave constant annoyance and demanded exactions. Brigands and wild tribesmen might attack them, and the searchers for hidden treasures receive no help from the Turkish authorities; thus many of them lost their lives and more of them lost money and property.
A New Policy
According to the article above mentioned, “the new Turkish government has given assurance that all this will now be changed. Every application to carry on archeological research made by recognized learned institutions will be granted promptly, without charge, and adequate protection will be given to the workers. . . . This new policy of the Turkish government opens up to civilization the greatest art treasures of the ancient world, for the most famous lands of the Bible and antiquity lie within the Turkish Empire.”
Some of the great places of ancient times, names that thrill the seeker after knowledge of the past, such places as Nineveh, Babylon, Ur, Damascus, Jerusalem, and all the cities of Palestine, the Land of Goshen, Tarsus, Tyre, Sidon, Mount Sinai, Arbela and other battlefields of Alexander the Great, are now to be thoroly explored and their fabled treasures brought to light.
New Activity
Archeological associations are already active as the result of this announced policy of the new Turkish government, and plans for joint action are being drafted and formulated for final action. It has been proposed to found two American schools of archeology at Bagdad, in Babylonia, and at Cairo, Egypt, to serve as permanent centers for all the archeological work in Babylonia and Egypt respectively,—just as the American school at Jerusalem and the American school at Athens now serve as centers for the work of exploration in Palestine and in Greece respectively. “How great is the task that lies before these excavators when these schools have been established, and what wonderful things may be discovered, may be appreciated by any one who considers the matter with a map in front of him, and who knows that so far only the surface has been scratched in most places, and that whatever we have is merely a suggestion of what is still to be uncovered.”
A Great Discovery
It might not be out of place to recall the finding of the royal mummies in Egypt in 1879 as an example of what wonderful treasures are sometimes suddenly discovered hid away within the domains of those ancient kingdoms. Nothing in modern discovery has more vividly and suddenly brought the ancient world home to the world of to-day than the finding of the actual bodies of the Pharaohs, marvelously preserved to us by the embalmer’s venerable art. The discovery has bridged the chasm between the ancient and the new, as a flash of lightning suddenly connects the clouds and the earth.
On Wednesday, the 6th of July, 1879, Messieurs Emil Brugsch and Ahmad Effendi Kamal, were conducted by Muhammed Ahmed Abd-er-Rassul to the entrance of the funeral vault containing the royal mummies, the secret chamber found to have been built in the most ingenious fashion by the Egyptian engineer who long ago directed the work. Never was a secret chamber better disguised than this one. The chain of hills which at the spot divides the capital Biban-el-Moluk from the Theban plains, forms, between the Assassif and the Valley of the Queens, a series of natural amphitheaters, of which the best known was, up to that time, the one on which stands the monument of Deir-el-Bahari.
In the wall of rocks that separates Deir-el-Bahari from the succeeding amphitheaters, just behind the knoll of Sheikh Abd-el-Gurnah, about two hundred feet above the level of the cultivated lands, a pit was dug forty feet in depth by six in breadth. At the bottom of the pit in the western side was cut the entrance of the corridor, four and one-half feet wide by nearly three in height. After running the length of about twenty-five feet, it turns abruptly to the north and extends two hundred feet, not always keeping to the same dimensions. In certain parts it is about six and one-half feet wide, while in others it is a little over four. Near the center, five or six roughly hewn steps indicate a sensible change in the level. The gallery at last emerges into a kind of irregular, oblong chamber about twenty-five feet in length.
A Wonderful Find
In the bottom of this pit are found a great many coffins and mummies which bear some of the great historic names of Egypt. Among these some of the most illustrious Pharaohs of Egypt, such as Tehutimes III, Seti I, Aahmes the liberator, and Rameses II, the conqueror. This Rameses II is known to be the great Pharaoh who oppressed the Israelites. He it was who required the great work which was done in enlarging the treasure cities of Pithon and Rameses. They were set to sweat in brick-yards and were beaten by taskmasters until they broke out in insurrection. In the course of time denial of religious privileges complicated and intensified the rebellion.
Just before Moses returned from the wilderness to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt, out of their land of bondage, Rameses died, and Menepta reigned as Pharaoh in Egypt. Historians say that it was under this Egyptian monarch that the children of Israel, numbering more than two million men, women, and children in all, left the land of their sojourn in fulfilment of God’s promise made to Abraham hundreds of years before.
Among the mummies was that of Queen Nefertari. This is without doubt the daughter of Pharaoh who found Moses in the bulrushes, and adopted him as her son. It is the person referred to in the scripture where it says that Moses “refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.” Heb. 11: 24, 25.
The world will await with interest the results of these new explorations and excavations. It is expected that more light will now be thrown upon the Exodus when the unexplored peninsula between Egypt and Palestine has been more carefully examined; for this is the scene of the forty years’ wandering of the Israelites in the wilderness.
In these last times God is making the very stones cry out in witness to the truth of His word, and is leaving the world without any11excuse by the clearness of His testimony, by the unimpeachable evidence of the true witness. R.
