Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 21.djvu/732

716 a gunshot would produce. The numerous articles of earthenware presented a great variety of forms, and were both plain and decorated. The iron articles were all very much oxidized, so that traces could hardly be detected of the silver with which some of them had been damascened. Lances were put at the head of the dead and arrows and battle-axes along by the legs. The bronzes were made of different alloys of copper and tin and other metals, and included fibules in the shape of a bird (single and double-headed paroquet), round belt-plates, and handsome little shoe-ornaments.

Egyptological Discovery.—Great progress has been made within twelve months in Egyptological discovery. M. Marriette, the official curator of the antiquities of the country, who died in January, 1881, had, just before his death, opened three pyramids, two of them those of monarchs of the sixth dynasty who were among the most distinguished kings of the old empire—Pepi Rameri, who, according to Manetho, reigned a hundred years, and his son and successor Rameri. The pyramids were richly adorned with inscriptions, and the discovery pleasantly supplements the valuable biography we already had of a chief officer of that period, relating the wars with the negroes and other events, which form one of the most satisfactory historical documents which the ancient empire has yet furnished us. Professor Maspero, who was appointed to succeed M. Marriette, shortly after he took his office explored the pyramids of a still earlier monarch, Unas, the last king of the fifth dynasty, which was also richly decorated and contained inscriptions, mostly parts of the ritual, a sarcophagus of black basalt, and remains of the mummy, bearing marks of the work of the ancient tomb-breakers. The excavations of the pyramids are to be continued in the expectation of finding them to confirm M. Maspero's theory that the pyramids from Gizeh to the Fayoom are a series containing in succession the bodies of the kings from the fourth to the thirteenth dynasty. A second great discovery of no less importance was made in July at the caverns behind the Deir-el-Bahari, or temple of Hatasu, near Thebes. Attention had long been drawn to the antiquities which had been offered to travelers for many years past, and which it was believed must come from some hiding-place known only to the Arabs. M. Emil Burgsch secured the arrest of the Arab who seemed most concerned in these dealings, and succeeded in tracing the articles to their source, the cave among the hills where the royal mummies had been carried and deposited for security against invasion during the twenty-first dynasty. The mummies are twenty-seven in number, several of them being of kings, queens, and princesses, and persons of distinction of the eighteenth and intervening dynasties to the twenty-first, and with them were thousands of objects—amulets, statuettes, papyruses which are expected when read to prove of great value, and a leather tent of a king of the twenty-first dynasty. Among the mummies are those of Raskenen, a king preceding the eighteenth dynasty; of Queen Ansera, Amenophis I, and his wife Ahmes Nofertari, Thothmes II, and Thothmes III, of the eighteenth dynasty; Rameses II, the supposed Pharaoh of Moses, of the twentieth dynasty; Queen Notemit (to whom the "Prince of Wales's papyrus" in the British Museum was originally attached); and King Pinotem II, of the twenty-first dynasty. Cases and other articles were also found belonging to other distinguished monarchs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties, The cave in which the remains were found is supposed to have been originally the tomb of Queen Ansera.

The Manageable Zone of Anæsthetics.—M. Paul Bert has announced some discoveries of great value respecting the mode of action of mixtures of anæsthetic vapors and atmospheric air upon the animal organism. He applies the term manageable zone to the different degrees of admixture, rising from the proportion of anæsthetic which is insufficient to put to sleep, to the proportion which will cause immediate death. In the case of chloroform and ether the mortal dose appears to be exactly double the minimum anæsthetic dose. Anæsthesia takes place in the middle of the manageable zone very rapidly and without danger, so that the animal may be left for two hours in the anæsthetic atmosphere without any one being concerned about him.