The Diggers

Little bands of men roaming over the earth, poking in caves, pits, mounds, quarries, buttes for vestiges of the creatures that roamed the earth before them. Bigger bands of men examining maps, bringing steam shovels, excavating whole dead civilizations. Millions of dollars spent in digging every year. . . . Following are significant efforts and exhumations of the past few months, chiefly in Africa.

In the Sahara, at Hoggar, a band of French and Americans-- "Count" Byron Kuhn de Prorok,* Algerian officials, and Trustee W. Bradley Tyrrell of Beloit College (Wis.)--broke into the reputed tomb of Tin Hinan, semi-legendary queen and goddess of the white race of Tuaregs (Berbers). In the crumbling frame of a carved wooden couch lay the six-foot skeleton of a personage, seemingly female, littered with beads, carbuncles, garnets, gold and silver objects, glass balls, with black and yellow designs like eyes. On the arm bones hung massive bracelets--eight on the right, seven on the left--of gold alloyed with copper and some other metal, perhaps antimony, which would link the artifacts definitely with Punic work done at Carthage, on the Sahara's north edge, before its conquest by Rome in 146 B. C. The beads resembled Carthaginian work of the Fourth Century B. C. At the skeleton's ostrich-plumed head rested a six-inch statuet--a naked female with hips exaggerated as in Aurignacian figures of Paleolithic workmanship--which some held to be the famed Libyan Venus, others merely a fetish placed by the burial party for good luck.

The party plowed back across the Sahara, smitten sorely by sand- storms, but not before M. Maurice Reygasse, savant and Governor of the Department of Tebessa, had ingratiated himself with Amenokal Akhamouk, monarch of the Tuaregs (who only a few years ago scourged the desert, slew foreigners), to such an extent that a royal edict was issued to find and lay before white archeologists a manuscript containing, in several hundred sheets of parchment, the only known history of the Tuaregs. This should throw much light on the history of the Punic Carthaginians with whom, it is now established, the Tuaregs traded extensively.

In Paris, journalistic sarcasm was drowned in archeologists' enthusiasm when Digger de Prorok laid his finds before the government. Professor Stephane Gsell of the College of France demonstrated before the Institute of France that Tin Hinan, whose tomb and skeleton he was inclined to believe had been found, could not have lived earlier than 1,000 B. C.; probably about 900 B. C. Others aimed their guesses at her actual date between those two centuries.

In Egypt, excavating continued under various commands without interruption from the furor over John D. Rockefeller Jr.'s offer, and Egypt's refusal, of a ten-million-dollar museum to house the ancient country's treasure trove (TIME, March 1 et seq.). At Sakkara, the Department of Antiquities of the Egyptian Government continued its quiet, painstaking disinterment of "the beautiful Temple of Zoser" at the base of the famed Step Pyramid. King Zoser, a monarch of the,Third Dynasty (3,100 B. C.) built--apparently before any one else in the world--in dressed stone, while his contemporaries of Upper and Lower Egypt were still getting along with tombs and temples of Nile mud. One Sakkara tomb yielded mummified horses, the first ever found in Egypt.

Near Luxor, a native boy of 18 dug up, right in his yard, statues, mummies, a scarab; sold them to a U. S. tourist for -L-110 (about $534); was arrested, imprisoned. Government officials negotiated for the digging concession in this yard, were refused by the owner, who announced that he would himself explore four buried rooms located by the boy, that he would soon be known as another Howard Carter.

At Abydos,* investigation of the mysterious Osireion--a subterranean building behind the well-known temple of Seti I--proved it to be a unique mausoleum, constructed of colossal stone blocks, with a central hall entirely surrounded by a deep channel of water around which a narrow ledge communicated with 17 cells. The central chamber could be reached only by boat or swimming. The ceilings of the approaching passages bore sculptured scenes of judgment and horror in the hereafter, with King Seti I at peace between the outstretched arms of the sky goddess Nut, goddess of death.

At Cairo, Digger Howard Carter, chief of the British expedition in the Valley of Kings, arranged for the public exhibition of King Tut-Ankh- Amen's massive gold coffin, beaten out of -L-50,000 ($243,000) worth of bullion. The Egyptian Government released photographs for the non-tourist world to see.

Director-Professor James H. Breasted of the University of Chicago forces in Egypt, in addition to acting as Mr. Rockefeller's spokesman in the gift-museum matter broadened his activities upon the receipt of $200,000 from the General Education Board: enlarged his epigraphie (inscription-reading) staff at Luxor, engaged a paleontologist and a surface geologist to investigate the Valley of Kings in general and, in particular, to investigate a cavern a day's journey from Luxor where he had seen natives picking up prehistoric flints. (Last year a Neanderthal skull was found near Luxor, in a cave overlooking the Sea of Galilee.)

Dr. Breasted has no superior in Egyptology. He is said to have read every Egyptian inscription ever discovered. Hale at 60, he is at the peak of a distinguished career that began 32 years ago when he returned from the University of Berlin, with a Ph. D. and a bride, to join the University of Chicago staff. Last week he stepped off a boat in Manhattan, paid a call on Mr. Rockefeller, entrained for Chicago to relate the successful launchings of another great project that is under his direction--a project:

In Palestine, on the site of ancient Armageddon, where University of Chicagoans and 300 Arab laborers are busy under Dr. Clarence Fisher, second in command to Director Breasted. The site is the lofty Mound of Megiddo. The first thing found was part of a monument erected by Armageddon's conqueror, Shishak of Egypt, to commemorate his bloody victory in the 10th Century B. C. Next week TIME will catalog archeological findings in yet other parts of the world.

* Born in 1896 at Mexico City, son of Leon S. Kuhn, a naturalized U. S. citizen, "Count" de Prorok attached his courtesy title from an uncle, the late Count Theophile Konerski de Prorok, who adopted him. His first name was affixed upon the discovery that he was descended from a relative of Lord Byron. Young, dashing, romantic, his contributions to archeology as chief of the Franco-American efforts at Carthage are already very considerable. * Not to be confused with the Abydos on the Hellespont where Xerxes the Persian led his hosts from Asia Minor over into Greece. The Greek name means "hill of the symbol or reliquary."