For hundreds of years it has lain in a
recumbent position buried beneath the
sands on the road to Sakkareh. To
day it is half-exposed to view, and
next year it is to be raised to a verti
cal position above the water-line.
This newly found sphinx was betray
ed in its hiding place by its tail, which
Mr. Mackay, one of the students of the
British School in Egypt, discovered
about a year ago. This, year, when
the water on the plain subsided, the
complete figure was excavated, and
was found to measure some fourteen
feet in height and twenty-six feet in
length. Alabaster being a rock foreign
to the neighborhood, the new sphinx
ranks as the largest that has ever
been transported. The figure bears no
Inscription, but is considered by Prof.
Flinders Petrie, the director of the
British School in Egypt, to have been
carved about 1300 B. C. Many other
remarkable discoveries, taking the
mind back as far as 5500 B. C, and
lifting the veil of centuries from
Egypt's romantic story, have also been
made by the same school, and, with
the exception of a red granite group
of Rameses II and the god Ptah, which
will be sent direct to the Ny Carlsberg
Museum at Copenhagen, and a few
other details, are now on exhibition at
University College, Gower street. They
include many objects quite new to
Egyptologists.
Among these are coffins made cf
basket work, reeds or withes, sandal
trays, an axe handle, in which the grip
is* composed of delicately knotted
string, a pot of unburnt incense for a
fire-offering of 4000 B. C, and numer
ous pieces of timber, showing by their
Coffin of Basket Work.
