The Treasury of Ancient Egypt: Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and ArchaeologyWeigall, Arthur E. P. Brome (Arthur Edward Pearse Brome)
History
The Treasury of Ancient Egypt: Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology
Weigall, Arthur E. P. Brome (Arthur Edward Pearse Brome)
Archaeology; Egypt -- Antiquities
For finding the famous gold hawk's head at Hieraconpolis a workman
received L14, and with this princely sum in his pocket he went to a
certain Englishman to ask advice as to the spending of it. He was
troubled, he said, to decide whether to buy a wife or a cow. He admitted
that he had already one wife, and that two of them would be sure to
introduce some friction into what was now a peaceful household; and he
quite realised that a cow would be less apt to quarrel with his first
wife. The Englishman, very properly, voted for the cow, and the peasant
returned home deep in thought. While pondering over the matter during
the next few weeks, he entertained his friends with some freedom, and
soon he found to his dismay that he had not enough money left to buy
either a wife or a cow. Thereupon he set to with a will, and soon spent
the remaining guineas in riotous living. When he was next seen by the
Englishman he was a beggar, and, what was worse, his taste for evil
living had had several weeks of cultivation.
The case of the fortunate finder of a certain great _cache_ of mummies
was different. He received a reward of L400, and this he buried in a
very secret place. When he died his possessions descended to his sons.
After the funeral they sat round the grave of the old man, and very
rightly discussed his virtues until the sun set. Then they returned to
the house and began to dig for the hidden money. For some days they
turned the sand of the floor over; but failing to find what they sought,
they commenced operations on a patch of desert under the shade of some
tamarisks where their father was wont to sit of an afternoon. It is said
that for twelve hours they worked like persons possessed, the men
hacking at the ground, and the boys carrying away the sand in baskets to
a convenient distance. But the money was never found.
It is not often that the finders of antiquities inform the authorities
of their good fortune, but when they do so an attempt is made to give
them a good reward. A letter from the finder of an inscribed statue, who
wished to claim his reward, read as follows: "With all delight I please
inform you that on 8th Jan. was found a headless temple of granite
sitting on a chair and printed on it."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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