Author: Margaret Alice Murray
Publisher:
Published: 2015-08-05
Total Pages: 108
ISBN-13: 9781332205127
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Excerpt from The Tomb of Two Brothers To The General Reader. To most people there are few ideas more repugnant than that of disturbing the dead. To open graves, to remove all the objects placed there by loving hands, and to unroll and investigate the bodies, seems to many minds not merely repulsive but bordering on sacrilege. And yet these same people would not hesitate to wear a scarab-ring taken off a dead man's hand; they willingly buy strings of beads which were found round a mummy's neck; they will handle without a qualm the amulets that were found actually inside a body. In short they encourage, for their own pleasure and amusement, the rifling of graves for gain by the natives. To such people I have nothing to say. Their objections - their opinions even - are an offence to science. To those, however, whose objections are not of the purely sentimental kind (dictated by a momentary feeling passing through an otherwise vacant mind) I wish to offer a short explanation of the reasons for the action of archaeologists throughout the world. Archaeology has been raised to the rank of a science within one generation: before that it was merely the pastime of the dilettante and the amateur who amused himself by adding beautiful specimens to his collection of ancient art. Then came the period of the enthusiast in languages, to whom inscriptions were the joy of life. And now there has arisen a new school to whom archaeology is a science, a science which embraces the whole field of human activity. Archaeology, in other words, is the history of the human race. It is a science which contains within itself all other sciences. The new sciences of psychology and comparative religion owe their being to archaeology, and history itself is merely archaeology in a narrow form. The acquisition of knowledge has been the great aim of humanity since the beginning of time; knowledge of the material world, and knowledge of the spiritual world. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."
