On Friday, the 21st, Mr. Howard Carter lectured on the
discovery of the Tomb of Tutankhamen. Many people do not perhaps realize that the work at Thebes has only _ begun and that it is estimated that it will take at least two or three years to remove all the precious objects from the tomb. Then and only then will be completed this strange and tragic story of the spoliation of one civilization by another—the appropriation of the most sacred relics that mark one of the supreme points of one epoch of human greatness to serve as the museum specimens of another. Not indeed that there is room for protest. Lord Carnarvon and Mr. Carter were but instruments of a natural law which it would be futile to attempt to suspend. Mr. Carter told his audience that the chief lesson of the discovery was that the world had not progressed in artistic achievement since the era of the XVIII. Egyptian Dynasty. But if the tomb is to show us that all is vanity, is it not by the reflection that those gorgeous trappings and ample provisions which were buried with the young king to ease his passage to another world have, in fact, but secured him a posthumous fame in this ?
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