BURIED PALACE FOUND.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 20, 20 December 1932, Page 12

BURIED PALACE FOUND.

FURTHER EXPLORATION. Sir Flinders Petrie, the celebrated archaeologist, was to' leave England recently for South Palestine, where ho will continue the oxcavation of a palace 5000 years old. Sir Flinders is 80 years old. This is his 53rd research expedition. He was to be accompanied by Lady Petrie, who is 57, and is making her 35th expedition. The palace to be excavated, th© lowest and largest of five already unearthed, has a stone frontage of 50ft, and stands in the ancient city of Gaza—old when Abraham was young, and abandoned to build tho relatively modern Gaza of Samson. “Ajjul it was called,” said Lady Petrie. “A key city on the main road from Palestine to Egypt, it was re-discovered two years ago by my husband, and lies on a hill above a dried estuary, ringed by doubl© walls, enclosing about 50 acres. We worked on the south-east corner and soon passed down through three-storeyed houses into a street. We excavated 80 chambers in this street. They were preserved as at Pompeii. In the north, facing the cooler breezes from the Mediterranean, we found the palaces, and though there is a difference of 1600 years between the first one and the last, each has a perfect bathroom, sloped, drained and stuccoed.

“Tho city belonged to the Canaanites, who were conquered by the North Syrians. Then came th© Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, who rode in on horses, animals unknown to these people. We have found the skeletons of these horses carefully buried in the city, cobs 14 hands high. The Hyksos made Ajjul the baso for their conquest of Lower daggers are plentiful among th© finds, and there are two spread gold falcon pendants, that were probably dropped by careless women in the streets 4000 years ago. The most interesting piece of jewellery was a, pair of gold torque ear-rings made in Ireland worn at Ajjul in 1500 8.C.” Anne, th© daughter of Sir Flinders and Lady Petrie, will help her father. “And will. I hope, help me,” . added Lady Petrie. “I have to organise 400 Bedouin Arabs as workmen, as well as the commissariat.”