Dows Dunham Recollections of an Egyptologist

ed spot. I asked the boy if he had seen the snake, and he said that he
had not, for it was too dark, but the bite was very painful, and he knew
his hour had come. I told him I would take him to the hospital, but first
I would give him a drink of whiskey to make him strong till I could get
him to the doctor in Cairo with my car, a trip of some eight miles. The
boy replied that he could not drink whiskey, as it was against his
religion, but I told him he must or he would die. I am quite sure he
believed me, but he still refused, saying “If it is God’s will, I must die,
but I cannot do something prohibited by Allah.” I got him in the car
and drove him to the hospital in Cairo, where they gave him an antivenin
injection. In a few days he recovered, for it proved to be only the
sting of a scorpion, which, though very painful, is seldom fatal to a
person in normal health. Nevertheless, 1 was greatly impressed by his
faithfulness to his religious beliefs.
Speaking of scorpions, I recall another incident that occurred later on
- in 1924, I think - at Sakkara. A boy aged perhaps twelve from the
nearby village, who was employed as a basket carrier, was stung by a
scorpion in the small of the back. The creature had crawled out of the
basket of dirt that the boy carried on his shoulder. A sting in such a
location on a boy of this age could easily be fatal. It so happened that I
had provided myself with antivenin serum in case my own children
should be stung, and I was able very promptly to inject this into the
child. I then took him to the local doctor for further precautionary
treatment, and he went home to his village and I saw him no more.
Some ten years later on a brief visit to Sakkara to see how the work there
was progressing, I was walking alone across from the excavations to the
house that served as headquarters when I noticed a man coming across
the desert in such a way as to intercept me. I did not know him, but he
was a large man, rather shabby looking and apparently not recently
shaven, and I said to myself “I don’t much like your looks.” The man
came directly in front of me and planted himself in the path facing me,
so I stopped and looked at him not too cordially. “Are you Mr. Dunham?”
he asked. “Yes,” I replied, “what do you want?” He then
reached out, seized my hand, and kissed it. “Why did you do that?” I
asked. “You saved my life, and I wish to thank you,” answered the man.
“I am the boy that was stung by the scorpion, and you gave me medicine
so that I did not die.”
During my second year at Sakkara, I worked partly at Dahshur, a few
miles south of Sakkara, where the Egyptian government was excavating
the Mastabet-el Faraoun under the supervision of Gustave Jequier. I
had a Model T Ford car in which I went to the site over the desert.
There was no road, but I was able to work out a route that, with a little
practice, usually obviated getting stuck in the sand. Occasionally, however,
I would get stuck, but since the workmen at either Sakkara or
Dahshur were within hailing distance, it sufficed for me to blow my
horn and wave to have a few men come running to push me out, and
the delay was not serious. I used the car also, from time to time, to drive
to Giza, Cairo, or Lisht, where the Metropolitan Museum was digging
under the supervision of Ambrose Lansing. The roads were quite passable,
being built on the tops of irrigation embankments through the
cultivation, but they were of single track width, and passing presented
a problem. One day my wife and I drove over to Lisht in the
afternoon for a visit with the Lansings, to see their dig and to have
supper with them. Returning about IO P.M. along the dike road, my
headlights picked up a group of men lined up across the road with guns
pointed at the car, and so we drew up in front of them. They were the
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