Science: After 7,000 Years

One of the oldest cities of which any record remains was Heliopolis (Greek for “City of the Sun”), prehistoric Egypt’s capital and sacred seat of the sun god, Ra. Little is known about this late Stone Age city except that it was destroyed by war about 5000 B.C. Last week from Cairo came the news that archeologists, after long search, have finally found its site. The real discoverer, oddly, was a German professor in Berlin.

Archeologists have long supposed that the site lay somewhere near the modern town of Heliopolis, a Cairo suburb. But Professor Herman Junker, in a recent Berlin lecture, advanced a new theory: he had found an old tomb inscription placing Heliopolis near Helwan, an ancient town on the Nile south of Cairo. He advised Egyptologists to dig in a large necropolis (cemetery), well-known to archeologists, near Helwan.

When a report of Junker’s lecture trickled through neutral countries to Cairo, archeologists began digging. Sure enough, they soon unearthed tomb writings definitely identifying the necropolis as Heliopolis’ cemetery. Dr. Etienne Drioton, director of Egypt’s Antiquities Service, last week reported that the diggers had already turned up valuable information about the city’s Stone Age inhabitants. Digging continues.