Kirsopp Lake at Serabit to Excavate Temple of Goddess Hathor, the Woman With Cow's Horns

Members of the Harvard archaeological expedition to Egypt headed by Kirsopp Lake, professor of History, are reported to be working on the site of ancient turquoise mines at Serabit which has long been famous for its ruined temple of the goddess Hather. She is usually represented with cow's horns and wearing a moon-shaped disc.

Numerous expeditions have been made to the ancient mining town and the principal work at present is in cleaning the debris from former visitors in preparation for excavation on the site. Accompanying Professor Lake are Richard F. S. Starr, Research Fellow of Fogg Art Museum, and Mrs. Silva Lake, a former Guggonheim Fellow.

In 1904-05, Sir W. M. Flinders Petric, British archacologist, visited the temple and the mines and found proto-Sinattic inscriptions in an unknown script, apparently a Semitic alphabet derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs, of great interest to philologists. Harvard expeditions in 1927 and 1930 visited Serabit and carried forward Petrie's investigations of the temple and mines, but no excavation of the temple was attempted.

The temple, situated as it was in a barren mountain region far from any town, was built and maintained by the ancient Egyptians solely in connection with the turquoise mines at that point from approximately 3000 B. C. to 1500 B. C. The mines were exploited by the Egyptians from the twelfth to the eighteenth dynastics, and probably were also worked intermittently by the local tribes.