In an older generation, especially among the writers of the more lurid types of fiction, it was an accepted axiom that “Dead men tell no tales!” But this was before the great era of modern archeology had impressed its findings on the general public, and indeed before most of those discoveries had been made.
Our generation knows better. Dead men do tell tales, and marvelous and wonderful are the stories they bring to us. By means of an archeological resurrection, the great men of antiquity are with us again. Once more we hear the accounts of their fascinating lives and adventures, and read again the records of their culture. The tongueless tombs of the distant past have suddenly become vocal, and this mighty chorus of the dead great has forced us to revise many of our once cherished opinions.
Nowhere is this more strikingly true than in the case of the coincidence of these old ages with the page of the Holy Bible. The richest finds of archeology come to us from the very periods of history that are dealt with in the pages of Holy Writ, and names that were known only from the record of the Scripture are now the common possession of the scholarly world. So much is this the case, that we have a new technique of Bible study in our day. Just as the microscope is the instrument for the study of biology, and the spectroscope has become the means of study in physics, so the Bible is best read today in the light that is reflected upon its pages from the blade of a spade! This, of course, is intended to apply to the historical sections of the Book, and refers to the problem of its authenticity and historicity. It still remains true that spiritual understanding of its message can be derived only from study that is supervised and directed by the Holy Spirit.
This volume, the fourth in the promised series to be known as the
“JOHN LAURENCE FROST
MEMORIAL LIBRARY”
will deal with some of those fascinating discoveries that bear particularly on the problem of the Old Testament. The succeeding and companion volume, which will be entitled “Crying Stones,” will deal in like manner with the records of the New Testament.
The material contained in this apologetic is derived from various sources. Much of it came from records in the famed British Museum, in London, England. This marvelous storehouse of treasure from the most remote antiquity is the greatest collection of evidence bearing upon these questions, that is at present in the possession of man. There is scarcely a section of the Bible that does not receive some authentication from the limitless wealth of this noble treasury.
A great deal of the remainder of this information and proof has been derived from other museums, such as the Egyptian Museum at Cairo, Egypt, and the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania. Much of the contents of this book has come from the excavations now in progress in Egypt, and from the ruins at Sakkara, Luxor, Karnak, Iraq, and other centers of present activity. The earth seems eager indeed to offer its treasures of proof concerning the Word of God.
The author is especially grateful for the help accorded to him in Egypt by Mr. and Mrs. Erian Boutros of Cairo, and by certain officials of the Egyptian government, chief of whom in helpfulness was M. Abdul Nabi, and the Egyptian Tourist Bureau, whose gracious efforts on our behalf won us many privileges from the Department of Antiquities.
The illustrations used in this volume are largely from the author’s own photographs of exhibits and evidences, made by him and presented with the assurance that they are not retouched or altered in any manner. In the course of his studies and travels in search of this material, he made hundreds of negatives, only a few of which appear in this work. The exceptions to this are noted where they appear. The zinc etchings are made from original drawings by Miss Elizabeth Elverhoy from our photographs, and are authentic in all details.
We hand you now Tales of Dead Men, rendered by Men Long Dead, as they unconsciously accredit the sacred page of the Word of God. If you have a tithe of the pleasure and profit in the reading of these pages that we have experienced in the gathering of their contents, we shall be repaid for the labor involved.