Chapter IV: Preface: To the Sixth Volume (3)

An expedition to explore the ruins of Babylon was sent out by
the German Orient Society, in 1899, under the direction of Dr.
Koldewey, an eminent architect and archæologist, who had been
connected with previous works of excavation done in Babylonia
and northern Syria. In announcing the project, in the "Sunday
School Times" of January 28, 1899, Professor Hilprecht
remarked: "These extended ruins will require at least fifty
years of labor if they are to be excavated as thoroughly and
systematically as the work is done by the American expedition
at Nippur, which has employed in its trenches never less than
sixty, but frequently from two hundred to four hundred, Arabic
workmen at the same time during the last ten years. Certain
parts of the ruins of Babylon have been previously explored
and excavated by Layard, Rawlinson, and the French expedition
under Fresnel and Oppert, to which we owe the first accurate
details of the topography of this ancient city." Writing
somewhat more than a year later from Nippur, after having
visited the German party at Babylon, Professor Hilprecht said
of its work: "The chief work of the expedition during the past
year was the exploration of the great ruin heap called
El-Kasr, under which are hidden the remains of the palace of
Nebuchadrezzar, where Alexander the Great died after his
famous campaign against India. Among the few important
antiquities so far obtained from this imposing mound of
Ancient Babylon is a new Hittite inscription and a
neo-Babylonian slab with an interesting cuneiform legend. Very
recently, Dr. Koldewey, whose excellent topographical surveys
form a conspicuous part of the results of the first year, has
found the temple of the goddess Nin-Makh, so often mentioned
in the building inscriptions of the neo-Babylonian rulers, and
a little terra-cotta statue of the goddess. The systematic
examination of the enormous mass of ruins covering Ancient
Babylon will require several decenniums of continued hard
labor. To facilitate this great task, a bill has been
submitted to the German Reichstag requesting a yearly
government appropriation of over fifteen thousand dollars,
while at the same time application has been made by the German
Orient Committee to the Ottoman Government for another firman
to carry on excavations at Warka, the biblical Erech, whose
temple archive was badly pillaged by the invading Elamites at
about 2280 B. C."

Some account of results from the uncovering of the palace of
Nebuchadrezzar are quoted from "Die Illustrirte Zeitung" in
the "Scientific American Supplement," December 16, 1899, as
follows: "According to early Babylonian records,
Nebuchadnezzar completed the fortifications of the city, begun
by his father Narbolpolassar, consisting of a double inclosure
of strong walls, the inner called Imgur-Bel ('Bel is
gracious'), the outer Nemitti-Bel ('foundation of Bel'). The
circumference of the latter according to Herodotus was 480
stades (55 miles), its height 340 feet, and its thickness 85
feet. At the inner and outer peripheries, one-story houses
were built, between which was room enough for a chariot drawn
by four horses harnessed abreast. When Koldewey cut through
the eastern front of Al Kasr, he came upon a wall which was
undoubtedly that described by Herodotus. The outer eastern
shell was composed of burnt brick and asphalt, 24 feet in
thickness; then came a filling of sand and broken stone 70½
feet in thickness, which was followed by an inner western
shell of 43 feet thickness. The total thickness was,
therefore, 137.5 feet. By dint of hard work this wall was cut
through and the entrance to Nebuchadnezzar's palace laid bare.
Koldewey and his men were enabled to verify the description
given by Diodorus of the polychromatic reliefs which graced
the walls of the royal towers and palaces. It still remains to
be seen how trustworthy are the statements of other ancient
historians. The city itself, as previous investigators have
found, was adorned with many temples, chief among them Esaglia
('the high towering house'), temple of the city, and the national
god Marduk (Merodach) and his spouse Zirpanit. Sloping toward
the river were the Hanging Gardens, one of the world's seven
wonders, located in the northern mound of the ruins of Babel.
The temple described by Herodotus is that of Nebo, in
Borsippa, not far from Babylon, which Herodotus included under
Babylon and which the cuneiform inscriptions term 'Babylon the
Second.' This temple, which in the mound of Birs Nimrûd is the
most imposing ruin of Babylon, is called the 'eternal house'
in the inscriptions; it was restored by Nebuchadnezzar with
great splendor. In form, it is a pyramid built in seven
stages, for which reason it is sometimes referred to as the
'Temple of the Seven Spheres of Heaven and Earth.' The Tower
of Babel, described in Genesis x., is perhaps the same
structure. It remains for the German expedition to continue
its excavations in Nebuchadnezzar's palace."

ARCHÆOLOGICAL RESEARCH: Babylonia:
Discovery of an inscription of Nabonidos,
the last of the Babylonian kings.

"A discovery of the greatest importance has just been made by
Father Scheil, who has for some time been exploring in
Babylonia. In the Mujelibeh mound, one of the principal heaps
of ruins in the 'enciente' of Babylon, he has discovered a
long inscription of Nabonidos, the last of the Babylonian
Kings (B. C. 555-538), which contains a mass of historical and
other data which will be of greatest value to students of this
important period of Babylonian history. The monument in
question is a small 'stela' of diorite, the upper part of
which is broken, inscribed with eleven columns of writing, and
which appears to have been erected early in the King's reign.
It resembles in some measure the celebrated India-House
inscription of Nebuchadnezzar, but is much more full of
historical matter. Its value may be estimated when it is
stated that it contains a record of the war of revenge
conducted by the Babylonians and their Mandian allies against
Assyria, for the destruction of the city by Sennacherib, in B.
C. 698; an account of the election and coronation of Nabonidos
in B. C. 555, and the wonderful dream in which Nebuchadnezzar
appeared to him; as well as an account of the restoration of
the temple of the Moon god at Kharran, accompanied by a
chronological record which enables us to fix the date of the
so-called Scythian invasion. There is also a valuable
reference to the murder of Sennacherib by his son in Tebet, B.
C. 681."

_American Journal of Archœology,
January-March, 1896._

ARCHÆOLOGICAL RESEARCH: Persia:
French exploration of the ruins of Susa,
the capital of ancient Elam.

"In 1897 an arrangement was completed between the French
Government and the Shah of Persia by which the former obtained
the exclusive right of archeological explorations in the
latter's empire, coupled with certain privileges for the
exportation of different kinds of antiquities that might be
unearthed. Soon afterwards, M. J. de Morgan, late director of
excavations in Egypt, who had made archeological researches in
the regions east of the Tigris before, was placed at the head
of a French expedition to Susa, the ancient capital of Elam,
the upper strata of which had been successfully explored by M.
Dieulafoy.
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In the Babylonian cuneiform inscriptions Elam appears as the
most terrible foe of the Babylonian empire from the earliest
time: and the name of its capital, Susa, or Shâsha, was
discovered by the present editor several years ago on a small
votive object in agate, originally manufactured and inscribed
in southern Babylonia, in the first half of the third
pre-christian millennium, several hundred years afterwards
carried away as part of their spoil by the invading Elamites,
and in the middle of the fourteenth century B. C. recaptured,
reinscribed, and presented to the temple of Nippur by King
Kurigalzu, after his conquest of Susa. It was therefore
evident that, if the same method of excavating was applied to
the ruins of Susa as had been applied so successfully by the
University of Pennsylvania's expedition in Nippur, remarkable
results would soon be obtained, and amply repay all labor and
money expended. M. de Morgan, accompanied by some engineers
and architects, set hopefully to work, cutting his trenches
more than fifty feet below the ruins of the Achæmenian
dynasty. The first campaign, 1897-98, was so successful, in
the discovery of buildings and inscribed antiquities, that in
October of last year the French government despatched the
Assyriologist Professor Scheil, in order to decipher the new
cuneiform documents, and to report on their historical
bearings.

"Among the more important finds so far made, but not yet
published, maybe mentioned over a thousand cuneiform tablets
of the earlier period, a beautifully preserved obelisk more
than five feet high, and covered with twelve hundred lines of
Old Babylonian cuneiform writing. It was inscribed and set up
by King Manishtusu, who left inscribed vases in Nippur and
other Babylonian cities. A stele of somewhat smaller size,
representing a battle in the mountains, testifies to the high
development of art at that remote period. On the one end it
bears a mutilated inscription of Narâm-Sin, son of Sargon the
Great (3800 B. C.); on the other, the name of Shimti-Shilkhak,
a well-known Elamitic king, and grandfather of the biblical
Ariokh (Genesis 14). These two monuments were either left in
Susa by the two Babylonian kings whose names they bear, after
successful operations against Elam, or they were carried off
as booty at the time of the great Elamitic invasion, which
proved so disastrous to the treasure-houses and archives of
Babylonian cities and temples [see above: BABYLONIA]. The
latter is more probable to the present writer, who in 1896
('Old Babylonian Inscriptions,' Part II, page 33) pointed out,
in connection with his discussion of the reasons of the
lamentable condition of Babylonian temple archives, that on
the whole we shall look in vain for well-preserved large
monuments in most Babylonian ruins, because about 2280 B. C.
'that which in the eyes of the national enemies of Babylonia
appeared most valuable was carried to Susa and other places:
what did not find favor with them was smashed and scattered on
Babylonian temple courts.'"

_Prof. H. V. Hilprecht,
Oriental Research
(Sunday School Times, January 28, 1809)._

ARCHÆOLOGICAL RESEARCH: Egypt:
Earlier explorations.

For some account of earlier archæological explorations in
Egypt,

See, in volume 1,
EGYPT.

ARCHÆOLOGICAL RESEARCH: Egypt:
Results of recent exploration.
The opening up of prehistoric Egypt.
The tomb of Mena.
The funeral temple of Merenptah.
Single mention of the people of Israel.

"During all this century in which Egyptian history has been
studied at first hand, it has been accepted as a sort of axiom
that the beginnings of things were quite unknown. In the
epitome of the history which was drawn up under the Greeks to
make Egypt intelligible to the rest of the world, there were
three dynasties of kings stated before the time of the great
pyramid builders; and yet of those it has been commonly said
that no trace remained. Hence it has been usual to pass them
by with just a mention as being half fabulous, and then to
begin real history with Senefern or Khufu (Cheops), the kings
who stand at the beginning of the fourth dynasty, at about
4000 B. C. The first discovery to break up this habit of
thought was when the prehistoric colossal statues of Min, the
god of the city of Koptos, were found in my excavations in his
temple. These had carvings in relief upon them wholly
different from anything known as yet in Egypt, and the
circumstances pointed to their being earlier than any carvings
yet found in that country. In the same temple we found also
statues of sacred animals and pottery which we now know to
belong to the very beginning of Egyptian history, many
centuries before the pyramids, and probably about 5000 B. C.
or earlier.

"The next step was the finding of a new cemetery and a town of
the prehistoric people, which we can now date to about 5000 B.
C., within two or three centuries either way. This place lay
on the opposite side of the Nile to Koptos—that is to say,
about 20 miles north of Thebes. At first we were completely
staggered by a class of objects entirely different from any
yet known in Egypt. We tried to fit them into every gap in
Egyptian history, but found that it was impossible to put them
before 3000 B. C. Later discoveries prove that they are really
as old as 5000 B. C. They show a very different civilization
from that of the Egyptians whom we already know—far less
artistic, but in some respects even more skillful in
mechanical taste and touch than the historical Egyptians. They
built brick houses to live in, and buried their dead in small
chambers sunk in the gravels of the water courses, lined with
mats, and roofed over with beams. They show several points of
contact with the early Mediterranean civilization, and appear
to have been mainly north African tribes of European type.
Their pottery, in its patterns and painting, shows designs
which have survived almost unchanged unto the present day
among the Kabyles of the Algerian Mountains. And one very
peculiar type of pottery is found spread from Spain to Egypt,
and indicates a widespread commercial intercourse at that
remote day. The frequent figures upon the vases of great
galley ships rowed with oars show that shipping was well
developed then, and make the evidences of trading between
different countries easy to be accepted.

{19}

"An of the above belongs to the age probably before 4700 B.
C., which is the age given for the first historical king of
Egypt by the Greek history of Manetho. A keystone of our
knowledge of the civilization is the identification of the
tomb of Mena, the first name in Egyptian history, the
venerated founder of all the long series of hundreds of
historic kings. This tomb, about 15 miles north of Thebes, was
found by some Arabs, and shown to Dr. De Morgan, the director
of the Department of Antiquities. It was a mass of about
thirty chambers, built of mud brick and earth. Each chamber
contained a different class of objects, one of stone vases,
one of stone dishes, one of copper tools, one of water jars,
etc. And among the things are carvings of lions and vases in
rock crystal and obsidian, large hard-stone vases, slate
palettes for grinding paint, pottery vases, and, above all, an
ivory tablet with relief carvings which show the names of the
king. Besides this, M. Amelineau has found sixteen tombs of
this same general character at Abydos, which we can hardly now
doubt belong to the early kings of the first three dynasties,
and some four or five have been actually identified with the
names of these kings in the Greek history. So now instead of
treating the first three dynasties as half fabulous and saying
that Egyptian art and civilization begin full blown at 4000 B.
C., we have the clear and tangible remains of much of these
early kings back to 4700 B. C., and a stretch of some
centuries of the prehistoric period with a varied and
distinctive civilization, well known and quite different from
anything later, lying before 4700 B. C. To put the earlier
part of this to 5500 B. C. is certainly no stretch of
probability. …

"We now pass entirely from these early times, with their
fascinating insight into the beginnings of things, long before
any other human history that we possess, until we reach down
to what seems quite modern times in the record of Egypt, where
it comes into contact with the Old Testament history. On
clearing out the funereal temple of King Merenptah I found in
that the upper half of a fine colossal statue of his, with all
the colors still fresh upon it. As this son of Rameses the
Great is generally believed to be the Pharaoh of the exodus,
such a fine portrait of him is full of interest. Better even
than that—I found an immense tablet of black granite over 10
feet high and 5 feet wide. It had been erected over two
centuries before and brilliantly carved by an earlier king,
whose temple was destroyed for materials by Merenptah. He took
this splendid block and turned its face inward against the
wall of his temple and carved the back of it with other scenes
and long inscriptions. Most of it is occupied with the history
of his vanquishing the Libyans, or North African tribes, who
were then invading Egypt. But at the end he recounts his
conquests in Syria, among which occurs the priceless passage:
'The people of Israel are spoiled; they have no seed.' This is
the only trace yet found in Egypt of the existence of the
Israelites, the only mention of the name, and it is several
centuries earlier than the references to the Israelite and
Jewish kings in the cuneiform inscriptions of Assyria. "What
relation this has to our biblical knowledge of the Israelites
is a wide question, that has several possible answers. Without
entering on all the openings, I may here state what seems to
me to be the most probable connection of all the events,
though I am quite aware that fresh discoveries might easily
alter our views. It seems that either all the Israelites did
not go into Egypt or else a part returned and lived in the
north of Palestine before the exodus that we know, because we
here find Merenptah defeating Israelites at about 1200 B. C.
Of his conquest and of those of Rameses III in Palestine there
are no traces in the biblical accounts, the absence of which
indicates that the entry into Canaan took place after 1160 B.
C., the last war of Rameses III. Then the period of the Judges
is given in a triple record—(l) of the north, (2) of the east
of the Jordan, (3) of Ephraim and the west; and these three
accounts are quite distinct and never overlap, though the
history passes in succession from one to another. Thus the
whole age of Judges is but little over a century. And to this
agree the priestly genealogies stretching between the
tabernacle and temple periods.

"Leaving now all the monumental age, we come lastly to the
evidences of the Christian period, preserved in the papyri or
miscellaneous waste papers left behind in the towns of the
Roman times. Last winter my friends, Mr. Grenfell and Mr.
Hunt, cleared out the remains of the town Behnesa, about 110
miles south of Cairo. There, amid thousands of stray papers,
documents, rolls, accounts, and all the waste sweepings out of
the city offices, they found two leaves which are priceless in
Christian literature—the leaf of Logia, or sayings of Jesus,
and the leaf of Matthew's Gospel. The leaf of the Logia is
already so widely known that it is needless for me to describe
it. … The leaf of Matthew's Gospel is of great interest in the
literary history of the Gospels. Hitherto we have had no
manuscripts older than the second great ecclesiastical
settlement under Theodosius. Now we have a piece two ages
earlier—before the first settlement of things under
Constantine at the council of Nicea. Here, in the middle of
the third century, we find that the beginning of the Gospel,
the most artificial, and probably the latest, part, the
introductory genealogy and account of the Nativity, was
exactly in its present form. This gives us the greatest
confidence that the Gospel as we have it dates from the time
of the great persecutions. Such are some of the astonishing
and far-reaching results that Egypt has given us within three
years past."

_W. M. Flinders Petrie,
Recent Research in Egypt
(Sunday School Times, February 19, 1898.)_

In a later article, contributed to the "Popular Science
Monthly," Professor Petrie has described more fully the
results of recent exploration in Egypt, especially with
reference to the discovery and study of prehistoric remains.
The following are passages from the article: "The great stride
that has been made in the last six years is the opening up of
prehistoric Egypt, leading us back some 2000 years before the
time of the pyramid builders. Till recently nothing was known
before the age of the finest art and the greatest buildings,
and it was a familiar puzzle how such a grand civilization
could have left no traces of its rise. This was only a case of
blindness on the part of explorers. Upper Egypt teems with
prehistoric remains, but, as most of what appears is dug up by
plunderers for the market, until there is a demand for a class
of objects, very little is seen of them. Now that the
prehistoric has become fashionable, it is everywhere to be
seen. The earlier diggers were dazzled by the polished
colossi, the massive buildings, the brilliant sculptures of
the well-known historic times, and they had no eyes for small
graves, containing only a few jars or, at best, a flint knife.

{20}

"The present position of the prehistory of Egypt is that we
can now distinguish two separate cultures before the beginning
of the Egyptian dynasties, and we can clearly trace a sequence
of manufactures and art throughout long ages before the pyramid
builders, or from say 6000 B. C., giving a continuous history
of 8000 years for man in Egypt. Continuous I say advisedly,
for some of the prehistoric ways are those kept up to the
present time. In the earliest stages of this prehistoric
culture metal was already used and pottery made. Why no ruder
stages are found is perhaps explained by the fact that the
alluvial deposits of the Nile do not seem to be much older
than 8000 years. The rate of deposit is well known—very
closely one metre in a thousand years—and borings show only
eight metres thick of Nile mud in the valley. Before that the
country had enough rain to keep up the volume of the river,
and it did not drop its mud. It must have run as a rapid
stream through a barren land of sand and stones, which could
not support any population except paleolithic hunters. With
the further drying of the climate, the river lost so much
velocity that its mud was deposited, and the fertile mud flats
made cultivation and a higher civilization possible. At this
point a people already using copper came into the country. …

"The second prehistoric civilization seems to have belonged to
a people kindred to that of the first age, as much of the
pottery continued unchanged, and only gradually faded away.
But a new style arose of a hard, buff pottery, painted with
patterns and subjects in red outline. Ships are represented
with cabins on them, and rowed by a long bank of oars. The use
of copper became more general, and gold and silver appear
also. … Though this civilization was in many respects higher
than that which preceded it, yet it was lower artistically,
the figures being ruder and always flat, instead of in the
round. …

"The separation of these two different ages has been entirely
reached by the classification of many hundreds of tombs, the
original order of which could be traced by the relation of
their contents. … The material for this study has come
entirely from excavations of my own party at Nagada (1895),
Abadiyeh, and Hu (1899); but great numbers of tombs of these
same ages have been opened without record by Dr. de Morgan
(1896-1897), and by French and Arab speculators in
antiquities. The connection between these prehistoric ages and
the early historic times of the dynastic kings of Egypt is yet
obscure. The cemeteries which would have cleared this have
unhappily been looted in the last few years without any
record, and it is only the chance of some new discoveries that
can be looked to for filling up the history.

"We can at least say that the pottery of the early kings is
clearly derived from the later prehistoric types, and that
much of the civilization was in common. But it is clear that
the second prehistoric civilization was degrading and losing
its artistic taste for fine work before the new wave of the
dynastic or historic Egyptians came in upon it. These early
historic people are mainly known by the remains of the tombs
of the early kings, found by M. Amelineau at Abydos
(1896-1899), and probably the first stage of the same race is
seen in the rude colossi of the god Min, which I found at
Koptos (1894). … In these great discoveries of the last few
years we can trace at least three successive peoples, and see
the gradual rise of the arts, from the man who was buried in
his goat skins, with one plain cup by him, up to the king who
built great monuments and was surrounded by most sumptuous
handiwork. We see the rise of the art of exquisite flint
flaking, and the decline of that as copper came more commonly
into use. We see at first the use of signs, later on disused
by a second race, and then superseded by the elaborate
hieroglyph system of the dynastic race. …

"Turning now to the purely classical Egyptian work, the
principal discoveries of the last few years have given us new
leading examples in every line. The great copper statue of
King Pepy, with his son, dates from before 3000 B. C. It is
over life size, and entirely wrought in hammered copper,
showing a complete mastery in metal work of the highest
artistic power. … Many of the royal temples of the 19th
dynasty at Thebes were explored by the English in 1896. The
Ramesseum was completely examined, through all the maze of
stone chambers around it. But the most important result was
the magnificent tablet of black granite, about 10 feet high
and 5 wide, covered on one side with an inscription of Amen
Hotep III, and on the other side with an inscription of
Merenptah. The latter account, of about 1200 B. C., mentions
the war with the 'People of Israel'; this is the only naming
of Israel on Egyptian records, and is several centuries
earlier than any Assyrian record of the Hebrews. …

"One of the most important results of historical Egyptian
times is the light thrown on prehistoric Greek ages. The
pottery known as 'Mykenæan' since the discoveries of
Schliemann in the Peloponnesus was first dated in Egypt at
Gurob in 1889; next were found hundreds of vase fragments at
Tell el Amarna in 1892; and since then several Egyptian kings'
names have been found on objects in Greece, along with such
pottery. The whole of this evidence shows that the grand age
of prehistoric Greece, which can well compare with the art of
classical Greece, began about 1600 B. C., was at its highest
point about 1400 B. C., and became decadent about 1200 B. C.,
before its overthrow by the Dorian invasion. Besides this
dating, Greece is indebted to Egypt for the preservation of
the oldest texts of its classics."

_W. M. Flinders Petrie,
Recent Years of Egyptian Exploration
(Appleton's Popular Science Monthly, April, 1900)._

Still later, in an address at the annual meeting of the Egypt
Exploration Fund, November 7, 1900, Professor Petrie summed up
with succinctness the gains to our knowledge of early man from
the later researches in Egypt. "How many controversies," he
said, "had waged over Manetho! And now from the Royal tombs of
Abydos we had seen and handled this summer the drinking bowls and
furniture of the Kings of the first dynasty, even the property
of Menes himself, the first King of United Egypt. The early
Kings, whom we had scarcely believed in, even Mena who had
been proclaimed a mythical version of the Cretan Minos and the
Indian Manu, came now before us as real and as familiarly as
the Kings of the 30th dynasty or of Saxon England; and never
before had so remote a period been brought so completely
before us as it had been in the work this year at Abydos.
{21}
And how did Manetho and the State history of Seti bear the
test? Five Kings we could already identify out of the eight
recorded for the first dynasty. Those five are proved to have
been recorded in their correct order, although the time of the
first dynasty was so remote from even that of Seti that all
the names had become slightly altered by transmission. It was
to be remembered that the first dynasty was older to Seti than
the Exodus was to us. Now that we were no longer afraid of our
own rashness in assigning anything to a date before the fourth
dynasty, and could deal with the earliest periods back to the
first entry of agricultural man into Egypt, we could see more
of the perspective of history. We saw palæolithic man
scattering his massive flint weapons until the age of Nile mud
(beginning about 7000 B. C.) made agriculture possible, and a
Caucasian race ousted the palæolithic folks, whose portraits
were left us in the figures found in the earliest graves. We
saw this oldest race of man to have been of the Hottentot
type, but even more hairy than the Hottentot, with the traces
of his original Northern habitation not yet wiped off by
tropical suns. Then we saw a rapidly rising civilization
already knowing metals linked with the modern Kabyle both by
bodily formation and by existing products. Next after some
dozen generations we could trace strong Eastern or Semitic
influence, which carried on this civilization to a higher
point in many respects; and then decay set in and the first
cycle that we could trace was completed. The next cycle began
with the entry of the dynastic race from the Red Sea,
possessing the elements of hieroglyphic writing and far more
artistic sense and power than the earlier people. In some
three or four centuries they had gradually conquered and
invaded all the races scattered through Egypt—long-haired,
short-haired, bearded and unbearded, clothed and unclothed;
and the first King of all Egypt, who founded his new capital
at the mouth of the valley, was Mena. The era of consolidation
which preceded him was stated by Manetho as the dynasty of ten
Kings of Abydos, who reigned for 300 years; it was a time of
rapidly increasing civilization, during which most of the main
features of Egyptian language, life, and art were stamped for
5,000 years to come. From the Royal tombs of Abydos we could
see now how this art rose to its finest age in the middle of
the first dynasty, and was decaying and becoming cheaper and
more common by the end of that time. Probably we should see
that this cycle was fading when some new impetus gave birth to
the colossal ages of the pyramid builders. That grand period
we now see to have been the third cycle of civilization and
art, which was renewed again and again until we might see in
the brilliance of the Fatimite dynasty the seventh of the
great eras of Egypt. Such was the wider aspect of human
history which the work solely of English exploration in Egypt
now put before us. It might be safely said that there had
never been a greater extension of knowledge of man's past in
any decade than the discoveries of the last five years had
unfolded. Details yet awaited us, but the main lines were all
marked out, and their work of the future was to complete the
picture of which we now had the full extent before us. What,
now, would occupy the coming winter was the exploration of the
remaining Royal tombs."

ARCHÆOLOGICAL RESEARCH: Egypt:
Discovery of a fragment of the Logia, or Sayings of Jesus.

During the winter of 1896-1897, Messrs. Bernard P. Grenfell
and Arthur S. Hunt conducted excavations for the Egypt
Exploration Fund on the site of Oxyrhynchus, which was a
flourishing city in the time of Roman rule in Egypt. Large
quantities of papyri were found in the rubbish heaps of the
town, and among them one fragment of special and remarkable
interest,—as thus described by the discoverers, in a brief
report, entitled "Sayings of Our Lord," published by the Egypt
Exploration Fund in 1897: "The document in question is a leaf
from a papyrus book containing a collection of Logia or
Sayings of our Lord, of which some, though presenting several
novel features, are familiar, others are wholly new. It was
found at the very beginning of our work upon the town, in a
mound which produced a great number of papyri belonging to the
first three centuries of our era, those in the immediate
vicinity of our fragment belonging to the second and third
centuries. This fact, together with the evidence of the
handwriting, which has a characteristically Roman aspect,
fixes with certainty 300 A. D. as the lowest limit for the
date at which the papyrus was written. The general
probabilities of the case, the presence of the usual
contractions found in biblical MSS., and the fact that the
papyrus was in book, not roll, form, put the first century out
of the question, and made the first half of the second
unlikely. The date therefore probably falls within the period
150-300 A. D. More than that cannot be said with any approach
to certainty. … The fragment measures 5¾X3¾ inches, but its
height was originally somewhat greater, as it is unfortunately
broken at the bottom."

The following is a translation of the fragmentary sayings
inscribed on the leaf:

"… and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote that
is in thy brother's eye."

"Jesus saith, Except ye fast to the world, ye shall in no wise
find the kingdom of God; and except ye keep the sabbath, ye
shall not see the Father."

"Jesus saith, I stood in the midst of the world, and in the
flesh was I seen of them, and I found all men drunken, and
none found I athirst among them, and my soul grieveth over the
sons of men, because they are blind in their heart. …"

"Jesus saith, Wherever there are … and there is one … alone, I
am with him. Raise the stone and there thou shalt find me,
cleave the wood and there am I."

"Jesus saith, A prophet is not acceptable in his own country,
neither doth a physician work cures upon them that know him."

"Jesus saith, A city built upon the top of a high hill, and
stablished, can neither fall nor be hid."

{22}

ARCHÆOLOGICAL RESEARCH:Egypt:
New discoveries in the tombs of the Valley of the Kings.

In the Valley of the Kings, which extends along the west bank
of the Nile, in the Libyan Mountains, opposite Luxor, M.
Loret, director of the Egyptian explorations, discovered in
1898 the tombs of Thutmosis III. and Amenophis II., and in the
following year made the more important discovery of the tomb of
Thutmosis I., "the real founder of the eighteenth dynasty, who
made Egypt one of the great empires of the ancient world."
Professor Steindorf of the University of Leipsic, writing of
this discovery to Professor Hilprecht of the University of
Pennsylvania, remarked that its special importance "lies in
the fact that Thutmosis I, the earliest king of the eighteenth
dynasty, was also the first ruler to depart from the ancient
custom of the Pharaohs, that of building in the desert lowland
pyramidal tombs. For himself he had a tomb hewn out of rock in
the mountains. His predecessor, Amenophis I, according to
custom, built his tomb in the plain, near the present site of
Drah-abul-negge, as we know from written records. Thutmosis I,
on the contrary, chose for his last dwelling-place the lonely
and majestic valley in the Libyan Mountains. For centuries the
Pharaohs followed his example, and during the eighteenth,
nineteenth, and twentieth dynasties were built those
magnificent sepulchers which in Roman times were still among
the greatest curiosities of ancient Thebes. …

"Chief among the articles that Mr. Loret found in the tomb is
a remarkably well-preserved papyrus containing texts from the
Book of the Dead, with colored pictures finely executed; also
a chest in which were kept a draught-board, with a full set of
draughtmen, and some garlands; likewise fruit, food, poultry,
and beef. The last-mentioned articles, being intended for the
sustenance of the dead, each one was wrapped in linen and
enclosed in a wooden case, exactly corresponding to its form.
Thirteen large earthen beer jars, most of which, with their
seals, stood there unmarred, and a large number of other
vessels, had contained the beverages necessary for the
refreshment of the dead. Weapons, among others two
artistically wrought leathern quivers containing arrows, and
two beautiful armchairs, completed this strange stock of
equipments. The most remarkable piece of all is a large and
beautifully preserved couch, the like of which has never been
found in any other tomb. It consists of a quadrangular wooden
frame, overspread with a thick rush mat, and over this were
stretched three layers of linen with a life-size figure of the
god of death, Osiris, drawn upon the outer layer. The figure
itself was smeared with some material intended to make the
under layer waterproof. Over this, mingled with some adhesive
substance, soil had been spread, in which barley was planted.
The grains had sprouted, and had grown to the height of from
two and a half to three inches. The whole, therefore,
represented a couch whereon the dead Osiris lay figured in
greensward. Verily, a striking poetical idea, the resurrection
of the dead symbolized by the picture of the barley springing
up. The whole tomb, with its numerous equipments, furnishes a
very important contribution to the history of the methods of
burial among the ancient Egyptians."

_Sunday School Times,
July 8, 1899._

ARCHÆOLOGICAL RESEARCH: Egypt:
Fall of eleven columns of the great temple at Karnak.

"From Professor Georg Steindorff, of the University of
Leipsic, comes the following: 'In the covered colonnade of the
great temple at Karnak extensive restorations have lately been
undertaken, rendered necessary by a most deplorable accident,
which, about a year ago, befell this grandest of all Egyptian
edifices. It occurred on the morning of October 3, 1899, in
the colonnade which was built by Ramses I, Sethos I, and
Ramses II, and which is doubtless familiar to all in
engravings and photographs. In the northeastern part of this
structure as many as eleven immense columns fell, and were
totally wrecked, while several others are leaning over so that
they might fall at any time. By this event the magnificent
structure has been utterly ruined, and it now presents a
dreary aspect. The cause of this catastrophe has not been
definitely ascertained. The first thought was of an
earthquake, but nothing of the sort was experienced elsewhere
in Egypt on the morning of the day above mentioned. It is more
likely that during the thirty-two hundred years of the
building's existence, the material used in its construction
had greatly deteriorated, and that this fact increased the
possibility of a collapse. Then, also, in the main hall during
recent years, the work of excavation and restoration was carried
on with little regard for the dilapidated condition of the
temple, which was weakened rather than strengthened by this
work. But especially for the last four years, during the
inundation of the Nile, the hall, by artificial means, has
been flooded in order to extract and remove the salt which had
formed. By this periodical flooding and drying of the ground
the foundations have been very badly damaged. This, according
to Dr. Borchardt, is the prime cause of the ruin. First the
ground gave way under a column, which then toppled, and, in
falling, brought down the others with it.

"We must recognize the zeal with which the Egyptian
Government, especially the department of Egyptian Antiquities,
with its Director-General, Professor Maspero, came to the
rescue of the ill-fated edifice. To prevent further
catastrophe, they first proceeded to remove the architraves
from five of the endangered columns, and to reduce the height
of the columns to about twenty feet. This was accomplished by
filling with sand that portion of the hall in which the
columns stood, and then rolling the separate parts down the
inclined plane formed by the sand. The north portion of the
pylon terminating the colonnade toward the east—that is,
toward the Nile—had badly suffered by the disaster. There were
cracks in it so large as to cause the fear that it might some
day collapse. After prompt and thorough work this danger also
was obviated. Later on the ruins of the eleven fallen columns
are to be removed, and the foundations of the hall examined.
Then everything possible will be done to make the ground
solid, and the attempt will be made to erect again the ruined
columns. But whether the beautiful colonnade will ever resume
its former appearance, whether it will ever again make upon
the visitor such an overpowering impression as formerly, may
well be a matter of serious doubt. Ancient Thebes has lost one
of its most beautiful monuments.'"

_Sunday School Times,
December 1, 1900._

ARCHÆOLOGICAL RESEARCH: Egypt:
Discovery of the Serapeion at Alexandria.

"The excavations by Dr. Botti, the Director of the Alexandrian
Museum, in the neighborhood of Pompey's Pillar, have resulted
in the discovery of the Serapeion, where the last of the great
libraries of Alexandria was preserved. An elaborate account of
his researches, with an admirable plan, has been given by the
discoverer in a memoir on 'L'Acropole d'Alexandrie et le
Sérapeum,' presented to the Archæological Society of
Alexandria. … Dr. Botti was first led to make his explorations
by a passage in the orator Aphthonios, who visited Alexandria
about A. D. 315."

_American Journal of Archœology,
January-arch, 1896._

{23}

ARCHÆOLOGICAL RESEARCH: Crete:
Recent explorations.
Supposed discovery of the Palace of Minos
and the Cretan Labyrinth.
Fresh light on prehistoric Greece
and the origin of the alphabet.

Results of extraordinary importance have been already obtained
from explorations in Crete, carried on during 1899 and 1900 by
the British School at Athens, under the direction of Mr. D. G.
Hogarth, and by Mr. Arthur J. Evans, of the Ashmolean Museum,
working with the aid of a small Cretan Exploration Fund,
raised in England. The excavations of both parties were
carried on at Knossos, but the latter was the most fortunate,
having opened the site of a prehistoric palace which is
yielding remarkable revelations of the legendary age in Crete.
In a communication to the "London Times" of October 31, 1900,
Mr. Evans gave the following account of the results so far as
then obtained:

"The discoveries made at Knossos throw into the shade all the
other exploratory campaigns of last season in the Eastern
Mediterranean, by whatever nationality conducted. It is not
too much to say that the materials already gathered have
revolutionized our knowledge of prehistoric Greece, and that
to find even an approach to the results obtained we must go
back to Schliemann's great discovery of the Royal tombs at
Mycenae. The prehistoric site, of which some two acres have
now been uncovered at Knossos, proves to contain a palace
beside which those of Tiryns and Mycenae sink into
insignificance. By an unhoped-for piece of good fortune the
site, though in the immediate neighbourhood of the greatest
civic centres of the island in ancient, medieval, and modern
times, had remained practically untouched for over 3,000
years. At but a very slight depth below the surface of the
ground the spade has uncovered great courts and corridors,
propylaea, a long succession of magazines containing gigantic
store jars that might have hidden the Forty Thieves, and a
multiplicity of chambers, pre-eminent among which is the
actual throne-room and council-chamber of Homeric kings. The
throne itself, on which (if so much faith be permitted to us)
Minos may have declared the law, is carved out of alabaster,
once brilliant with coloured designs and relieved with curious
tracery and crocketed arcading which is wholly unique in
ancient art and exhibits a strange anticipation of 13th
century Gothic. In the throne-room, the western entrance
gallery, and elsewhere, partly still adhering to the walls,
partly in detached pieces on the floors, was a series of
fresco paintings, excelling any known examples of the art in
Mycenaean Greece. A beautiful life-size painting of a youth,
with a European and almost classically Greek profile, gives us
the first real knowledge of the race who produced this
mysterious early civilization. Other frescoes introduce us to
a lively and hitherto unknown miniature style, representing,
among other subjects, groups of women engaged in animated
conversation in the courts and on the balconies of the Palace.
The monuments of the sculptor's art are equally striking. It
may be sufficient to mention here a marble fountain in the
shape of a lioness's head with enamelled eyes, fragments of a
frieze with beautifully cut rosettes, superior in its kind to
anything known from Mycenae; an alabaster vase
naturalistically copied from a Triton shell; a porphyry lamp
with graceful foliation supported on an Egyptianising lotus
column. The head and parts of the body of a magnificent
painted relief of a bull in gesso duro are unsurpassed for
vitality and strength.

"It is impossible here to refer more than incidentally to the
new evidence of intercourse between Crete and Egypt at a very
remote period supplied by the Palace finds of Knossos. It may
be mentioned, however, as showing the extreme antiquity of the
earlier elements of the building that in the great Eastern
Court was found an Egyptian seated figure of diorite, broken
above, which can be approximately dated about 2000 B. C. Below
this again extends a vast Stone Age settlement which forms a
deposit in some places 24 ft. in thickness.

"Neither is it possible here to dwell on the new indications
supplied by some of the discoveries in the 'House of Minos' as
to the cult and religious beliefs of its occupants. It must be
sufficient to observe that one of the miniature frescoes found
represents the façade of a Mycenaean shrine and that the
Palace itself seems to have been a sanctuary of the Cretan God
of the Double Axe, as well as a dwelling place of prehistoric
kings. There can be little remaining doubt that this huge
building with its maze of corridors and tortuous passages, its
medley of small chambers, its long succession of magazines
with their blind endings, was in fact the Labyrinth of later
tradition which supplied a local habitation for the Minotaur
of grisly fame. The great figures of bulls in fresco and
relief that adorned the walls, the harem scenes of some of the
frescoes, the corner stones and pillars marked with the labrys
or double axe—the emblem of the Cretan Zeus, explaining the
derivation of the name 'Labyrinth' itself—are so many details
which all conspire to bear out this identification. In the
Palace-shrine of Knossos there stands at last revealed to us
the spacious structure which the skill of Daedalus is said to
have imitated from the great Egyptian building on the shore of
Lake Moeris, and with it some part at least of his fabled
masterpieces still clinging to the walls.

"But, brilliant as are the illustrations thus recovered of the
high early civilization of the City of Minos and of the
substantial truth of early tradition, they are almost thrown
into the shade by a discovery which carries back the existence
of written documents in the Hellenic lands some seven
centuries beyond the first known monuments of the historic
Greek writing. In the chambers and magazines of the Palace
there came to light a series of deposits of clay tablets, in
form somewhat analogous to the Babylonian, but inscribed with
characters in two distinct types of indigenous prehistoric
script—one hieroglyphic or quasi-pictorial, the other linear.
The existence of a hieroglyphic script in the island had been
already the theme of some earlier researches by the explorer
of the Palace, based on the more limited material supplied by
groups of signs on a class of Cretan seal-stones, and the
ample corroboration of the conclusions arrived at was,
therefore, the more satisfactory. These Cretan hieroglyphs
will be found to have a special importance in their bearing on
the origin of the Phoenician alphabet.

{24}

"But the great bulk of the tablets belonged to the linear
class, exhibiting an elegant and much more highly-developed
form of script, with letters of an upright and singularly
European aspect. The inscriptions, over 1,000 of which were
collected, were originally contained in coffers of clay, wood,
and gypsum, which had been in turn secured by clay seals
impressed with finely-engraved signets and counter-marked and
counter-signed by controlling officials in the same script
while the clay was still wet. The clay documents themselves
are, beyond doubt, the Palace archives. Many relate to
accounts concerning the Royal Arsenal, stores, and treasures.
Others, perhaps, like the contemporary cuneiform tablets,
refer to contracts or correspondence. The problems attaching
to the decipherment of these clay records are of enthralling
interest, and we have here locked up for us materials which
may some day enlarge the bounds of history."

In an earlier communication to "The Times" (September 15), Mr.
Evans had explained more distinctly the importance of the clay
tablets found at Knossos, as throwing light on the origin of
the alphabet: "In my excavation of the pre-historic Palace at
Knossos," he wrote, "I came upon a series of deposits of clay
tablets, representing the Royal archives, the inscriptions on
which belong to two distinct systems of writing—one
hieroglyphic and quasi-pictorial; the other for the most part
linear and much more highly developed. Of these the
hieroglyphic class especially presents a series of forms
answering to what, according to the names of the Phoenician
letters, we must suppose to have been the original pictorial
designs from which these, too, were derived. A series of
conjectural reconstructions of the originals of the Phoenician
letters on this line were in fact drawn out by my father, Sir
John Evans, for a lecture on the origin of the alphabet given
at the Royal Institution in 1872, and it may be said that
two-thirds of these resemble almost line for line actual forms
of Cretan hieroglyphics. The oxhead (Aleph), the house (Beth),
the window (He), the peg (Vau), the fence (Cheth), the hand
(Yod) seen sideways, and the open palm (Kaph), the fish (Nun),
the post or trunk (Samekh), the eye (Ain), the mouth, (Pe),
the teeth (Shin), the cross-sign (Tau), not to speak of
several other probable examples, are all literally reproduced.

"The analogy thus supplied is indeed overwhelming. It is
impossible to believe that, while on one side of the East
Mediterranean basin these alphabetic prototypes were naturally
evolving themselves, the people of the opposite shore were
arriving at the same result by a complicated process of
selection and transformation of a series of hieratic Egyptian
signs derived from quite different objects. The analogy with
the Cretan hieroglyphic forms certainly weighs strongly in
favour of the simple and natural explanation of the origin of
the Phoenician letters which was held from the time of
Gesenius onwards, and was only disturbed by the extremely
ingenious, though over-elaborate, theory of De Rougé."

At the annual meeting of the subscribers to the British School
at Athens, held in London, October 30, 1900, Mr. Hogarth, the
Director, spoke with great enthusiasm of the significance of
the Cretan discoveries already made, and of the promise of
enlarged knowledge which they gave. He said: "The discovery
made 25 years ago [by Schliemann] that no barbarians, but
possessors of a very high and individual culture, preceded the
Hellenic period in Greece—a culture which could not but have
affected the Hellenic—had been developed in various ways
since. It had been established that this culture had had a
very long existence and development; it covered completely a
large geographical area; it developed various local
characteristics in art production which seemed to be gathered
again into one by the typical art of Mycenae. But the most
important historical points remained obscure. Where was the
original home of this new civilization; what family did the
race or races belong to; of what speech were they and what
religions; what was the history of their societies and art
during their dominance, and what became of them after? Neither
mainland Greece nor the Aegean islands answered these. But
there were two unknown quantities, Crete and Asia Minor, with
Rhodes. One of these we have now attacked. Crete by its great
size and natural wealth, its position, and its mythologic fame
was bound to inform us of much. It is too early to say that
the questions will all be answered by Crete, but already we
have much light. The discovery of written documents and of
shrines has told us more than any other evidence of the origin
and family. The Knossos frescoes show us the racial type; the
Dictaean, Cave, and Knossos houses illuminate the religion.
New arts have been discovered, and the relation to Egypt and
Asia are already far better understood. It remains now to find
the early tombs, and clear the lower stratum of the Palace
ruins at Knossos, to know more of the earliest Cretan race, to
explore the cast or 'Eteocretan' end of the island, to obtain
light on the language and relations to Egypt and Asia, and to
investigate the 'Geometric' period, which is the transition to
the Hellenic."