Chapter IV (1)

ANOTHER GROUP OF ARCHÆOLOGISTS AND EXPLORERS.—THE SPOILS OF XANTHUS, OF
BABYLON, OF NINEVEH, OF HALICARNASSUS, AND OF CARTHAGE.

‘She doted upon the Assyrians her neighbours, ... when she saw men
pourtrayed upon the wall,—the images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed with
vermilion, girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed
attire upon their heads; all of them princes to look to, after the
manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea.’

EZEKIEL xxiii, 12–15.

‘I do love these ancient ruins;
We cannot tread upon them, but we set
Our foot upon some reverend history.

· · · · ·

But all things have their end,
Castles and cities (which have diseases like to men)
Must have like death which we have.’
WEBSTER, _The Duchess of Malfi_.

_The Libraries of the East.—The Monasteries of the Nitrian Desert, and
their Explorers.—William_ CURETON _and his Labours on the MSS. of
Nitria, and in other Departments of Oriental Literature.—The
Researches in the Levant of Sir Charles_ FELLOWS, _of Mr._ LAYARD,
_and of Mr. Charles_ NEWTON.—_Other conspicuous Augmentors of the
Collection of Antiquities._

We have now to turn to that vast field of research and exploration, from which the national Museum of Antiquities has derived an augmentation that has sufficed to double, within twenty-five years, its previous scientific and literary value to the Public. In this chapter we have to tell of not a little romantic adventure; of remote and perilous explorations and excavations; sometimes, of sharp conflicts between English pertinacity and Oriental cunning; often, of great endurance of hardship and privation in the endeavour at once to promote learning—the world over—and to add some new and not unworthy entries on the long roll of British achievement.

Two distinct groups of explorers have now to be recorded. The labours of both groups carry us to the Levant. [Sidenote: THE LIBRARIES OF THE EAST.] What has been done of late years by the searchers after manuscripts, in their effort to recover some of the lost treasures of the old Libraries of the East, will be most fairly appreciated by the reader, if, before telling of the researches and the studies of CURZON, TATTAM, CURETON, and their fellow-workers in Eastern manuscript archæology, some brief prefatory notice be given of the earlier labours, in the same field, of HUNTINGTON, BROWNE, and other travellers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Mention must also be made of the explorations of SONNINI and of ANDRÉOSSI.

[Sidenote: THE RESEARCHES OF ROBERT HUNTINGTON IN THE NITRIAN
MONASTERIES;]

About the year 1680, Robert HUNTINGTON, afterwards Bishop of Raphoe, visited the Monasteries of the Nitrian Desert, and made special and eager research for the Syriac version of the _Epistles of St. Ignatius_, of the existence of which there had been wide-spread belief amongst the learned, since the time of Archbishop USSHER. But his quest was fruitless, although, as it is now well known, a Syriac version of some of those epistles did really exist in one of the monasteries which HUNTINGTON visited. The monks, then as afterwards, were chary of showing their MSS., very small as was the care they took of them. The only manuscripts mentioned by HUNTINGTON, in recording his visits to three of the principal communities—St. Mary Deipara, St. Macarius, and El Baramous—are an _Old Testament_ in the Estrangelo character; two volumes of Chrysostom in Coptic and Arabic; a Coptic Lectionary in four volumes; and a _New Testament_ in Coptic and Arabic.

Towards the close of the following century, these monasteries received the successive visits of SONNINI, of William George BROWNE, and of General Count ANDRÉOSSI. [Sidenote: AND THOSE OF SONNINI, BROWNE, AND OTHERS.] SONNINI says nothing of books. BROWNE saw but few—among them an Arabo-Coptic _Lexicon_, the works of St. Gregory, and the _Old_ and _New Testaments_ in Arabic—although he was told by the superior that they had nearly eight hundred volumes, with none of which they would part. [Sidenote: Browne, _Travels in Africa_, &c., p. 43.] General ANDRÉOSSI, on the other hand, speaks slightingly of the books as merely ‘ascetic works, ... some in Arabic, and some in Coptic, with an Arabic translation in the margin;’ [Sidenote: Huntington, _Observations_ (repr. in Ray’s Coll.).] but adds, ‘We brought away some of the latter class, which appear to have a date of six centuries.’ This was in 1799. [Sidenote: Andréossi, _Vallées des Lac de Nation_, pass.] BROWNE died in 1814; SONNINI DE MANONCOURT, in 1812; Count ANDRÉOSSI survived until 1828.

In the year 1827, the late Duke of NORTHUMBERLAND (then Lord PRUDHOE) made more elaborate researches. His immediate object was a philological one, his Lordship desiring to further Mr. TATTAM’S labours on a Coptic and Arabic Dictionary. [Sidenote: Lord Prudhoe’s _Narrative_, &c., as abridged in _Quarterly Review_, vol. lxxvii, pp. 45, seq.] Hearing that ‘Libraries were said to be preserved, both at the Baramous and Syrian convents,’ he proceeded to El Baramous, accompanied by Mr. LINART, and encamped outside the walls. ‘The monks in this convent,’ says the Duke, ‘about twelve in number, appeared poor and ignorant. They looked on us with great jealousy, and denied having any books, except those in the church, which they showed us.’ But having been judiciously mollified by some little seductive present, on the next day, ‘in a moment of good humour, they agreed to show us their Library. From it I selected a certain number of Manuscripts, which, with the _Lexicon_ (_Selim_) already mentioned, were carried into the monk’s room. A long deliberation ensued, ... as to my offer to purchase them. Only one could write, and at last it was agreed that he should copy the _Selim_, which copy and the MSS. I had collected were to be mine, in exchange for a fixed sum of dollars, to which I added a present of rice, coffee, tobacco, and such other articles as I had to offer.’ After narrating the acquisition of a few other MSS. at the Syrian convent, or Convent of St. Mary Deipara, his Lordship proceeds:—‘These manuscripts I presented to Mr. TATTAM, and gave him some account of the small room with its trap-door, through which I descended, candle in hand, to examine the manuscripts, where books, and parts of books, and scattered leaves, in Coptic, Ethiopic, Syriac, and Arabic, were lying in a mass, on which I stood.... In appearance, it seemed as if, on some sudden emergency, the whole Library had been thrown down this trap-door, and they had remained undisturbed, in their dust and neglect, for some centuries.’

[Sidenote: THE RESEARCHES IN THE LEVANTINE MONASTERIES OF MR. CURZON.]

Ten years later, Mr. TATTAM himself continued these researches. But in the interval they had been taken up by the energetic and accomplished traveller Mr. Robert CURZON, to whose charming _Visits to the Monasteries of the Levant_ it is mainly owing that a curious aspect of monastic life, which theretofore had only interested a few scholars, has become familiar to thousands of readers of all classes.

Mr. CURZON’S researches were much more thorough than those of any of his predecessors. He was felicitous in his endeavours to win the good graces of the monks, and seems often to have made his visits as pleasant to his hosts as afterwards to his readers. But, how attractive soever, only one of them has to be noticed in connexion with our present topic—that, namely, to the Convent of the Syrians mentioned already. ‘I found,’ says Mr. CURZON, ‘several Coptic MSS. lying on the floor, but some were placed in niches in the stone wall. They were all on paper, except three or four; one of them was a superb MS. of the Gospels, with a commentary by one of the early fathers. Two others were doing duty as coverings to large open pots or jars, which had contained preserves, long since evaporated. On the floor I found a fine Coptic and Arabic Dictionary, with which they refused to part.’ After a most graphic account of a conversation with the Father Abbot—the talk being enlivened with many cups of rosoglio—he proceeds to recount his visit to a ‘small closet, vaulted with stone, which was filled to the depth of two feet or more with loose leaves of Syriac MSS., which now form one of the chief treasures of the British Museum.’ The collection thus ‘preserved’ was that of the Coptic monks; the same monastery contained another which was that of the Abyssinian monks. ‘The disposition of the manuscripts in the Library,’ continues Mr. CURZON, ‘was very original.... The room was about twenty-six feet long, twenty feet wide, and twelve feet high; the roof was formed of the trunks of palm-trees. A wooden shelf was carried, in the Egyptian style, around the walls, at the height of the top of the door, ... underneath the shelf various long wooden pegs projected from the wall, ... on which hung the Abyssinian MSS., of which this curious Library was entirely composed. The books of Abyssinia are bound in the usual way—sometimes in red leather, and sometimes in wooden boards, ... they are then enclosed in a case, ... to which is attached a strap, ... and by these straps the books are hung on the wooden pegs, three or four on a peg, or more, if the books were small; their usual size was that of a small, very thick quarto.... Almost all Abyssinian books are written upon skins.... They have no cursive writing; each letter is therefore painted, as it were, with the reed-pen.... Some manuscripts are adorned with the quaintest and grimmest illustrations conceivable, ... and some are worthy of being compared with the best specimens of caligraphy in any language.’ Then follows an amusing account of the ‘higgling of the monks,’ after a truly Abyssinian fashion, ending in the acquisition of books, of the whole of which the travellers could not, by any packing or stuffing, make their bags containable. ‘In this dreadful dilemma, ... seeing that the quarto was the most imperfect, I abandoned it; and I have now reason to believe, on seeing the manuscripts of the British Museum, that this was the famous book, with the date of _A.D._ 411, the most precious acquisition to any Library that has been made in modern times, with the exception, as I conceive, of some in my own Collection.... [Sidenote: Curzon, _Visits_, &c., as above.] This book, which contains some lost works of Eusebius, has ... fallen into better hands than mine.’

In the following year (1838), the Rev. Henry TATTAM (afterwards Archdeacon of Bedford), in furtherance of the purpose which had previously enlisted Lord PRUDHOE’S co-operation, set out upon his expedition into Egypt. He arrived at Cairo in October, and in November proceeded up the Nile as far as Esneh, visiting many monasteries, and inspecting their Libraries, in most of which he only met with liturgies and service-books. Sanobon was an exception, for there he found eighty-two Coptic MSS., some of them very fine.

Continuing the narrative, we find that on the 12th of January they started across the desert for the valley of the Natron Lakes, and pitched their tent at a short distance from the Monastery of Macarius. [Sidenote: Miss PLATT’S Journal (unpublished, but abridged in the _Quarterly Review_, as above).] The monks told them that of these convents there had once been, on the mountain and in the valley of Nitria, no less than three hundred and sixty. Of fifty or thereabouts the ruins, it is said, may still be seen. [Sidenote: RESEARCHES OF ARCHDEACON TATTAM.] At the Convent of the Syrians, the Archdeacon was received with much civility, not, however, unaccompanied by a sort of cautious circumspection. After a look at the church, followed by the indispensable pipes and coffee, the monks asked the cause to which they were indebted for the honour of his visit. He told them discreetly that it was his wish to see their books. ‘They replied that they had no more than what he had seen in the church; upon which he told them plainly that he knew they had.’ A conference ensued, and, on the next day, they conducted him to the tower, and then into a dark vault, where he found a great quantity of very old and valuable Syriac MSS. He selected six quarto volumes, and took them to the superior’s room. He was next shown a room in the tower, where he found a number of Coptic and Arabic MSS., principally liturgies, with a beautiful copy of the _Gospels_. He then asked to see the rest. The monks looked surprised to find he knew of others, and seemed at first disposed to deny that they had any more, but at length produced the key of the apartment where the other books were kept, and admitted him. After looking them over, he went to the superior’s room, where all the priests were assembled, fifteen or sixteen in number; one of them brought a Coptic and Arabic _Selim_, or _Lexicon_, which Mr. TATTAM wished to purchase; they informed him they could not part with it, ... but consented to make him a copy. He paid for two of the Syriac MSS. he had placed in the superior’s room, for the priests could not be persuaded to part with more.... The superior would have sold the Dictionary, but was afraid, because the Patriarch had written in it a curse upon any one who should take it away.’ [It was the same volume which had been vainly coveted by Mr. CURZON, as well as by several preceding travellers, and of which he tells us he ‘put it in one of the niches of the wall, where it remained about two years, when it was purchased and brought away for me by a gentleman at Cairo.’] ‘In the Convent of El Baramous,’ continues Miss PLATT, ‘Mr. TATTAM found about one hundred and fifty Coptic and Arabic liturgies, and a very large Dictionary in both languages. In the tower is an apartment, with a trap-door in the floor, opening into a dark hole, full of loose leaves of Arabic and Coptic manuscripts.’ At the Monastery of Amba-Bichoi, Mr. TATTAM saw a lofty vaulted room, so strewn with loose manuscripts as scarcely to afford a glimpse of the floor on which they lay, ‘in some places a quarter of a yard deep.’ At Macarius Convent a similar sight presented itself, but of these Mr. TATTAM was permitted to carry off about a hundred.

As the reader may well imagine, the charms of the Syriac MSS. had made too deep an impression on Mr. TATTAM’S heart to admit of an easy parting. Many were the longing, lingering looks, mentally directed towards them. Almost at the moment of setting out on his return to Cairo, he added four choice books to his previous spoils. In February, he resolved to revisit the convents, and once more to ply his most persuasive arguments. He was manfully seconded by his Egyptian servant, MAHOMMED, whose favourite methods of negotiation much resembled those of Mr. CURZON. ‘The Archdeacon soon returned,’ says Miss PLATT, ‘followed by MAHOMMED and one of the Bedouins, bearing a large sack full of splendid Syriac MSS. on vellum. They were safely deposited in the tent.’ At Amba-Bischoi a successful bargain was struck for an old _Pentateuch_ in Coptic and Arabic, and a beautiful Coptic _Evangeliary_. [Sidenote: Platt’s Journal; abridged, as above.] On the next day, ‘Mahommed brought from the priests a Soriana, a stupendous volume, beautifully written in the Syriac characters, with a very old worm-eaten copy of the _Pentateuch_ from Amba-Bischoi, exceedingly valuable, but not quite perfect.’ The remainder of the story, or rather the greater part of what remains, must here be more concisely told than in the words of the reviewer.

The manuscripts which Mr. TATTAM has thus obtained, in due time arrived in England. Such of them as were in the Syriac language were disposed of to the Trustees of the British Museum.... Forty-nine manuscripts of extreme antiquity, containing some valuable works long since supposed to have perished, and versions of others written several centuries earlier than any copies of the original texts now known to exist, constituted such an addition as has been rarely, if ever, made at one time to any Library. The collection of Syriac MSS. procured by Mr. RICH had already made the Library of the British Museum conspicuous for this class of literature; but the treasure of manuscripts from Egypt rendered it superior to any in Europe.

From the accounts which Lord PRUDHOE, Mr. CURZON, and Mr. TATTAM had given of their visits to the Monastery of the Syrians, it was evident that but few of the manuscripts belonging to it had been removed since the time of ASSEMANI; and probable that no less a number than nearly two hundred volumes must be still remaining in the hands of the monks. Moreover, from several notes in the manuscripts ... already brought to England, it was certain that most of them must be of very considerable antiquity.... In several of these notices, MOSES of Tecrit states that, in the year 932, he brought into the convent from Mesopotamia about two hundred and fifty volumes. As there was no evidence whatever to show that even so many as one hundred of these MSS. had ever been taken away (for those which were procured for the Papal Library by the two ASSEMANI, added to those which Mr. CURZON and Mr. TATTAM had brought to England, do not amount to that number), there was sufficient ground for supposing that the Convent of the Syrians still possessed not fewer than about one hundred and fifty volumes, which, at the latest, must have been written before the tenth century. Application, accordingly, was made by the Trustees to the Treasury; a sum was granted to enable them to send again into Egypt, and Mr. TATTAM readily undertook the commission. [Sidenote: TREASURY GRANT, IN 1841, FOR FURTHER RESEARCHES.] The time was most opportune. Had much more delay been interposed, these manuscripts, which, perhaps, constitute the greatest accession of valuable literature which has been brought from the East into Europe since the taking of Constantinople, [Sidenote: _Quart. Review_, as before.] would, in all probability, have been now the pride of the Imperial Library at Paris.

[Sidenote: MR. TATTAM’S EXPEDITION TO NITRIA IN 1842.]

Mr. TATTAM thought he could work most effectively through the influence of a neighbouring Sheikh with the superior of the convent. By which means he obtained, after some delays, a promise that all the Syriac MSS. should be taken to the Sheikh’s house, and there bargained for. ‘My servant,’ he says, ‘had taken ten men and eight donkeys from the village; had conveyed them, and already bargained for them, which bargain I confirmed. That night we carried our boxes, paper, and string, and packed them all.... Before ten in the morning they were on their way to Alexandria.’ But, as will be seen in the sequel, the monks were too crafty for Mr. TATTAM to cope with.

[Sidenote: TISCHENDORF’S VISIT IN 1844.]

In 1844, TISCHENDORF visited the monasteries already explored by CURZON and TATTAM. His account reproduces the old characteristics:—‘Manuscripts heaped indiscriminately together, lying on the ground, or thrown into large baskets, beneath masses of dust.... The excessive suspicion of these monks renders it extremely difficult to induce them to produce their MSS., in spite of the extreme penury which surrounds them.... But much might yet be found to reward the labour of the searcher.’

In truth, the monks, poor and simple as they sometimes seemed to be, had taken very sufficient care to keep enough of literary treasures in their hands to reward ‘further researches.’ Nearly half of their collection seems to have been withheld.

[Sidenote: PACHO’S NEGOTIATION FOR THE RECOVERY OF THE MSS. WITHHELD BY
THE MONKS OF ST. MARY DEIPARA.]

A certain clever Mr. PACHO now entered on the scene as a negotiator for the obtainment or recovery of the missing ‘treasures of the tombs.’ They had been virtually purchased before, but the Lords of the Treasury very wisely re-opened the public purse, and at length secured for the Nation an inestimable possession. The new accession completed, or went far towards completing, many MSS. which before were tantalizingly imperfect. [Sidenote: See page 622, in this Chapter.] It supplied a second ancient copy of the famous Ignatian _Epistles_ (_to St. Polycarp_, _to the Ephesians_, and _to the Romans_); many fragments of palimpsest manuscripts of great antiquity, and among them the greater part of St. Luke’s _Gospel_ in Greek; and about four thousand lines of the _Iliad_, written in a fine square uncial letter, apparently not later than the sixth century. The total number of volumes thus added to the previous Nitrian Collections were calculated, roundly, to be from a hundred and forty to a hundred and fifty.

That the rich accession to our sacred literature, thus made amidst many obstacles, should be turned speedily to public advantage, two conditions had to be fulfilled. [Sidenote: WILLIAM CURETON AND HIS LABOURS IN ORIENTAL LITERATURE.] Skilful labour had first to be employed in the arrangement of a mass of fragments. Scholars competently prepared, by previous studies in Oriental literature and more especially in Syriac, must then get to work on their transcription, their gloss, and their publication. It could scarcely have been expected, beforehand, that any one man would be able to undertake both tasks, and to keep them, for some years to come, well abreast. The fact, however, proved to be so. The right man was already in the right place for the work that was to be done.

The late William CURETON had entered the service of the Trustees of the British Museum in 1837, at the age of twenty-nine, when he had been already for about eight years in holy orders. He was a native of Westbury, in Shropshire. His education, begun at Newport School, had been matured at Christ Church, Oxford. He had been just about to enter himself at Christ Church in the ordinary way, when his father died, suddenly, leaving the family fortunes under considerable embarrassment. CURETON, and a brother of his, showed the metal they were both made of, by instantly changing their youthful plans. That the whole of the diminished patrimony might be at their mother’s sole disposal, William CURETON went to Oxford as a servitor. His brother, instead of waiting for his expected commission in the Army, enlisted as a private dragoon. And certainly, in the issue, neither of these young men lost any ‘dignity’—in any sense of that word—on account of the step so unselfishly taken at their start in life.

William CURETON began his literary labours as a Coadjutor-Under-Librarian in old Bodley. Dr. GAISFORD introduced him to Dr. BANDINEL, in 1834, with the words:—‘I bring you a good son. He will make a good librarian.’ It was at Oxford that he laid the substantial foundation of his Oriental studies. After three years, he followed the fashion already set him by some of the best and ablest officers the Bodleian has ever had—ELLIS, BABER, and H. O. COXE, for example—by transferring, for a time, his services from the great Library of Oxford to that of London. [Sidenote: CURETON’S ENTRANCE INTO THE BRITISH MUSEUM.] His first (or nearly his first) Museum task was to set to work on the cataloguing of the Arabic and Persian MSS. In 1842, he began his earliest Oriental publication (undertaken for the ‘Oriental Text Society,’ to be mentioned presently), namely, AL SHARASTANI’S ‘_Book of Religious and of Philosophical Sects_.’

At the British Museum, he became quite as notable for the amiability of his character, and the genial frankness of his manners, as for his scholarly attainments and his power of authorship. I have a vivid recollection of my own introduction to him, in the February of 1839, and of the impression made on me by his kindly and cordial greeting. When I noted that pleasant face, which beamed with good nature as well as with intellect, I instantly appreciated the force of the words used by my introducer: ‘Let me make you known,’ said he, ‘to my father-confessor.’ I thought the choice to be obviously a felicitous one. Not less vivid is my memory of the delight Mr. CURETON manifested on receiving, within the Museum _vaults_, the first importation from the Nitrian Desert. The sight of such a mass of torn, disorderly, and dirty fragments, would have appalled many men not commonly afraid of labour, but to William CURETON the scholarly ardour of discovery made the task, from the first, a pleasure. When successive fresh arrivals gave new hope that many gaps in the manuscripts of earliest importation would, in course of time, be filled up, the laborious pleasure ripened into joy.

The collection, obtained by the long succession of labours already narrated, reached the British Museum on the first of May, 1843. When the cases were opened, very few indeed of the MSS. were perfect. [Sidenote: FRAGMENTARY CONDITION OF THE SYRIAC MSS. IMPORTED IN 1843.] Nearly two hundred volumes had been torn into separate leaves, and then mixed up together, by blind chance and human stupidity. It was a perplexing sight. But the eyes that looked on it belonged to a seeing head. Even into a little chaos like this, almost hopeless as at the first glance it seemed, the learning, assiduity, and patience of Mr. CURETON gradually brought order. Of necessity, the task took a long time. First came the separation of the fragments of different works, and then the arrangement of the leaves into volumes, with no aid to pagination or catchwords. With translations of extant Greek works, the collection of their originals gave, of course, great help. But in a multitude of cases every leaf had to be read and closely studied.

Within about eighteen months of the reception of the MSS., Mr. CURETON had ascertained the number of volumes—reckoning books made up of fragments, as well as complete works—to amount to three hundred and seventeen, of which two hundred and forty-six were on vellum, and seventy on paper; all in Syriac or Aramaic, except one volume of Coptic fragments. With the forty-nine volumes previously acquired, an addition was thus made to the MS. Department of the National Library of three hundred and sixty-six volumes. Many of these volumes contain two, three, or four distinct works, of different dates, bound together, so that probably, in the whole, there were of manuscripts and parts of manuscripts, upwards of one thousand, written in all parts of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt, and at periods which range from the year 411 to the year 1292. Of the specific character and contents of some of the choicest of these MSS., mention will be made hereafter.

[Sidenote: DR. CURETON’S PUBLICATIONS IN SYRIAC, AND IN ARABIC
LITERATURE.]

For several years, the labour on the Syriac fragments did but alternate with that on the larger body of the Arabic MSS., a classed catalogue of which Mr. CURETON published in 1846,—only a month or two after he had contributed to the _Quarterly Review_ a deeply interesting and masterly article on the Syriac discoveries. This paper was quickly followed by his first edition of the _Three Epistles of St. Ignatius_ (I, to Polycarp; II, to the Ephesians; III, to the Romans). In an able preface, he contended that, of these genuine _Epistles_, all previous recensions were, to a considerable extent, interpolated, garbled, and spurious; and also that the other Ignatian _Epistles_, so-called, are entirely supposititious. In the year 1870 it need hardly be said either that this publication excited much controversy, or that competent opinion is still divided on some parts of the subject. But on two points there has never been any controversy whatever:—As an editor, William CURETON displayed brilliant ability; as a student of theology, he was no less distinguished by a single-minded search after truth. He was never one of those noisy controversialists of whom Walter LANDOR once said, so incisively,[35] that they were less angry with their opponents for withstanding the truth, than for doubting their own claims to be the channels and the champions of Truth. To his dying day, CURETON owned himself to be a learner—even in Syriac.

Within three years of the publication of his _Ignatius_, CURETON gave to the world his precious edition of the fragmentary _Festal Letters_ of ATHANASIUS, which Richard BURGESS soon translated into English, and LASSOW into German. [Sidenote: THE FOUNDATION OF THE ORIENTAL TEXT SOCIETY.] The Syriac version was one of its editor’s earliest discoveries amongst the spoils of the Nitrian monasteries, and it was published at the cost of a new society, of which CURETON himself was the main founder. For the old Oriental publication society[36] limited itself, as its name imports, to the publication of translations. The new one—the claims of which to liberal support CURETON was never weary of vindicating—was expressly founded to print Oriental texts. This new body had his strongest sympathies, but he co-operated zealously with the ‘Translation Fund’ as well as with the ‘Text Society,’

Among his other and early labours, was the publication of a Rabbinical Comment on the _Book of Lamentations_, and of the Arabic text of EN NASAFI’S _Pillar of the Creed of the Sunnites_ (‘Umdat Akidat ahl al Sunnat wa al Tamaat’), both of which books were printed in 1843. After 1845, CURETON’S literary labours were almost exclusively devoted to that Syriac field in which he was to be so large and so original a discoverer. The first distinctively public recognition of his services was his appointment as a Chaplain to the Queen, in 1847. Two years afterwards, he was made a Canon of Westminster and Rector of St. Margaret’s. Thenceforward, his energies were divided. The charms of Syriac discovery were not permitted to obstruct the due performance of the appropriate work of a parish priest; though it is much to be feared that they were but too often permitted to interfere, more than a little, with needful recreation and rest.

Among those of his parochial labours which demanded not a small amount of self-sacrifice were the rebuilding and the improved organization of the schools; [Sidenote: PAROCHIAL LABOURS.] the building of a district church—St. Andrew’s—in Ashley Place; and the establishment of Working-Class Lectures, upon a wise and far-seeing plan.

[Sidenote: FURTHER CONTRIBUTIONS TO LITERATURE.]

In 1851, he gave to scholars the curious palimpsest fragments of HOMER from a Nitrian manuscript (now ADDIT. MS., 17,210), and, two years afterwards, the _Ecclesiastical History_ of JOHN, Bishop of Ephesus. This was quickly translated into German by SCHÖNFEHLER, and into English by Dr. R. Payne SMITH. [Sidenote: MS. ADDIT. 14,640. (B. M.)] Then came the _Spicilegium Syriacum_, containing fragments of BARDESANES, of MELITO of Sardes, and the inexpressibly precious fragments of an ancient recension of the Syriac _Gospels_, believed by CURETON to be of the fifth century, and offering considerable and most interesting divergences from the Peshito version.

In a preface to these evangelical fragments of the fifth century, their editor contends that they constitute a far more faithful representation of the true Hebrew text than does the Peshito recension, and that the remark holds good, in a more especial degree, of the _Gospel of St. Matthew_. This publication appeared in 1858.

[Sidenote: LABOUR AND ITS REWARDS IN FRESH LABOURS.]

Enough has been said of these untiring labours to make it quite intelligible, even to readers the most unfamiliar with Oriental studies, that their author had become already a celebrity throughout learned Europe. As early as in 1855, the Institute of France welcomed Dr. CURETON, as one of their corresponding members, in succession to his old master, GAISFORD, of Christ Church. In 1859, the Queen conferred on him a distinction, which was especially appropriate and dear to his feelings. He became ‘Royal Trustee’ of that Museum which he had so zealously served as an Assistant-Keeper of the MSS., up to the date of his appointment to his Westminster parish and canonry. No fitter nomination was ever made. Unhappily, he was not to be spared very long to fill a function so congenial.

Yet one other distinction, and also one other and most honourable labour, were to be his, before another illustrious victim was to be added to the long list of public losses inflicted on the country at large by the gross mismanagement, and more particularly by what is called—sardonically, I suppose—the ‘economy’ of our British railways. CURETON’S life too, like some score of other lives dear to literature or to science, was to be sacrificed under the car of our railway Juggernaut.

In 1861, he published, from another Nitrian manuscript, EUSEBIUS’ _History of the Martyrs in Palestine_. [Sidenote: THE REMOVAL, AND ITS CIRCUMSTANCES.] Early in 1863, he succeeded the late Beriah BOTFIELD in the Chair of the Oriental Translation Fund. On the twenty-ninth of May, of the same year, a railway ‘accident’ inflicted upon him such cruel injuries as entailed a protracted and painful illness of twelve months, and ended—to our loss, but to his great gain—in his lamented death, on the seventeenth of June, 1864.

He died where he was born, and was buried with his fathers. The writer of these poor memorial lines upon an admirable man well remembers the delight he used to express (thirty years ago) whenever it was in his power to revisit his birthplace, and knows that the delight was shared with the humblest of its inhabitants. Dr. CURETON was one of those genuine men who (in the true and best sense of the words) are not respecters of persons. He had a frank, not a condescending, salutation for the lowliest acquaintances of youthful days. And those lowliest were not among the least glad to see his face again at his holiday-visits; nor were they among the least sorrowful to see it, when it bore the fatal, but now to most of us quite familiar, traces of victimism to the mammon-cult of our railway directors.

[Sidenote: THE ARCHÆOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS IN THE LEVANT.]

Just as we have to go very far back indeed in the history of the Manuscript Department of the British Museum, in order to find an accession quite as notable as are—taking them as a whole—the manuscripts of the Nitrian monasteries, so have we also to do in the history of the several Departments of Antiquities, in order to find any parallel to the acquisitions of monuments of art and archæology made during the thirty years between 1840 and 1870. In point of _variety_ of interest, in truth, there is no parallel at all to be found.

In archæology, however—as in scientific discovery, or in mechanical invention—every great burst of new light will be seen, if we look closely enough, to have had its remote precursive gleams, howsoever faint or howsoever little noticed they may have been.

Austen Henry LAYARD, for example, is a most veritable ‘discoverer.’ Nevertheless, the researches of LAYARD link themselves with those of Claudius RICH, and with the still earlier glimpses, and the mere note-book jottings, of Carsten NIEBUHR, as well as with the explorations of LAYARD’S contemporary and most able French fellow-investigator, Monsieur BOTTA. In like manner, Nathan DAVIS is the undoubted disinterrer of old Carthage, but the previous labours of the Italian canon and archæologist SPANO, of Cagliari, and those of the French geographers DE DREUX and DUREAU DE LA MALLE, imperfect as they all were, helped to put him upon the quest which was destined to receive so rich a reward.

It is obvious, therefore, that a tolerably satisfactory account of the researches of the renowned archæologists mentioned at the head of this chapter must be prefaced with some notices of much earlier and much less successful labours than theirs; and a thorough account would need greatly more than that. But, at present, I cannot hope to give either the one or the other. Rapid glances at the recent investigations are all that, for the moment, are permitted me, and for the perfunctory manner of these I shall have to make not a little demand on the reader’s indulgence. The subject-matter is rich enough to claim a volume to itself; nor would the story be found to lack well-sustained and varied interest, even if retold at large.

The first inquiries and explorations in _Lycia_ of Sir Charles FELLOWS began several years earlier than those in _Assyria_ of Mr. Austen LAYARD, but an intelligible narrative of what LAYARD did, in 1845, must needs start with a notice, be it ever so brief, of what BOTTA had been doing in 1842. The Lycian excavations were also effectively begun in 1842. They were, in fact, contemporaneous with the first excavations at Nineveh. I begin, therefore, with the closely-linked labours of BOTTA and of LAYARD, prefacing them with a glance at the previous pursuits and aims in life of our distinguished fellow-countryman.

[Sidenote: AUSTEN HENRY LAYARD AND HIS EARLY CAREER.]

Austen Henry LAYARD is an Englishman, notwithstanding his birth in Paris (5th of March, 1817), and his descent from one of the many Huguenot families who (in one sense) do honour to France for their sufferings for conscience sake, and who (in many more senses than one) do honour to England by the way in which zealous and persevering exertions in the service of their adopted country have enabled them to pluck the flowers of fame, or of distinction, from amidst the sharp thorns of adversity. Austen LAYARD is the grandson of the honoured Dr. LAYARD, Dean of Bristol, and he began active life, whilst yet very young, in a solicitor’s office in the City of London. But he had scarcely reached twenty-two years of age before family circumstances enabled him to gratify a strong passion for Eastern travel. Archæology had no share, at first, in the attractions which the Levant presented to his youthful enterprise. But a fervid nature, a good education, and a wonderful power of self-adaptation to new social circumstances, made the mind of the young traveller a fitting seedplot for antiquarian knowledge, whenever the opportunity of acquiring it should come.

[Sidenote: THE JOURNEY THROUGH ASIA MINOR AND SYRIA IN 1839–1840.]

To a man of that stamp it would be impossible that he should tread near those ancient ruins, every stone of which must needs connect itself with some ‘reverend history’ or other—when the discerning eye should at length pore upon it and ponder it—without the ambition stirring within him to make at least an earnest attempt to explore and to decipher. To this particular man and his companion in travel, Fortune was propitious, by dint of her very parsimony. As he says himself: ‘No experienced dragoman measured our distances or appointed our stations. We were honoured with no conversations by pashas, nor did we seek any civilities from governors. We neither drew tears nor curses from the villagers by seizing their horses, or searching their houses for provisions; [Sidenote: _Nineveh and its Remains_ (1849), vol. i, p. 2.] their welcome was sincere; their scanty fare was placed before us; we ate, and came, and went in peace.’

It was almost thirty years ago—about the middle of April, 1840—that Mr. LAYARD looked upon those vast ruins on the east bank of the Tigris, opposite Mósul, which include the now famous mounds of Konyunjik and of Nebbi Yunus. Having gazed on them with an incipient longing—even then—to explore them thoroughly, he and his companion rode into the desert, and looked with new wonder at the great mound of Kàlàh Sherghat, the site of which is by some geographers identified with the Assur of the book Genesis.[37] After that hasty and tantalising visit, in the spring of 1840, LAYARD did not again see Mósul until the summer of 1842, when he was again travelling Tatar, and hurrying to Constantinople. In the interval, he had often thought of his early purpose, and had talked of it to many travellers. [Sidenote: BOTTA’S FIRST DISCOVERIES.] Now, in 1842, he heard that what he had hitherto been able only to contemplate, as the wished-for task of the future, Monsieur BOTTA, the new French Consul at Mósul, had, for some months, been actually working upon; although, as yet, with very small success. Our countryman encouraged the French Consul in his undertaking, and presently learned that by him the first real monument of old Assyria had been uncovered. This primary discovery was not made at Kouyunjik, but at Khorsabad, near the river Khauser, many miles away from the place at which the first French excavations had been made, early in 1842.

The delighted emotions of Monsieur BOTTA, when he found himself, very suddenly, standing in a chamber in which—to all probability—no man had stood since the Fall of Nineveh, and saw that the chamber was lined with sculptured slabs of ‘gypsum-marble’ or alabaster, full of historic scenes from the wars and triumphs of Assyria, a reader can better imagine than a writer can describe. BOTTA himself rather indicates than depicts them, in the deeply interesting letters which he speedily addressed to his friend MOHL at Paris (and which by MOHL were not less promptly published in the _Journal Asiatique_, to be within a month or two pondered and wondered over by almost every archæologist in Europe). The delight, and also the surprise, were enhanced when the discoverer saw that almost every slab had a line of wedge-shaped characters carved above it, giving hope of history in legible inscriptions, as well as history in ruins. For, unhappily, nearly all the sculptures _first_ discovered at Khorsabad were fractured. The durability of the Assyrian style of building had brought about the defacement of the sculptured records. The walls were formed of blocks of gypsum, backed and lined, so to speak, with enormous masses of clay. When the weight of such large earth-banks pressed down upon the sculptured slabs, these were thrust from their place. Many that were still in position, when first seen, fell, or crumbled, as the explorer was looking at them. He had to shore-up and underpin, as he went on; and to do this by unpractised hands. Else, the more diligent his excavations, the more destructive they would have been of the very end he had in view.

LAYARD was at Constantinople when the news came of M. BOTTA’S increasing successes. His detention there had been unexpected, as well as unavoidable. But he wrote to England without delay. He had a foresight that BOTTA would not lack encouragement in France. He felt no unworthy jealousy on account of the fact that it was a Frenchman who was now disinterring historic treasures of a hitherto unexampled kind, and who was rapidly securing historic fame for himself.[38] Mr. LAYARD knew—few men just then knew more fully—that in all matters of learning and of discovery the gains of France are the gains of the world. [Sidenote: LAYARD’S OVERTURES TO THE BRITISH GOVERNMENT.] For the staunchest of John Bulls amongst us must acknowledge that in the arts of scientific dissemination and exposition a Frenchman (other things being equal) has usually twice the expertness of an Englishman. But he was naturally desirous that France should not have _all_ the glory of Assyrian discovery. What, then, was the reception with which his first overtures were met? ‘With a single exception,’ in the person of his London correspondent, ‘no one,’ he tells us, ‘in England’ ... [Sidenote: _Nineveh and its Remains_, vol. i, p. 10.] ‘seemed inclined to assist or take any interest in such an undertaking.’

What, on the other hand, were the encouragements given to the French explorer by the Government and the Nation of France? They were large; they were ungrudgingly given; and they were instantaneously sent. In Mr. LAYARD’S words: ‘The recommendation was attended to with that readiness and munificence which [has] almost invariably distinguished the French Government in undertakings of this nature. [Sidenote: LIBERAL AID EXTENDED TO M. BOTTA BY THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT.] Ample funds to meet the cost of extensive excavations were at once assigned to M. BOTTA, and an artist of acknowledged skill was placed under his orders, to draw such parts of the monuments discovered as could not be preserved or removed.’ Who will wonder that at first it seemed as though France would carry off all the stakes, and England have no place at all in the archæological race?

[Sidenote: CONTRASTS:—ENGLAND AND FRANCE.]

Mr. LAYARD, however, was otherwise minded. And he found, presently, a powerful helper in the person of the British Ambassador at Constantinople, Sir Stratford CANNING (now Lord Stratford de Redcliffe). Had it not been for the union, in that ambassador, of a large intellect, a liberal mind, and a strong will, and also for the _absence_, in him, of that shrinking from extra-official responsibilities which in so many able men has often emasculated their ability, Mr. LAYARD’S efforts, earnest and unremitting as they were, would assuredly have been foiled.

The reader will perceive that for what was achieved, in 1845 and in the subsequent years, on the banks of the Tigris, the British public owe a debt of gratitude to Lord STRATFORD DE REDCLIFFE, the encourager of the enterprise, as well as to Mr. LAYARD, its originator.

But neither does this fact, nor does the like of it, five years earlier, in the help given by Lord PONSONBY to the Lycian researches of Sir Charles FELLOWS, invalidate or weaken the remark I have ventured to make (on pages 348; 381, of the present volume, and elsewhere) about the discreditable and long-continued apathy of our Foreign Office in matters of art and literature; especially if we compare on that head British practice with French practice. Perhaps, at first blush, it might be thought somewhat presumptuous, in a private person, to remark so freely on what seem to him the shortcomings of statesmen. But it has to be borne in mind that, in such cases as this, outspoken criticism is rather the expression of known public opinion, than of mere individual judgment. The one writer, how humble soever, is very often the mouthpiece of the thoughts of many minds. Nor is other warrant for such criticism lacking.

_Three years_ after beginning his excavations at Nimroud, Mr. LAYARD himself wrote thus (from Cheltenham):—‘It is to be regretted that proper steps have not been taken for the transport to England of the sculptures discovered at Nineveh. Those which have already reached this country, and (it is to be feared) those which are now on their way, have consequently suffered _unnecessary_ injury; ... yet, ... [Sidenote: _Nineveh and its Remains_, vol. i, p. xiii.] they are almost the only remains of a great city and of a great nation.’

Part of the injury now observable in the Assyrian sculptures of the British Museum was, of course, inseparable from circumstances attending the discovery. Besides the injury already spoken of—from the pressure of the earth-banks—all the low-reliefs of one great palace had suffered from intense heat. From this cause, Mr. LAYARD’S experiences recall, in one particular, the impressive accounts we have all read of the opening of ancient tombs in Egypt and in Italy. The fortunate excavator suddenly beheld a kingly personage, in fashion as he lived. The royal forehead was still encircled by a regal crown. The fingers were decked with rings; the hand, mayhap, grasped a sceptre. But whilst the discoverer was still gazing in the first flush of admiration, the countenance changed; the ornaments crumbled; the sceptre and the hand that held it alike became dust. So it was, at times, at Nimroud. Some of the calcined slabs presented, for a moment, their story in its integrity. Presently, they fell into fragments.

[Sidenote: MIXED NATURE OF THE CAUSES OF THE MUTILATIONS OBSERVABLE IN
THE MUSEUM SCULPTURES FROM ASSYRIA.]

None the less, when the reader goes into the Kouyunjik Gallery; looks at the sculptures from SENNACHERIB’S palace; observes the innumerable ‘joinings,’ and then glances at his official ‘_Guide_’ (which tells him, at page 85, ‘many single slabs reached this country in three hundred or four hundred pieces’), he is bound for truth’s sake to remember that, whilst some of the breakage is ascribable to the action of fire at the time of the Fall of Nineveh, another portion of it is ascribable to the want or absence of action, on the part of some worthy officials in the public service of Britain, just twenty-five centuries afterwards.

With Sir Stratford CANNING’S help, and with the still better help of his own courage and readiness of resource, Mr. LAYARD surmounted most of the obstacles which lay in his path. There was a rich variety of them. To quote but a tithe of his encounters with Candian pashas, Turcoman navvies, Abou-Salman visitors, and Mósul cadis and muftis, would ensure the reader’s amusement beyond all doubt; but the temptation must be overcome. Happily, the original books are well known, though the anecdotes are more than racy enough to bear quotation and requotation.

[Sidenote: LAYARD’S FIRST DISCOVERY, 28th Nov., 1845.]

Two incidents of the first explorations (1845–46) must needs be told. The earliest discovery was made on the twenty-eighth of November. The indications of having approached, at length, a chamber lined with sculpture, rejoiced the Arab labourers not less than it rejoiced their employer. They kept on digging long after the hour at which they were accustomed to strike work. The slab first uncovered was a battle-scene. War chariots drawn by splendidly equipped horses contained three warriors apiece, in full career. The chief of them (beardless) was clothed in complete mail, ‘and wore a pointed helmet on his head, from the sides of which fell lappets covering the ears, the lower part of the face, and the neck. The left hand (the arm being extended) grasped a bow at full stretch; whilst the right, drawing the string to the ear, held an arrow ready to be discharged. A second warrior urged, with reins and whip, three horses to the utmost of their speed.... A third, without helmet and with flowing hair and beard, held a shield for the defence of the principal figure. Under the horses’ feet, and scattered about, were the conquered, wounded by the arrows of the conquerors. I observed with surprise the elegance and richness of the ornaments, the faithful and delicate delineation of the limbs and muscles, both in the men and horses, and the knowledge of art displayed in the grouping of the figures and the general composition. [Sidenote: _Nineveh and its Remains_ (1849), vol. i, p. 41.] In all these respects, as well as in costume, this sculpture appeared to me, not only to differ from, but to surpass, the bas-reliefs of Khorsabad.’

Thus cheered, the work of digging went on with fresh vigour, and in new directions. Parts of a building which had suffered from decay, not from fire, were at length uncovered. Slabs of still greater beauty were disclosed. ‘I now thought,’ says the explorer, ‘I had discovered the earliest palace of Nimroud.’

On the morning after the discovery of these new and more choice sculptures—middle of February, 1846—Mr. LAYARD rode away from the mound to a distant Arab encampment—wisely cultivating, as was his manner, a good understanding with a ticklish sort of neighbours. Two early Arabs, from this camp, had already paid a morning visit to the mound. They hastened back at a racing pace. Before they could well pull up their horses, or regain their own Oriental composure, the riders shouted at sight of Layard: ‘Hasten, O Bey, to the diggers. They have found great NIMROD himself. Wallah! it is wonderful, but it is true! We have seen him with our eyes.’

The ‘Bey’ did not wait for lucid explanations; but urged his horse to emulate the speed with which the grateful, though mysterious, tidings had been brought to him. No sooner had he entered the new trench at the mound, than he saw a splendidly sculptured head, the form of which assured him at a glance that it must belong to a winged bull or lion like to those of Persepolis and of Khorsabad. [Sidenote: _Ibid._, p. 65.] Its preservation was perfect, its features sharply cut. [Sidenote: 1846, February.] The Arab workmen stood looking at it with intent and fear-expressing eyes—but with open palms. The first word that came from their lips begged a ‘back-sheesh,’ in honour of the auspicious occasion. The terror of one of them, only, had led him to scamper at full speed to his tent, that he might hide himself from the frightful monster whose aspect seemed to threaten vengeance on those rash men who had dared to disturb his long repose, in the bowels of the earth.

Scarcely had Mr. LAYARD glanced at ‘NIMROD’ before he found that more than half the tribe whose encampment he had just left had followed hard at his heels. They were headed by their Sheikh. It would be difficult to depict, in few words, the conflict of their feelings. Admiration, terror, anger, had each a part in the emotion which was evinced, no less in their gestures than in their words. ‘There is no God but GOD, and MAHOMED is his prophet! [Sidenote: _Ibid._, p. 66.] This is not the work of men’s hands, but of those infidel giants whom the Prophet—peace be with him!—has said, that “they were higher than the tallest date-tree.” This is one of the idols which NOAH—peace be with him!—cursed before the Flood.’ Such were the words of Sheikh ABD-UR-RAHMAN himself. He showed great reluctance, at first, to enter the trench. But when once in, he examined the image with great and continued earnestness. All his followers echoed his verdict.