1!)13] on Meroe : Four Years' Excavations 739 



including the ancient township itself which abutted against the walls 

 of the royal city. The explorer is of the opinion that without a sub- 

 stantial increase in the annual sum available for this work, which up 

 to the present has been almost entirely privately contributed by a few 

 generous benefactors, it will be hardly possible to complete the 

 undertaking even in ten or fifteen years. 



For the last two seasons the excavation has been almost entirely 

 concentrated upon the Royal enclosure, in which remarkable dis- 

 coveries have been made. In one of the royal palaces a hoard of gold 

 treasure and ornaments was found ; and the royal baths adjacent, 

 which are on an extensive scale, illustrate in their details the character 

 of the Meroitic arts better than any other features of the city. 



Under the threshold of another public building, carefully buried 

 in sand, amid the debris of a building, there was found a beautiful 

 bronze head of Augustus, which is now permanently deposited in the 

 British Museum. A short distance from the spot are the remains of 

 a small temple of Roman style ; and the lecturer believes that this 

 bronze head of the divine emperor had once formed the cult 

 ol:)ject in this temple. Two passages from Pliny seem to have been 

 overlooked by those who have discussed the possibility of a Roman 

 occupation at Meroe. From these it would appear that the imperial 

 soldiers under Petronius had not only reached Meroe, but had passed 

 up the Nile a further 100 miles. During the past winter a bronze 

 coin of Augustus and an increasing number of small objects were 

 discovered, all of which tend to indicate that, for a brief time at 

 any rate, Roman troops actually occupied the city. In this way the 

 fact and circumstances of the discovery of the bronze head would be 

 satisfactorily explained. When Augustus commanded the Roman 

 troops to withdraw, the head was removed from the temple and 

 carefully buried out of danger of violation. 



Two main culture periods are traceable in the history of Meroe 

 previous to the Roman occupation. The first was that of its 

 foundation under King Aspelut and his contemporaries, about the 

 seventh century B.C. In this period Egyptian influence in art is 

 freely apparent. The second phase began with an influx of Greek 

 ideas, which may be roughly dated to the third century B.C., 

 corresponding to a record by the historian Diodorus of great refor- 

 mations instituted by Ergamenes, who had himself been educated in 

 Greek thought in the schools of Alexandria. It is the second phase 

 which is the most striking in the history of Meroe, and most of the 

 visible buildings and monuments of the site belong to this period. 

 The Roman occupation left little permanent impress unon the 

 civilization of the locality, but previous and subsequent" to the 

 Expedition of Petronius there must have been already some influence 

 of Roman contact, which manifests itself in various ways. 



Thereafter the history of Meroe became that of a local and some- 

 what barbarous civilization, reflecting only faintly the Greek and 



