384 ETHNOLOGY. 



SOME ACCOUNT OF THE SARCOniAGUS U THE NATIONAL MUSEUM NOW 

 IN CHARGE OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. 



By Eeah-Admiral A. A. Harwood, U. S. N. 



Washington, December 17, 18G9. 



I recognize this sarcopliagus as one of two mouuments removed from 

 elevated grouuds just in the rear of Beirut, iu Syria, and embarked on 

 board the United States frigate Constitution, the flag-ship of the Med- 

 iterranean squadron, of which I was at the time first lieutenant. I left 

 the ship shortly after, and on my return to the United States learned 

 from reliable sources that one of the sarcoi:>hagi referred to had been 

 presented by Commodore Elliott to Carlisle College, in Pennsylvania, 

 and that the other, after having been ofl'ered to General Andrew Jack- 

 son to be buried in, and the old hero's declining the honor, was depos- 

 ited in the Patent Office as the tomb of the Emperor Alexander Sev- 

 erus. 



As you have probably observed, there is no inscription on this coffin, 

 (to give it its English name;) consequently who the occupant was, or 

 what his position, is a subject of pure conjecture. 



The somewhat profuse carving upon it might suggest that its former 

 tenant was " well to do in the world," but the style is hardly chaste and 

 simple enough to encourage the supposition that he or she was of im- 

 perial or patrician rank. Nevertheless, for nearly twenty years this relic 

 was exhibited in a public building of the metropolis, labeled as the last 

 resting-place of the Emperor Alexander Severus, and nobody took the 

 pains to question the accuracy or expose the absurdity of the legend. 



It was found near to the one referred to as having been presented to 

 Carlisle College, which is inscribed with the name of "Julia Mamaea," 

 and in virtue of that fact assumed to be the coffin of the Koman Empress 

 of the same name, and the wish thus becoming "father to the thought," 

 the contiguous receptacle was incontinently credited as having contained 

 the mortal remains of her imperial son. 



Any respectable coffin in the same grave-yard would have had as good 

 a claim to the honor of having inclosed an emx)eror; but after all, the 

 first step to be taken should have been to ascertain who the Julia re- 

 ferred to by the inscription was. She might have been a relative of the 

 Empress, the mother of Alexander, both because the Empress was of a 

 Syro-Phoenecian family, and because the stjde of the sarcophagus, incor- 

 rectly represented as hers, is simple and elegant, and such as might 

 have contained the bones of the kinswoman of an empress, but the 

 inscription, which I copied carefully at the time, very conclusively 

 establishes the fact that she was not the Empress Mamaea. It runs as 

 follows : 



IVLIA. C. FIL. 



MAMAEA 



VIXIT. ANN. XXX 



