LIBRARY 
NEW YORK 
BOTANICAS 
GARDEN 
Eier November last year a great many Greco-Roman and Palmyrene 
antiquities, collected in Syria and Palestine from 1872 to 189o by the 
Russian baron Ustinov, who never published anything about his finds, 
have been sold in this city for English account. The first day I bought 
a bronze steelyard and a collection of surgical bronze instruments which 
seemed interesting from an historical point of view, many of them bearing 
an obvious likeness to some instruments from »Casa del Chirurgo« in 
Pompeji which I have seen in the »Museo Nazionale« in Naples. 
I obtained no other information about the instruments then that, according 
to the sale catalogue, they were said to have come from Ascalon, an old 
port in Palestine 40 km. North of Gazah. From its history I would remind 
you that after Alexander the Great, under the Ptolemei and the Seleucidae 
the town became a centre for Hellenistic culture in Palestine; it reached 
the height of its glory under the Roman Emperors, was conquered by 
the Arabs under the Kaliph Omar in 638 A. D. and was for a while in 
the hands of the Crusaders. In the thirteenth Century the fortifications 
were rased to the ground; since then it has been a town of ruins. 
Besides in Ascalon Ustinov made collections in Gazah and Caesarea 
as well to a great extent in Palmyra; several of our instruments are 
probably from this town. You remember that Palmyra under the Roman 
Emperors was a great city, a stapletown for the import of the Romans 
from China, India and Southern Arabia; after Aurelian's victory over 
Queen Zenobia in 272 A. D. it was reduced to a garrison town for the 
defense of the frontier and under the Kaliphs it did not play its ancient 
great part as a commercial centre. Even while it belonged to the Roman 
Empire the majority of the population and the ruling classes are said to 
have been Arab. Many of the names of the inscriptions on the tombs 
Ware Arab, in spite of their Aramaic and Greek letters. Since the r2th 
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century, according to other sources the r4th century, also Palmyra has 
been a town of ruins. 
