ARCHAEOLOGY. 



creek. When, however, he found himself surround- 

 ed by the harder rocks of the Red Cliffs, he relied 

 wholly on masonry, building to the face of the cliffs 

 to produce the characteristic buildings of the Verde 

 region. In the Verde valley he likewise built stone 

 houses in the plain and on the mesa tops, using the 

 stone at hand. . . . From these statements if would 

 appear unsound to rely upon the character of build- 

 ings as a criterion of the culture of their inhabit- 

 ants, and absurd to separate the habitants of cave 

 dwellings from those of cliff houses. . . . One result 

 to which my conclusions point is that an older view 

 often entertained that cliff houses antedate other 

 prehistoric dwellings in our Southwest is not neces- 

 sarily true.'' 



Greece. The excavations of the American School 

 of Classical Studies were begun at Corinth in the 

 spring of 1896 under the direction of Prof. Rufus 

 B. Richardson, and prosecuted until the theater was 

 discovered. This structure, the first positively iden- 

 tified in the city, will serve as a base, starting from 

 which and following the descriptions of Pausanias. 

 the other sites may be recovered and identified. 

 Previous to this discovery the excavators had no 

 certain landmark. Up at the top of the eaves of 

 this theater were found a number of terra-cotta 

 figures of human shapes, mostly female, and many 

 in animals, mostly horses. Continued excavations 

 brought to light a huge drum and the broad pave- 

 ment, with a water channel on each side discov- 

 eries which are supposed to indicate the old agora 

 or a broad passageway into it. The chief find in 

 sculpture was a group representing the youthful 

 Dionysus between Pan and a nymph. Two graves, 

 with nineteen vases grouped around the skeletons, 

 are spoken of as worthy of special mention. The 

 vases are unbroken, of interesting shape, and very 

 primitive in appearance. 



The chief discovery made in the excavations at 

 Eretria by the American school under the direction 

 of Prof. Rufus B. Richardson is that of a building 

 which is identified from the inscriptions as a gym- 

 nasium. Of three fragments of sculpture found in 

 the course of excavating this building, one is a head 

 of the type known as the Indian Dionysos, excep- 

 tionally well preserved ; another is of interest be- 

 cause it fits and completes a fragment of a portrait 

 head of the Roman type which had long been lying 

 in the local museum. The inscriptions include a 

 decree in honor of a gymnasiarch named Elpinikos, 

 nearly fifty lines in length. From its mention of 

 " resident Romans " it helps assign other similar 

 inscriptions to the first century before Christ. Two 

 or three brief inscriptions on gravestones may be as 

 early as the third or fourth century. 



The inscription which once stood in bronze upon 

 the eastern architrave of the Parthenon has been 

 deciphered by an American student from a close 

 examination of the nail points. It records a dedi- 

 cation to Nero, dated in the eighth term of the gen- 

 eralship of Novius. or A. D. 61, and is supposed to 

 have accompanied the erection of a statue of the 

 emperor, possibly just in front of the Parthenon. 



An enumeration in the report of the British Mu- 

 seum of the new papyrus finds in Kgypt a'-quired 

 by that institution includes three speech. 

 Demosthenes: some philosophical writings of Plato 

 and other known and unknown (i reek writers of the 

 ihird century before Christ : a private letter of the 

 Emperor Hadrian : a rescript of Diocletian, which is 

 the oldest papyrus in the Greek language: a frag- 

 ment of a lost (I reek drama: a number of frag- 

 ments of Homer's poems; and a second papyrus 

 containing 700 lines from the thirteenth and four- 

 teenth books of the "Iliad."' Only a small propor- 

 tion of the papyri in the mound whence these were 

 recovered have yet been removed. 



Among magnificent examples of Greek art. re- 

 cently acquired by the Louvre, Paris, is a golden 

 tiara, hammered out and chased in an admirable 

 state of preservation. Its weight is 443 grammes, its 

 height 20 centimetres, and its diameter across the 

 base 18 centimetres. It was found in a tomb near 

 the ancient town of Olbia. in the Crimea, and it 

 bears an inscription in Greek recording its presenta- 

 tion to the great (aveiK-nrov) King Saitapharnes. 

 Saitapharnes was a barbarian king, who frequently 

 made incursions into the territory of Olbia, and 

 levied tribute from the inhabitants. On one occa- 

 sion when he appeared before the place he refused 

 an offer of 900 pieces of gold as insufficient, but 

 was afterward bought off with magnificent presents. 

 The tiara is equally interesting for its ornamenta- 

 tion. It is in the form of a sugar loaf divided into 

 seven cones. One of these contains a series of bas- 

 reliefs representing two incidents in the history of 

 Achilles his wrath and the pyre of Patroclus. with 

 elaborate details from the " Iliad." In a zone above 

 are various scenes of Scythian life : a man breaking 

 in a wild horse, a leopard fighting with a lion, a 

 running bull, sheep and goats, a living heron, etc. 

 The top of the tiara is formed of the head of a 

 serpent coiled around itself. In another tomb close 

 by was found at the same time a beautiful necklace 

 of gold and colored glass. The genuineness of this 

 object has been disputed by X. Vesselovsky, of St. 

 Petersburg, who affirms that it is the work of the 

 Otchskoff factory of false antiquities, and refers to 

 another crown of the same kind at Kherson. He 

 is answered by M. Heron de Villefosse, conservator 

 of Grecian and Roman antiquities at the Louvre, 

 who has compared the tiara with the Kherson crown, 

 and declares that the difference between the two is 

 so obvious as to strike any unprejudiced person at 

 the first sight. 



Evidence has been found by Mr. Arthur J. Evans 

 of the existence of two systems of script in prehis- 

 toric Crete, one hieroglyphic and the other linear, 

 which seem to be of native origin. He has sug- 

 gested a derivation of the linear characters from 

 the pictographs, and has compared them with the 

 signs found on the pottery of Tel-el- A marna, Gurob, 

 and Kahiin in Egypt, and of Tel-el-Hesy in Pales- 

 tine. The pictographs seem to have been of native 

 growth. Some of them resemble the Hittite char- 

 acters, while others remind us of the hieroglyphics 

 associated with Hittite characters on the seals of 

 Gurghat ; but as a whole they are regarded as form- 

 ing a peculiar and isolated group. They are sup- 

 posed in all probability to go back to a consider- 

 able antiquity. Mr. K vans shows that the designs 

 on certain early seals are derived, with but little 

 change, from Egyptian scarabs of the twelfth dy- 

 nasty. So far, then, as we can see at present, says 

 Prof. A. H. Sayce, reviewing Mr. Evans's book 

 describing his discoveries, it would seem that in 

 days earlier even than what is called the Mycenaean 

 period "an independent culture and system of 

 writing grew up in the eastern basin of the Medi- 

 terranean and Asia Minor, including also, perhaps, 

 northern Syria. But the real cylinders with 

 which this culture is associated show that it was 

 subsequent to the introduction of Babylonian influ- 

 ence ; indeed, it was probably the introduction of 

 Babylonian influence which first called it into ex- 

 istence. The seal cylinder made its way to Egypt 

 during the same age, and is characteristic of the 

 old empire. . . . We are no longer obliged to con- 

 tine- the introduction of Babylonian culture into 

 the Mediterranean, even to the remote age of Sar- 

 gon of Akkad. The recent American excavations 

 have shown that there was a still older empire 

 which extended from the Persian Gulf to the Medi- 

 terranean, and which Prof. Hilprecht places in the 



