ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES. (PALESTINE.) 



tectural style of the building was somewhat 

 like that of the double-storied cloisters of the 

 medieval and Renaissance periods. The por- 

 tico was furnished with 48 columns of cipollino 

 marble on the ground-floor, and as many small- 

 er columns of breccia corallina on the upper 

 story. The Atrium was surrounded by state 

 apartments in the lower story and by the pri- 

 vate apartments of the Vestals in the upper 

 story. A hall corresponding with the tabli- 

 num of a Roman house was paved with colored 

 marbles and walled with marbles, and a num- 

 ber of smaller rooms around it are presumed 

 to have been used for the deposition of ar- 

 chives. The situation having been very damp, 

 elaborate arrangements were provided for 

 warming and ventilating the building by means 

 of hot-air furnaces and flues. The marks of 

 the ruins indicate that the Atrium may have 

 originally contained more than a hundred hon- 

 orary pedestals with statues and eulogistic in- 

 scriptions of Vestales Maxima ; but in several 

 of these cases more than one of the pedestals 

 appear to have commemorated the same lady. 

 Most of these works have disappeared by hav- 

 ing been burned into limestone. Twenty-eight 

 of the inscriptions have been recovered in the 

 Atrium, and eight other inscriptions, some of 

 them older than any in the Atrium, have been 

 found in other parts of the city. The earliest 

 of the pedestals in the Atrium bears the name 

 of Prsetestata, daughter of Crassus, whose 

 mother, Sulpicia, is mentioned by Tacitus in 

 his history, iv, 42. These names occur, in the 

 order of date : Numisia Maximilia, A. D. 201 ; 

 Terentia Flavola, A. D. 215 (on four pedestals) ; 

 Flavia Publicia, A. D. 247 (on seven pedestals) ; 

 Coelia Claudiana, A. D. 286 ; a pedestal from 

 which the name has been erased, A. D. 294; 

 and Coelia Concordia, the last or the last but 

 one of the Vestales Maxim. Three statues 

 were found in a comparatively perfect condi- 

 tion. One, which is supposed to represent 

 Flavia Publicia, is described as an "exquisite 

 statue." One upper part of a statue has the 

 head in a fine state of preservation ; and sever- 

 al headless parts of statues have been found. 



Eight hundred and twenty -nine Anglo-Saxon 

 coins, bearing the names of Alfred, Edward, 

 Athelstan, Edmund, Onlaf, Sitrice. and Arch- 

 bishop Plegmund, have been discovered within 

 the Atrium. 



Exploration of Palestine. The Palestine Ex- 

 ploration Fund has completed its survey of 

 western Palestine, and has published the re- 

 port of its work in seven volumes, with 

 maps and drawings. It has identified, with 

 more or less of. certainty, the greater part of 

 the more important places mentioned in the 

 Bible, and has made as thorough examinations 

 as local conditions and regard for the rights of 

 property-owners would permit, of walls and 

 ancient structures at Jerusalem and other cit- 

 ies. In its maps are noted down all of the 

 springs, the caverns, the tombs; the ancient 

 synagogues; the old "high places," now called 



muTcanes ; the names of Roman temples con- 

 structed of materials previously used for syn- 

 agogues ; of Byzantine churches made of the 

 same stones taken from the Roman temples ; 

 and of crusaders' forts made from these same 

 stones worked over again ; of which any relics 

 have been found. Some ten thousand names 

 have been corrected and translated or trans- 

 literated ; and a plan has been drawn and 

 published of every important ruin. A geologi- 

 cal survey has been completed by Prof. Hull, 

 which clearly illustrates the physical, structure 

 and topographical features of the country, and 

 throws light on those parts of biblical history 

 that are connected with such features. 



An important identification has been proba- 

 bly fixed, independently of the surveys of the 

 Palestine Exploration Fund, of the site of Ka- 

 desh-Barnea. The location of this place, which 

 was an important station in the wanderings of 

 the Israelites, had been a difficult problem to 

 geographers, and they had not been able to 

 agree upon it. The most generally accepted 

 location was that of Robinson, who fixed it at 

 a place called Wady-el-Jayb, where are certain 

 springs called Ain-el-Weibeh. His identifica- 

 tion was not sustained by any special evidence, 

 either in the traditional name or the topo- 

 graphical features of the place. Shortly after 

 1842, the Rev. John Rowlands, whose atten- 

 tion had been directed to the spot, but who 

 had not visited it in that year, made his way 

 to a place called G-adis, or Ain Quadis, south- 

 west of the Ain-el-Weibeh, and a little west 

 of north of a third conjectural location at the 

 Wady Jerafeh, where he found a spur of solid, 

 naked rock, from the base of which issued a 

 considerable stream that was lost in the sand 

 at three or four hundred yards away. The 

 conditions, in the name, the character of the 

 situation, and its features, its position in the 

 order of stations, and in other respects, all fa- 

 vored the identification of the spot with Ka- 

 desh-Barnea. No one, however, had succeeded 

 in finding this place after Rowlands's account 

 of it was published, and his theory was ignored, 

 while that of Robinson became current. In 

 1881 the Rev. Henry Clay Trumbull, of Phila- 

 delphia, whose account has been published dur- 

 ing the past year, succeeded in reaching Ain 

 Quadis, and found it to correspond accurately 

 with the description given of it by Rowlands, 

 nearly forty years before. 



Survey of Moab. Capt. C. R. Conder, R. E., 

 has published, in a book entitled " Heth and 

 Moab," an account of a survey of part of the 

 land that is supposed to have been included 

 in the empire of the Hittites, and of the Moab- 

 ite country north of the river Arnon, which he 

 made in connection with the work of the Pales- 

 tine Exploration Fund. The primary object of 

 the survey was the exploration of Moab proper, 

 but this was prevented by the interference of 

 the Turkish officials ; so that the investigations 

 in that region were confined chiefly to what 

 formed the northwestern part of the territory 



