ARCHAEOLOGY. 



25 



roofed houses, and that the great " river-wall " 

 is a wall only in appearance, and is the re- 

 sult of the river having eaten into the ter- 

 races and foundations of the east side of the 

 ruins, where the plan of the structure was 

 originally the same as on the other sides. The 

 excavations yielded, among objects of interest, 

 a few worked stones, including some beads 

 and a whorl of jade, pearls, and carved pieces 

 of shells, a pot containing a red powder and 

 several ounces of quicksilver, human bones, 

 dogs' teeth, and jaguars' skeletons, parts of 

 one of which were painted red. From the 

 fact that the Spaniards failed to make any 

 mention of the cities the ruins of which are 

 now attracting attention, or of anything like 

 them, and that the settlements they did speak 

 of are unlike these, Mr. 

 Maudsley draws the 

 conclusion that the sites 

 had been deserted and 

 the buildings buried in 

 the forest long before 

 the conquest. In ex- 

 amining the sculptured 

 ornaments and hiero- 

 glyphics, a profusion of 

 which is characteristic 

 of Copan, the author 

 was struck with the fre- 

 quency of the occur- 

 rence of the serpent- 

 symbol, usually the 

 plumed serpent. It ap- 

 pears in the scroll- 

 work ; is often found 

 in connection with a 

 natural or more or less 

 grotesque human head ; 

 and occurs under vari- 

 ous disguises. A curi- 

 ous feature in the in- 

 scriptions, which the 



author believes should i NSCRIPri oN FROM COPAN. 

 be read in double col- 

 umns, from left to right, downward, is that all 

 those which appear complete from the begin- 

 ning, are headed by an initial scroll, and be- 

 gin with the same formula, usually extending 

 through six squares of hieroglyphic writing. 

 The sixth square, or sometimes the latter half 

 of the sixth square, is a human face, usually 

 in profile, inclosed in a frame or cartouche. 



Babylonia and Assyria. The Wolfe Expedition to 

 Babylonia. The report of the Wolfe Expedition 

 to Babylonia has been published in the papers 

 of the Archaeological Institute of America. 

 The expedition consisted of W. Hayes Ward, 

 D. D., in charge ; Mr. J. H. Haynes, of Robert 

 College, Constantinople ; and Dr. J. R. S. Ster- 

 rett, who had been engaged with the explora- 

 tions of the Institute in Asia Minor. The ex- 

 pedition was intended to make a preliminary 

 examination of Chaldea during the winter 

 months, and investigate the practicability of 

 further excavations there. A firman was ob- 



tained from the Turkish Government author- 

 izing the visitation of the country, but forbid- 

 ding all excavations. After leaving Constan- 

 tinople the party visited the American mission 

 at Marath, in the vicinity of which are sev- 

 eral ruined Hittite towns and Hittite in- 

 scriptions; and Jerablus, on the Euphrates 

 river, the site of the old Hittite capital, Car- 

 cheinish. At Arslan Tash, not far from Bire- 

 jik, two enormous lions in black basalt were 

 found and photographed, and a prostrate bull 

 was found. Proceeding to Bagdad, the expe- 

 dition visited Mosul, Koyunjik (Nineveh), 

 Khorsabad, and Nimrud, places which had 

 been the scenes of explorations by Layard, 

 Botta, and Place, and Erbil, the Arbela of 

 ancient history, while it also passed numerous 

 mounds which have not been opened. From 

 Bagdad it went to Babylon and Hillah, on the 

 way visiting Abu-Habba, the site of the ancient 

 Sippara of fchamash, which had been explored 

 by Mr. Rassam. While at Hillah it visited 

 Birs Nirnrud, the ancient Borsippa, and the 

 traditional site of the Tower of Babel. From 

 Hillah the expedition started, on the 21st of 

 January, 1885, on a journey through the coun- 

 try to the south of Babylon, lying between the 

 Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which no Ameri- 

 can traveler had ever traversed, which had 

 not been visited by any European traveler fcr 

 thirty years, and parts of it never. Numerous 

 mounds were observed all through the region, 

 only a few of which have been identified. 

 Among them were Niffeh, the Nipur of the in- 

 scriptions, and probably the Calneh of Genesis, 

 one of the oldest and most important cities in 

 Babylonia; Tello and Zerghul, where the 

 French explorer. M. de Sarzec, had made some 

 discoveries of great value, and Warka, the bib- 

 lical Erech. A second visit to Abu-Habba, 

 after his return to Hillah, satisfied Dr. Ward 

 that that mound was the Sippara of Shamash ; 

 but he could find nothing pointing to the ex- 

 istence at that place of the older Sippara of 

 Anunit, or Agade, which archasologists had 

 associated with it. He heard, however, at 

 Saklanich, on the Euphrates, of a large mound 

 called Anbar, which, on visiting it, proved to 

 answer well to the descriptions which have 

 come down of the situation, shape, and dimen- 

 sions of the ancient capital. " The discovery 

 of this city," Dr. Ward says, u which repre- 

 sents the Agade, or Sippara of Anunit, the 

 Accad of Genesis x, 10, the Persabora of. 

 classical geographers, and the Anbar of Arabic 

 historians, is of the first importance. It is easy 

 to trace the lines of the old palaces or temples, 

 not through any stone walls, but by the de- 

 pression of the courts, now cultivated wheat- 

 fields. In various places the brick masonry of 

 buildings and walls could easily be traced." 

 At Palmyra, which the expedition visited on 

 the return hcroe, nearly a hundred views were 

 taken, and squeezes of most of the inscriptions, 

 including the immense stone recently discov- 

 ered, containing the law of tolls for caravans. 



