ARCHEOLOGY. (SYEIAN.) 



25 



metre wide, and 1-40 metre high, with a cover 

 .80 metre high, and walls nearly '40 metre 

 thick. On on side and end is portrayed a bat- 

 tle between Greeks and Persians, and on the 

 other side and end a chase, in which the recent 

 combatants unite. The Greeks are nude, wear- 

 ing only a helmet, and carrying a great round 

 grooved shield. The Persians are completely 

 clothed, wearing the head-dress called the 

 mitre, and long trousers. One of the principal 

 Greek characters in the batrle wears a head- 

 dress made of a lion's skin, and may have been 

 intended to refer to Alexander the Great. The 

 chase-scene gives a representation of a lion at- 

 tacking a horse, whose rider has pierced the 

 assailant with his spear. The figures stand out 

 in a bold relief, and the whole is colored in 

 various shades, in which combinations of Tyrian 

 purple prevail. These sarcophagi, all appar- 

 ently Greek, are supposed to belong to differ- 

 ent ases, according to their several styles ; but 

 no clew to the dates of any of them was found, 

 unless it be contained in some coins found 

 near the last one that bore the stamp of Alex- 

 ander Baia, 149 to 144 B. o. Two Phoenician 

 sarcophagi of black marble were also found. 

 One was found in the east chamber, under the 

 sarcophagus of the eighteen female mourners, 

 and contained a skull with long black hair, in 

 good preservation, and the skeleton of a woman 

 with remnants of bandages, articles of orna- 

 ment, etc. The second was found in a separate 

 shaft, in which at first only two bronze cande- 

 labra were discovered. The floor of this cham- 

 ber was formed of great blocks of stone, below 

 which were two other layers still thicker, and 

 beneath this a monolith of ten cubic metres, 

 covering a pit cut in the solid rock. In this 

 pit lay an anthropoidal sarcophagus, which has 

 been compared with the sarcophagus of Ash- 

 manezer in the Louvre, from which, however, 

 it presents some striking differences. The 

 carvings consist of a head, a winged globe, a 

 kneeling female figure, two erect Egyptian 

 idols, eleven vertical lines of hieroglyphics, and 

 seven and a half lines of Phoenician letters. The 

 sarcophagus was nearly filled with water, and 

 within it lay the body of a young man, with the 

 flesh, except where it had not been covered 

 with water, still tender and firm, but of a blu- 

 ish tint, with the internal organs intact. Sev- 

 eral translations or paraphrases of the Phoeni- 

 cian inscription on this sarcophagus have been 

 offered, all of which are in substantial agree- 

 ment. The one given by Baltaji Bey, Director 

 of Antiquities at Smyrna, reads: "I Tabnith, 

 priest of Astarte, and king of Sidon, son of 

 Ashmanezer, priest of Astarte and king of 

 Sidon, lying in this tomb, say : ' Do not open 

 my tomb, for there is in it no gold, nor silver, 

 nor treasures. He who opens this tomb shall 

 have no prosperity under the sun, and shall not 

 find rest in his own sepulchre.' " 



The City of Tiberias. Herr Schumaker has 

 traced the whole wall of Herod's City of Ti- 

 berias, on the Lake of Tiberias. It is three 



miles in length, and is in shape an oblong, the 

 long side of which is presented to the lake. 

 At its southwest corner rises a hillock five 

 hundred feet in height, crowned with ruins 

 which were noticed, but not examined, by Col. 

 Kitchener at the time of his survey. The an- 

 cient wall of Tiberias ran up, and was con- 

 nected with a strong wall round this hill. 

 Within the wall are ruins, probably of Herod's 

 palace, certainly of a fort. This is then ad- 

 judged to have been the Acropolis of Tiberias, 

 which is now proved to have been in the time 

 of Jesus no mean village, but a considerable 

 city, dominated and guarded by a stronghold 

 situated on an elevation of five hundred feet. 



The Hittite (Hamath) Inscription. Capt. C. R. 

 Conder has published in the book, " Altaic 

 Hieroglyphs and Hittite Inscriptions," the re- 

 sults of his studies of the inscriptions of the 

 class formerly called Hamathite, and at a later 

 period, Hittite inscriptions. These inscriptions 

 had been found at Hamath, Aleppo, Carche- 

 mish, and through Asia Minor, and had for 

 many years furnished one of the most inter- 

 esting questions of Oriental archeology. For 

 a long time their origin was in deep doubt, 

 and it was only after evidence had accumulated 

 from the frequent mentions of them in Egyp- 

 tian and Assyrian inscriptions that the Hittites 

 were a more important people than had been 

 supposed, that the consensus of a considerable 

 number of Oriental scholars accredited them to 

 that nation. Even then they remained unde- 

 cipherable, because the language in which they 

 were written was unknown. Capt. Conder 

 claims, or hopes, that he has found a key to 

 the reading of this writing, which he calls the 

 Altaic system, which may be accepted by Ori- 

 entalists as simple and demonstrable, and to 

 have identified the language as belonging to 

 the family of IJgro-Altaic dialects ; and he pre- 

 sents in his book the evidence on which his 

 belief rests. He was led to the special inves- 

 tigation by the detection of resemblances of 

 certain of the characters in the texts with par- 

 ticular characters in the Cypriote syllabary, 

 and by the observation of a connection be- 

 tween certain combinations and Accadian 

 word-roots. The symbols appear to have been 

 originally ideographic or representing ob- 

 jects; but to have lost their original ideo- 

 graphic meaning, and to have become " repre- 

 sentative of certain distinct sounds articularly 

 connected in definite grammatical structure." 

 Capt. Conder's conclusion is, that the charac- 

 ters are connected with the Cypriote charac- 

 ters, and that the vocabulary and grammar of 

 the language are Accadian, or nearly related to 

 it. Upon these bases, he has deciphered and 

 published tentative translations of ten of the 

 principal inscriptions. These he finds to be 

 religious in their character, being mostly invo- 

 cations. None of them are historical. Pale- 

 ographists are generally agreed with Capt. Con- 

 der in supposing a connection between the 

 Altaic and the Cypriote characters. But his 



