14 



ARCHAEOLOGY. (EGYPT.) 



lire can not have been any national movement, 

 or it would not have been annihilated so soon 

 after; it must have been individual, and due to 

 the personality of Khuenaten. By an astonish- 

 ing chance, we have left to us a cast from the 

 actual face of the king, Khuenaten, who led 

 this change. We see in it strong idealism and 

 obstinacy allied with a curious humanism and 

 humor. " These traits of the art of Khuenaten's 

 period are illustrated on page 13, which repre- 

 sents objects found at the palace as they were 

 exhibited at the Oxford Mansions, London. 



The tomb of Khuenaten was explored by M. 

 Alexandre, who has described its passages in 

 chambers in detail. It was never finished, and 

 everything about it indicates that the " heretic 

 king's reign ended in a revolution." 



Lake Moeris. The results of his studies of 

 the supposed site of Lake Moeris were com- 

 municated by Herr H. Brugsch Bey in a paper 

 read before the Societe de Geographic Khediviale, 

 April 8. The author maintained that there was 

 abundant monumental evidence to show that an 

 immense basin of water existed at a very early 

 period near the plateau of Hawara, and gave its 

 name to the Fayum, or lake district. This dis- 

 trict appears not to have been included in the 

 forty-two divisions or nomes of Egypt, but to 

 have formed an isolated part of the kingdom, 

 with its own subordinate divisions. Save in the 

 necropolis at Hawara it was given over to the 

 worship of Sebak, the crocodile god. It was 

 known in hieroglyphics as To She, the lake dis- 

 trict, which in Coptic became P-ium, the mari- 

 time district, and survives to-day in the Arabic 

 Fayum. It is evident from the Fayum papyrus, 

 of which there are two copies, that the term 

 Meruer, the great water or lake, was also applied 

 to it : and perhaps herein lies the origin of the 

 name Moeris. 



Certain of the tombs of Siut are regarded by 

 Prof. Maspero as belonging to the period of the 

 tenth dynasty. Prof. Sayce has discovered in- 

 scriptions giving the names of some of UK; 

 kings of that dynasty, one of them previously 

 unknown, and showing that its rule was recog- 

 nized as far south as the first cataract, or on the 

 frontiers of Nubia, as well as indicating that 

 the government passed from the tenth to the 

 eleventh dynasty peacefully and regularly. 



The American Expedition to Babylonia. 

 A verbal report was made by Prof. John P. 

 Peters, at the meeting of the American Oriental 

 Society in Washington, D. C., in April, of the 

 chief results obtained by the expedition which 

 had been sent out to Babylonia by the University 

 of Pennsylvania. Excavations were made in 

 the mounds of Niffer, where, in the old temple 

 of Bel, tablets were found which go back to the 

 earliest Babylonian dynasties, or four thousand 

 years before Christ. While the expedition had 

 been unsuccessful in the search for the clay 

 cylinders which were placed in the corners of 

 the building and are of great value as historical 

 material, the orientation of the buildings had 

 been tested and found in most cases not accurate 

 or mathematical, but vague and often incorrect. 

 A study of the meaning of the inscription that 

 appeared on the wall of the banqueting cham- 

 ber of Belshazzar was presented by Mr. John I). 

 Prince, of Johns Hopkins University. Following 



a hint given by M. Clermont Ganneau, he trans- 

 lated the words Mene, mene, tekel upharsin 

 " there have been counted a mina, a shekel, and 

 half minas." According to Talmudic usage, an 

 unworthy son of a worthy father is metaphoric- 

 ally called a "half mina, son of a mina." In this 

 way the author of Daniel wished to draw a 

 parallel between Nebuchadnezzar, the father, and 

 Belshazzar, the son. The mina was the largest 

 Babylonian weight. The shekel was one sixtieth 

 of the mina, and would represent Belshazzar as 

 the unworthy successor of the founder of the 

 Babylonian empire. The two half minas point 

 to the division of the kingdom of Nebuchadnez- 

 zar between the Medes and the Persians. 



An Ancient LXX Manuscript. A recently 

 found papyrus manuscript of the Septuagint 

 version of the Old Testament has been trans- 

 lated and described by Prof. Hechler, of the 

 British Embassy at Vienna. The style of the 

 writing places its date well before A. D. 300. It 

 consists of 16 sheets written on both sides, or 32 

 pages, each about 16 inches by 7 inches, and 

 contains the greater part of the Book of Zecha- 

 riah from about the fourth chapter and parts of 

 the prophet Malachi. The readings indicate 

 that the original scribe had an excellent copy of 

 the LXX before him, and was himself an accu- 

 rate writer. 



An Accadian Creation Tablet. A second 

 Babylonian story of the creation has been trans- 

 lated and published by Mr. Theodore G. Pinches, 

 which exhibits several variations from the bibli- 

 cal account and from the version translated by 

 Mr. George Smith. It is in the Accadian or 

 Sumerian language, and is inscribed on a small 

 tablet of baked clay in such a way that each line 

 is divided into two parts, between which the 

 Semitic- Babylonian version is written. Mr. 

 Pinches gave a full account of the new version, 

 with explanations of the differences between it 

 and the other versions, at the meeting of the 

 International Oriental Congress in London. 



Interpretation of the Hittite Inscrip- 

 tions. An attempt to interpret the Hittite in- 

 scriptions has been made by Prof. A. H. Sayce 

 from data afforded by the discoveries of Messrs. 

 Ramsay, Hogarth, and Headlam in Asia Minor. 

 Reading in the light of the discovery he supposes 

 he has made, he concludes that the inscriptions 

 of Hamath and those known as the first and third 

 inscriptions of Jerablus are records of building: 

 while the second inscription of Jerablus is little 

 more than a list of royal or high-priestly titles. 

 He remarks upon a close similarity between the 

 titles assumed by the Hittite princes and those 

 of the Egyptian pharaohs of the eighteenth and 

 nineteenth dynasties, and finds other evidence of 

 likeness between the graphic systems of the 

 Hittites and the Egyptians. Some of Prof. 

 Sayce's conclusions respecting the ideographic 

 character of the texts, the character and affinities 

 of the language, and the reading of the Jerablus 

 inscriptions, are questioned by Major C. R. 

 Conder, who has also studied the Hittite inscrip- 

 tions and proposed a reading of them, and who 

 claims priority in comparing the Hittite and 

 the Egyptian emblems. Mr. Conder further 

 finds similarities between some .of the Hittite 

 emblems and some of the oldest-known Chinese 

 characters. 



