

ARCHAEOLOGY. 



29 



longing to the pre-Sargonic period was uncovered Petrie in Egypt and by Dr. Peters in Mesopo- 

 beneath an accumulation of 70 feet of rubbish on tamia, of driving tunnels in the mounds reaching 

 the northeastern side of the Shate-el-Nil. This from the base to the summit. Beneath the charred 



building, which is mentioned in the letter as hav- 

 ing a frontage of GOO feet, is believed to have been 

 the palace of the early priest-kings of Nippur. 



remains of the Shushan of Arab times the exca- 

 vators came upon the Elamite palace which was 

 destroyed by Sardanapalus, and beneath this, in 



The few rooms excavated have already given valu- successive strata downward, the bricks of royal 

 able results in the shape of pre-Sargonic tablets, buildings and the flint implements of remote times, 

 seal cylinders of the earliest type, and clay fig- Among the more important of the ancient object - 

 urines of early date. At a later period in the found was a limestone monument bearing a sculp- 

 history it was used as a quarry for materials for tured portrait of a bearded king wearing a flowin" 



robe and armed with a bow and shaft. 



Egyptian. Excavations were carried on in 



Egypt during the winter of 1899-1900 under the 



colonnade, having been completely excavated, auspices of six institutions at seven principal sites, 

 proves to be of a date a thousand years later than A party working in behalf of the museum of Gizeh 

 Dr. Peters had estimated it to be, and is a work of at Sakkarah, near the pyramid of Horae, in search 

 the Persian period. A cruciform structure which of burials of princes and princesses, came upon an 

 had been supposed to be connected with the temple unfinished burial of the Saitic period, the disposi- 

 * .,4. * v_,,~ i **:..: A ^i 4j on o f w hi c h cas t s light on the way in which the 



massive sarcophagi were erected. In a chamber 

 A catalogue of the collection of Assyrian and reached by a narrow doorway from the bottom of 

 Babylonian tablets in the British Museum, pre- a well 20 metres deep was a very large sarcopha- 

 pared under the direction of Prof. Carl Bezold, of gus, not yet occupied, the lid of which was raised 



about 2 feet above its place by six little pillars 

 of masonry. On the sides of the wall of the cham- 

 ber were notes in demotic on the progress of the 



other buildings. Some of the discoveries correct 

 previous conclusions reached by the Philadelphia 

 expeditions. A large building with a remarkable 



turns out to have been a fortification constructed 

 some time during the last two centuries B. c. 



Heidelberg, includes principally the list of the 

 23,000 tablets that formed part of the library col- 

 lected by Esarhaddon and Assurbanipal, 681-625 



B. c., which have been recovered from the Koyun- work, written in black ink by the overseer, and 



jik mound, Nineveh. The library, as appears other examples of unfinished construction contrib- 



from the records associated with it, was a careful uted to illustrate the method of proceeding, 



selection, made by the order of the two kings The work of M. Gayet, representing the Musee 



named, of the more important works from the Guimet at Shekh Aabadeh, the ancient Antinoe. 



libraries of southern Chaldea, as a means of sup- has as yet brought to light nothing more important 



plying the lack of literary culture felt by the than some Coptic embroideries. 



Assyrian conquerors of the Babylonian empire. 

 Assyrian youth might, indeed, resort to the libra- 

 ries and temple schools of Babylonia, among'which 

 those of Borsippa, Sippara, and Nippur were con- 

 spicuous; but the influence under which they were 

 brought there was all Babylonian, and not favor- 

 able to the aspirations of the Assyrian monarchs. 

 In order to counteract this condition, Esarhaddon 

 determined to form a library and school at Nine- 

 veh; and this work, begun by him, was completed 

 by Assurbanipal. The library was named after the 

 great library of E-Zida in Borsippa, and was dedi- 

 cated to Nebo, the god of learning, and his consort 

 Tamitum, the hearer or pupil. Many of the tab- 

 lets bear a colophon, reading, " These tablets I 

 wrote, engraved, and, for the inspection of my 

 people, placed in my palace," which is interpreted 

 as meaning that the library was a public one. 

 The scribes engaged in preparing the tablets were 

 instructed to copy all works of educational or 

 literary value in the colleges of the south ; and the 

 fidelity with which the transcription was done is 



Mr. Garstang, working for the Egyptian Re- 

 search Account in some tombs near Abydos, came 

 upon several undisturbed burials of the twelfth 

 and eighteenth dynasties, and some which it is 

 hoped may belong to the period between these 

 two ages of which little is yet known. 



The University of California had two parties in 

 the field, one of which, under Mr. Reisner, made 

 an unsuccessful search at Kuft for the cemetery 

 of Coptos. The other party was that of Messrs. 

 Grenfell and Hunt, prosecuting at Ummel Bara- 

 kfit, on the southern edge of the Fayum, the fourth 

 season of their searching for papyri. The ruins of 

 a large' town, hitherto wholly unknown, were dis- 

 covered, the name of which appears to have been 

 Tebtunis. The remains found indicate that this 

 place flourished from Ptolemaic times down to 

 those of the Arabs. Many papyri were found, 

 largely from the houses of the priests in the tem- 

 ple inclosure, which date from the first to the 

 third century of the Christian era. A very large 

 cemetery, the earliest monuments of which date 



indicated by the indorsement " Like its old copy " from the twelfth dynasty, was discovered. About 



on most of the books, and by the occasional occur- 

 rence of the statement that the original was dam- 

 aged. The collection includes educational works 

 and handbooks, medical tablets, astronomical and 

 astrological texts, and letters and dispatches, an'd 

 were written in the different scripts current in the 

 empire, and one that is unknown. Many of the 

 tablets are furnished with a legend corresponding 

 in character with the modern bookplate, in which 

 the royal proprietorship is asserted and a warning 

 is embodied against carrying the book off or con- 

 verting it to another person's use. 



Renewed Excavations at Susa. Soon after 

 retiring from the museum at Cairo M. de Morgan 

 was commissioned to continue, under the permis- 

 sion of the Shah, the excavation at Susa, in Persia, 

 which had been begun several years ago and car- 

 ried on with considerable success by M. Dieulafoy. 



60 of the mummies found in the Ptolemaic ceme- 

 tery were in good preservation. They were fur- 

 nished with papyrus cartonnage like those found 

 by Prof. Petrie at Gurob. Thousands of mummi- 

 fied crocodiles were found, some of them wrapped 

 up in papyrus sheets and stuffed in the head and 

 stomach with papyrus rolls, many of which are 

 large and fine, although hardly supposed to con- 

 tain important literary remains. All of them are 

 of a late Ptolemaic date. The general result of 

 the work of Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt is nearly 

 to double the quantity of Ptolemaic papyri extant. 

 The work of Prof. Petrie and Mr. Mace at Aby- 

 dos in the interest of the Egypt Exploration Fund 

 was very successful, and contributed important 

 additions to our verified knowledge of the most 

 ancient Egyptian history. Explorations had al- 

 ready been carried on at this site by M. Amt?lineau, 



He adopted the method of proceeding there that who had discovered the tombs of a number of the 

 had been used, with satisfactory results, by Mr. earlier kings and recovered a number of objects 



