ARCHAEOLOGY. 



23 



Winners of Olympic Games. Among the 

 papyri recovered from Behneseh, Egypt, and de- 

 ciphered by Messrs. Grenfell and Hunt, is one 

 giving a list of the winners in all the 13 events 

 which formed the Olympian games for a series 

 of about seven years. It is the first record that 

 has been found of all the events of even a single 

 Olympiad. It covers a part of the time when 

 Pindar and Bacchylides were composing odes, yet 

 extant, in honor of the Olympian victors, and af- 

 fords upon independent testimony, accurate dates 

 for these famous compositions. It further throws 

 light upon the history of Greek plastic art of 

 the period by fixing the year of a victory, and 

 consequently of the sculptor whose" w r ork com- 

 memorated it. Thus Polycleitus is shown to have 

 been living in the middle of the fifth century B. c., 

 and to have flourished only a little later than 

 Phidias, while the sculptor Pythagoras can be 

 shown to have continued his work down to about 

 the same period in that century. 



Palestine. Presumed Site of Gath. At 

 Tell-es-Safn, the supposed site of ancient Gath, 

 the boundary wall of the former city has been 

 discovered in the excavations of Dr. Bliss and 

 Mr. Macalister by tracing a massive rampart 

 that inclosed it. The walls were 12 feet thick, 

 and rose in some places to the height of 33 feet. 

 Shafts have been sunk within the area, and have 

 revealed four strata of debris two pre-Israelite 

 strata, a stratum coinciding with Jewish times, 

 and a stratum of the age of the crusades. The 

 testimony of the pottery would make it appear 

 that the place has had a continuous history 

 from the eighteenth century B. c. to the fourth 

 century B. c., that it Avas founded long before 

 the conquest of the land by Joshua, and was in- 

 habited continuously till a late Jewish period, 

 when it was deserted till the time of the crusaders. 

 The tablets or stelce have not, however, yet been 

 found which would definitely identify Tell-es- 

 Safn with Gath. " Our excavations," says Dr. 

 Bliss, " have proved the existence of a city quite 

 as ancient as Gath on a site where Gath may 

 reasonably be looked for, fortified at about a 

 period when Gath was made a city of defense." 

 The explorers have also been working at the 

 neighboring site of Tell Zakariya, which has 

 been identified with the Azekah of Scripture, 

 where the remains of a large fortress have been 

 found. 



A Canaanitish " High Place." The report 

 of the excavation at Tel-es-San by Dr. Bliss, pub- 

 lished in the quarterly journal of the Palestine 

 Exploration Fund, relates the discovery of a 

 structure which is supposed to be the remains 

 of a Canaanitish temple, or one of the " high 

 places " mentioned in the Bible. Three upright 

 monoliths are supposed to represent the pillars 

 spoken of in the Scripture. 



Persia. Ruins of Apadana. Prof. J. De 

 Morgan, digging beneath the excavations made 

 by M. Dieulafay in 1885 on the site of the Apa- 

 dana of Darius and Artaxerxes at Susa, has 

 found inscriptions and monuments of the An- 

 zanite period which seem to throw light on 

 Assurbanipal's account of having taken Susa 

 and destroyed it. Many of the monuments bore 

 traces of fire, which the explorer referred to As- 

 surbanipaPs conflagration. A large stela, 6 feet 

 high and 40 inches wide at the base, bore three 

 representations of the sun at the top. Below 

 these stands the king, wearing his helmet and 

 having a bow in his left hand and an arrow in his 

 right, dressed in Assyrian costume, treading ene- 

 mies under his feet, and having a wounded enemy 

 (a supplicant) and dead around him. Soldiers 



led by three standard bearers are pursuing the 

 enemy, some of whom have turned toward them, 

 beneath three trees, with a supplicating air. The 

 scene is in the mountains. An abrupt cliff which 

 the king and his pursuing force have reached 

 bears a long inscription. The whole has suffered 

 much from fire. The composition and its details 

 are well spoken of as works of art. A bronze 

 table or altar discovered in the same trench an 

 irregular slab about 5 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 

 10 inches thick was borne by four human fig- 

 ures at one end, while the other end was mortised 

 into the wall, was pierced by four holes at the 

 sides, and had a border of two enormous serpents. 

 Only the upper parts of the bodies of the human 

 figures remain, the heads and lower parts being 

 gone; the arms were slightly extended from the 

 body, and crossed over the abdomen. All pro- 

 jecting parts of the monument had been broken 

 off, and the marks of hammers were visible. A 

 granite obelisk was found, covered on all four 

 of its sides with an inscription deeply cut into 

 the stone, consisting of 25 horizontal lines, di- 

 vided into more than 1,500 small columns, and 

 containing almost 10,000 characters. It is the 

 longest inscription ever discovered in Mesopo- 

 tamia, and is almost complete. A white stone, 

 roughly hewn, had four faces bearing pictures 

 and inscriptions; at the top a coiled serpent, with 

 two panels beneath it running round the block, 

 and containing, the upper one two suns, the 

 moon, two houses with conical roofs, and a 

 scorpion; the lower one, some fantastic animals 

 and squares interlapping. The lower part of this 

 stone had once contained 23 lines of inscriptions, 

 a part of which had been rubbed out by the use of 

 the stone for sharpening tools. Another similar 

 stone, but black, has a coiled serpent at the top, 

 with pictures and inscriptions on the four faces 

 below it: a star, moon, and sun, below which is 

 a seated figure, supposed to be the king, with 

 hands raised in adoration of a scorpion in front 

 of him; a lion lies at his feet, under which are 

 five lines of inscriptions. The second face of this 

 stone is divided into five panels, containing a 

 square building with conical roof, four standards 

 or religious emblems, and a hawk perched next 

 to a bull. The other two sides are filled with 

 inscriptions. The inscriptions are being studied 

 by Pere Schell. 



Egypt. Fall of Columns in the Temple of 

 Kariiak. On Oct. 9 a number of columns 

 (making 11 columns in all) in the fourth and 

 fifth rows north of the axis of the Temple of 

 Karnak fell, in consequence, it is supposed, of a 

 slight shock of earthquake. They all fell in a 

 straight line, from east to west/ The columns 

 can be set up again, but the architraves above 

 them are utterly broken and destroyed. The 

 work of repairing and strengthening the ruins of 

 the temple has been going on for three years, 

 under the direction of M. Segrain. None of the 

 columns that had been repaired were injured. 



Tomb of Dhuti. In the excavations prose- 

 cuted in January, 1899, by Dr. W. Spiegelberg, 

 of Strasburg, in the necropolis of Drah-Abu-1- 

 Neggah, many tombs were found, but, they hav- 

 ing all been plundered in early times, only the 

 less valuable things remained. Yet many objects 

 were found of importance for archaeology. Dr. 

 Spiegelberg believes that the tombs belong to the 

 obscure period of which we have very few monu- 

 mentsbetween the thirteenth and seventeenth 

 dynasties. With this fact in view, Prof. W. 

 Max Miiller says, in the Independent of New 

 York : " Even the discovery of numerous crude 

 ' usliebti ' figures of wood with the well-known 



