436 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1919, 
exhaustion, one might think, and yet it ever remains a fresh spring 
of knowledge and inspiration. This book will ever remain our chief 
source of information on Palestine’s contribution to the spiritual — 
good of the world. But the modern mind is no longer satisfied with 
merely the literature of a past age or civilization. It desires the 
ocular evidences of that past; it wishes to know how the people lived, 
what was their economy, their commerce, their architecture, their 
sanctuaries, their politics. We understand much when we read, we 
understand more when we see. Even in the case of a spiritual prod- 
uct like the Bible, which was not dependent upon and related to a 
mighty civilization, as in the case of Greece and Rome, we desire to 
know the material circumstances of that religious life and to learn 
what we may about its origins and conditions. This natural trend of 
the human mind, which is as old as Herodotus, has developed and 
made a science of the quest of archeology. 
To-day the classical student does not feel he is equipped for his 
work unless he has visited the lands of Greece and Rome and spent a 
year or more visiting their remains and studying in their very atmos- 
phere among the memorials of the mighty past. He will push his 
researches into the outlying lands of the classical world, into Asia 
Minor and Africa or northern Europe. And equally so for the 
civilizations of India and China, the student explores those lands for 
the vestiges of early times. In America has sprung up a native arch- 
eology in the exploration of the remains of the ancient civilizations 
of the continent, of the Mayas, Aztecs, Incas, and the cliff dwellers 
of our Southwest—the more fascinating research, for these peoples 
have left no written records, or at least none decipherable. In all 
these fields we have the lure of the history of man, of the quest cf our 
beginnings as humanity. But of particular, almost practical, impor- 
tance must be the archeological study of the ancient civilizations 
which have directly affected and molded our own, those which he at 
the basis of our modern civilization. 
In the case of the archeological investigation of Syria and Palestine 
there are fascinating problems before us. We may discover written 
documents coeval with the originals of our Bible books. These would 
throw immense light upon the many disputed critical questions as to 
the age and authenticity of those writings. If actual books of parch- 
ment or paper are not found, we may reasonably expect the discovery 
of stone and clay inscriptions, which would illuminate by written 
reference the history contained in the Bible. Such inscriptions al- 
ways add to our knowledge of the Bible, sometimes indirectly, some- 
times by direct reference to the characters and events of the Bible 
history. In any case they give us palpable evidence of the pulsating 
life of that ancient time, help us to realize the details of the sphere 
