614 THE EXCAVATIONS OF CARTHAGE. 



interest, in which the author traces his genealogy back to the seventh 

 or eighth generation. The genealogy is accompanied by honorary 

 titles, of whose import we have as yet only a faint idea. After giving 

 his descent, the Carthaginian at great length commends the monument 

 that he has erected and possibly his titles also to the favor of the gods, 

 and appears to invoke the benediction of the sun god on his mortal 

 remains. 



At all events, it is not a slab for merely identifying the dead, but a 

 monumental inscription intended for an edifice over the tomb. It seems, 

 then, that the necropolises whose traces we seek underground were 

 covered, according to a frequent usage among Oriental peoples, with 

 monuments which kept a place for the dead among the living. Up- 

 heavals — the law of history — have swept these monuments away, but 

 one inscription has been left as proof of their existence. Others will 

 be found; the discoveries that have succeeded each other for some 

 years without interruption in the domain of Carthaginian antiquity 

 permit us to hope for more. 



We must not shut our eyes to the fact that we are witnesses of an 

 event of greater archaeologic interest than any that has taken place 

 for some time. It is the beginning of the resurrection of Carthage. 

 If for no other reason than this, we ought to congratulate ourselves 

 upon the conquest that has put Tunis into our hands, and gave a pow- 

 erful stimulus to research by handing this historic ground over to 

 science as a field for exploration, such as, comparatively speaking, 

 Egypt was at the beginning of the century. The minister of public 

 instruction thoroughly realized its importance when he instituted the 

 North African commission. It instigates discoveries and centralizes 

 them; serves as a bond between the direction of the Acadenrie des 

 Antiquites in Tunis and the officers of our topographical survey and 

 the scholars to whom it intrusts missions, and effectively coordinates 

 all these efforts in a way beginning to show good results. 



Every civilization depends on those that have preceded it. It puts 

 to good use the lessons of things. The sites of towns, ports, roads, 

 the administration of water ways, the customs of the first cultivators of 

 land, the laws that governed their development, are so many signboards 

 for later occupants. The knowledge of Carthaginian civilization and 

 of times preceding it is necessary to understand the development of 

 Roman colonization. It even explains for us to-day certain predominant 

 traits of that mixture of peoples unified by Islam. In this study noth- 

 ing can be neglected, for often things apparently valueless suddenly 

 assume unsuspected importance. I do not speak of the pleasure 

 experienced by the lover of science, when he questions ancient times, 

 reconstructs what is no more, follows up the genesis of nations, discovers 

 points of contact between civilizations to all appearance widely sepa- 

 rated, and explains the present by the past, thereby fully realizing the 

 bond that unites all things. 



