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The Museum Gazette 



usually find some expression in the features. To this state- 

 ment the heroine of our last month's frontispiece is no 

 exception. 



Recent discoveries in Babylonia and in Krete have 

 afforded a triumphant vindication of the superiority of Museum 

 methods of research. We of course count under that head 

 all seeking for relics of bygone times which can be made to 

 throw light upon their history. The place in which such 

 fragments of the past can be arranged and made instruc- 

 tive is a Museum. Such has been the success which has 

 attended investigations of this order- on the sites of the 

 ancient cities of the East, that much that was hardly better 

 than myth has now been placed on a solid foundation, and 

 whole groups of misconceptions have been removed. 



The remarks just made have been suggested by the perusal 

 of a little book by Professor Sayce, published by the Religious 

 Tract Society. It has already reached its third edition. 

 As it carries the imprimatur of the Society no one need fear 

 for his orthodoxy in allowing himself to enjoy its pages, and 

 we can heartily recommend it. It is entitled " Monument 

 Facts and Higher Critical Fancies," and it is not the less 

 readable because, as its title suggests, it is enlivened by con- 

 troversial spirit. With the controversy we are in no wise 

 concerned. Quite apart from it the book conveys in singu- 

 larly clear language and from the pen of an authority, many 

 most important statements of fact. Dr. Sayce's contention is 

 that the state of culture which had been reached in Babylon 

 was far more advanced than had been supposed by philologists. 

 " Centuries before Abraham was born Egypt and Babylonia 

 were alike full of schools and libraries, of teachers and pupils, 

 of poets and prose writers, and of the literary works which 

 they had composed." The notion of modern critics that the 

 early Israelites could not read or write he refutes, not without 

 scorn, and upon this refutation bases a proposition that there 

 is really nothing improbable in the supposition that Moses 

 was the author of the Pentateuch. 



