An introductory lecture on archæology

Following the example of my distinguished predecessor in the Disney Professorship of Archæology, I open my first Course of Lectures with an introductory Lecture on Archæology itself, so far as the very limited time for preparation has allowed me to attempt one.

I cannot indeed conceal from myself, and still less can I conceal from you, that no introductory Lecture which I could give, even if I were to take my own time in writing it, would bear any comparison with the compositions of his elegant and learned pen. It certainly does not proceed from flattery, and I hope not from an undue partiality of friendship to say of him, that in his power of grasping a complicated subject, of presenting it in a clear light, of illustrating it with varied learning, and of expressing himself in relation thereto in appropriate language, I have rarely seen his equal. To how great a disadvantage then must I necessarily appear, when I have had only six weeks’ time in which to get ready this as well as five other Lectures, and have been moreover compelled to devote a considerable part even of that short time to other and not less important duties. A great unwillingness however that the Academical year should pass over without any Archæological Lectures being delivered by the Disney Professor, has induced me to make the attempt more quickly than would under other circumstances have been desirable or even justifiable; and I venture to hope that when allowance is made for the exigency of the case, I shall find in you, who have honoured this Lecture by your presence, a clement and even an indulgent audience.

In an introductory Lecture which deals with generalities, it is hardly to be expected that I either can say or ought to try to say much which is absolutely new to any of my hearers; and I shall not affect to say anything peculiarly striking, but shall rather attempt to bring before you in a plain way a view of the subject, which aims at being concise and comprehensive; and in connexion therewith respectfully to submit a few observations which have relation to other Academical studies, as well as to the character of this particular Professorship.

What I propose then to do is this, first to explain what Archæology is; next to put in a clear light what the character of this Professorship is; after that to attempt a general sketch of the existing remains of Antiquity; then to point out the qualifications necessary or desirable for an archæologist; and in conclusion, to indicate the pleasure and advantage which flow from his pursuits.

The field of Archæology is vast, and almost boundless; the eye, even the most experienced eye, can hardly take in the whole prospect; and those who have most assiduously laboured in its exploration will be most ready to admit, that there are portions, and those large portions, which are to them either almost or altogether unknown.

For what is Archæology? It is, I conceive, the science of teaching history by its monuments^[1], of whatever character those monuments may be. When I say history, I use the word not in the limited sense of the history of dynasties or of governments. Archæology does indeed concern itself with these, and splendidly does it illustrate and illuminate them; but it also concerns itself with every kind of monument of man which the ravages of time have spared.

Archæology concerns itself with the domestic and the social, as well as with the religious, the commercial, and the political life of all nations and of all tribes in the ages that have passed away. All that men in ancient times have made, and left behind them, is the farrago of our study.

The archæologist will consequently make observations and speculations on the sites of ancient cities where men have dwelt; on their walls and buildings, sacred and profane; on their altars and their market-places; on their subterranean constructions, whether sepulchres, treasuries, or drains. He will trace the roads and the fosses along which men of the old world moved, and on which men often still move; he will explore the routes of armies and the camps where they have pitched, and will prowl about the barrows in which they sleep;

He will also collect and classify every kind of object, which man has made for use or for ornament in his own home, or in the city; in the fields, or on the water. He will arrange the weapons of offence and defence according to their material and age; whether of stone, of bronze, of iron, or of steel; among which some are so rude that a practised eye alone distinguishes them from the broken flint stones lying in the field, others again so elaborate as to rank among the most beautiful productions both of classical and medieval art; he will not disdain to preserve the bricks and the tiles, which have once formed parts of Asiatic cities or of Roman farms; he will excavate the villas of the ancients; unearth their mosaic pavements; clean their lamps and candelabra; he will mend or restore their broken crockery, and glass; he will even penetrate into the lady’s chamber, turn over her toilet, admire her brooches and her bracelets, examine her mirrors and her pins; and all this he will do in addition to studying the nobler works of ancient art, such as engraved gems and medallions; works chased, carved and embossed in the precious metals and in ivory; frescoes and vase-paintings; bronzes and statues. He will, likewise, familiarise himself with the alphabets of the ancient nations, and exercise his ingenuity in deciphering their written records, both public and private; whether these be contained in inscriptions on stones or metal plates, or in papyrus-rolls, or parchment books; or be scratched on walls or on statues; or be painted on vases; or, in fine, surround the device of a coin.

I have now mentioned some of the principal objects of archæology, which, as I have said, embraces within its range all the monuments of the history and life of man in times past. And this it does, beginning with the remains of primeval man, which stretch far beyond the records of all literary history, and descending along the stream of time till it approaches, but does not quite reach time actually present. No sharp line of demarcation separates the past from the present; you may say that classical archæology terminates with the overthrow of the Western Empire; you may conceive that medieval archæology ceases with the reign of Henry the Seventh; but, be this as it may, in a very few generations the objects of use or of ornament to us will become the objects of research to the archæologist; and, I may add, may be the subjects of lectures to my successors.

For the founder of this Professorship, whose memory is never to be named without honour, and the University which accepted it, together with his valuable collection of ancient sculptures, undoubtedly intended that any kind or class of antiquities whatever might fitly form the theme of the Professor’s discourse. I say this, because a misconception has undoubtedly prevailed on this subject, from which even my learned predecessor himself was not free. “Every nation of course,” says he, “has its own peculiar archæology. Whether civilized or uncivilized, whether of historic fame or of obscure barbarism, Judæa, Assyria, and Egypt; Greece and Rome; India, China, and Mexico; Denmark, Germany, Britain, and the other nations of modern Europe, all have their archæology. The field of inquiry,” he continues, “is boundless, and in the multitude of objects presenting themselves the enquirer is bewildered. It has been wisely provided therefore by the founder of this Professorship, that we shall direct our attention more immediately to one particular class of Antiquities, and that the noblest and most important of them all, I mean the Antiquities of Greece and Rome^[2].” Very probably such may have been Mr Disney’s original intention; and if so, this will easily explain and abundantly pardon the error of my accomplished friend; but the actual words of the declaration and agreement between Mr Disney and the University, which is of course the only document of binding force, are as follows: “That it shall be the duty of the Professor to deliver in the course of each academical year, at such days and hours as the Vice-Chancellor shall appoint, six lectures at least on the subject of Classical, Mediæval and other Antiquities, the Fine Arts and all matters and things connected therewith.” Whether he would have acted wisely or not wisely in limiting the field to classical archæology, he has in point of fact not thus limited it. And, upon the whole, I must confess, I am glad that he has imposed no limitation. For while there are but few who would deny that many of the very choicest relics of ancient art and of ancient history are to be sought for in the Greek and Roman saloons and cabinets of the museums of Europe, yet it must at the same time be admitted that there are other branches of archæology, which are far too important to be neglected, and which have an interest, and often a very high interest, of their own.

Let it be confessed, that the archæology of Greece has in many respects the pre-eminence over every other. “It is to Greece that the whole civilized world looks up,” says Canon Marsden, “as its teacher in literature and in art; and it is to her productions that we refer as the standard of all that is beautiful, noble, and excellent. Greece excelled in all that she put her hand to. Her sons were poets and orators and historians; they were architects and sculptors and painters. The scantiest gleanings of her soil are superior to that which constitutes the pride and boast of others. Scarcely a fragment is picked up from the majestic ruin, which does not induce a train of thought upon the marvellous grace and beauty which must have characterized the whole!

These eloquent and fervid words proceed from a passionate admirer of Hellenic art, and a most successful cultivator of its archæology. Nor do I dare to say that the praise is exaggerated. But at the same time, viewed in other aspects, the archæology of our own country has even greater interest and importance for us. What man is there, in whose breast glows a spark of patriotism, who does not view the monuments of his country which are everywhere spread around him, (in this place above most places,) which connect the present with the remote past, and with many and diverse ages of that past by a thousand reminiscences, with feelings deeper and nobler than any exotic remains of antiquity, how charming soever, could either foment or engender? This love of national antiquities, seated in a healthy patriotic feeling, has place in the speech of an apostle himself: “Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried; and his sepulchre is with us unto this day.” The same feeling prompted Wordsworth thus to express himself in reference to our ancient colleges and their former occupants:

And not only the buildings, but the other archæological monuments of the University (for so I think I may be permitted to call the pictures and the busts, and the statues, and the tombs, which are the glories of our chapels, our libraries and our halls) teach the same great lessons. They raise up again our own worthies before our very eyes, calling on us to strive to walk as they walked, dead though they be and buried; for their effigies and their sepulchres are ‘with us to this day.’ I must repeat, then, that I am glad that the Disney Professor is not obliged to confine himself to classical archæology, sorry as I should be if he were wholly unable to give lectures on one or more branches of that most interesting department, which has moreover a special connexion with the classical studies of the University. It is manifest that the University intended the Professor to consider no kind of human antiquities as alien from him; and I think this in itself a very great gain. For, if the truth must be confessed, antiquaries above most others have been guilty of the error of despising those branches of study which are not precisely their own. I forbear to adduce proofs of this, though I am not unprovided with them; and even although you would certainly be amused if I were to read them; classicists against gothicists; gothicists against classicists.

I could wish that the learned and meritorious writers on both sides had profited by the judicious remarks of Mr Willson, prefixed to Mr Pugin’s Specimens of Gothic Architecture in England. “The respective beauties and conveniences proper to the Grecian orders in their pure state or as modified by the Romans and their successors in the Palladian school may be fully allowed, without a bigoted exclusion of the style we are accustomed to term Gothic. Nor ought its merits to be asserted to the disadvantage of the classic style. Each has its beauties, each has its proportions^[3].” One of the most eminent Gothic architects, Mr George Gilbert Scott, expresses himself in a very similar spirit. “It may be asked, what influence do we expect that the present so-called classic styles will exercise upon the result we are imagining, (i.e. the developement of the architecture of the future). Is the work of three centuries to be unfelt in the future developements, and are its monuments to remain among us in a state of isolation, exercising no influence upon future art? It would, I am convinced, be as unphilosophical to wish, as it would be unreasonable to expect this^[4].” To turn from them to the classicists. “See how much Athens gains,” says Prof. T. L. Donaldson, “upon the affections of every people, of every age, by her Architectural ruins. Not a traveller visits Greece whose chief purpose is not centred in the Acropolis of Minerva.... But in thus rendering the homage due to ancient Art it were unjust to pass without notice those sublime edifices due to the Genius of our Fathers. It is now unnecessary to enter upon the question, whether the first ideas of Gothic Architecture were the result of a casual combination of lines or a felicitous adaptation of form derived immediately from Nature: But graceful proportion, solemnity of effect, variety of plan, playfulness of outline and the profoundest elements of knowledge of construction place these edifices on a par with any of ancient times. Less pure in conception and detail, they excel in extent of plan and of disposition, and yield not in the mysterious effect produced on the feelings of the worshipper. The sculptured presence of the frowning Jove or the chryselephantine statue of Minerva were necessary to awe the Heathen into devotion. But the presence of the Godhead appears, not materially but spiritually, to pervade the whole atmosphere of one of our Gothic Cathedrals^[5].” The Editor of The Museum of Classical Antiquities, well says, “As antiquity embraces all knowledge, so investigations into it must be distinct and various. Each antiquary labours for his own particular object, and each severally assists the other^[6].” It should be borne in mind moreover that archæological remains of every kind and sort are really a part of human history; and if all parts of history deserve to be studied, as they most assuredly do, being parts, though not equally important parts, of the Epic unity of our race, it will follow even with mathematical precision that all monuments relating to all parts of that history must be worthy of study also.

I desire therefore to express in language as strong as may be consistent with propriety, my entire disapproval of pitting one branch of archæology against another, or indeed any study against another study. And on this very account I rejoice that the Disney Professor’s field of choice is as wide as the world itself, so far as concerns its archæology. There is no country, there is no period about which he may not occupy himself, or on which he may not lecture, if he feel himself qualified to do so. He is in a manner bound by the tenure of his office to treat every branch of archæology with honourable respect; and this in itself may not be without a wholesome influence both upon his words and sentiments. I have been somewhat longer over this matter than I could have wished; but I thought it desirable that the position of the Disney Professor should be rightly understood; and I have also endeavoured to shew the real advantage of that position.

His field then is the world itself; but as this is so (and as I think rightly so) there is a very true and real danger lest he and his hearers should be mazed and bewildered at the contemplation of its magnitude. Yet in spite of that danger I will venture to invite you to follow the outlines of the great entirety of the relics of the ages that have for ever passed away. I say the outlines, and even this is almost too much, for I am compelled to shade some parts of the picture so obscurely, and to throw so much of other parts into the background, that even of the outlines I can distinctly present to you but a portion. Thus I will say little more of the archæology of the New World, than that there is one which reaches far beyond the period of Spanish conquest, comprising among many other things ruins of Mexican cities, exquisite monuments of bas-reliefs and other carvings in stone; I will not invite you into the far East of the Old World, to explore the long walls and Buddhist temples of the ancient and stationary civilisation of China, or to dwell upon the objects of its fictile and other arts; but leaving both this and all the adjacent countries of Thibet, Japan and even India without further notice, or with only passing allusions, spatiis conclusus iniquis, I will endeavour, so far as my very limited knowledge permits, the delineation of the most salient peculiarities of the various remains of the old world till the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, and then attempt to trace briefly the remains of successive medieval classes of antiquities, until we arrive at almost modern times. I can name but few objects under each division of the vast subject; but these will be selected so as to suggest as much as possible others of a kindred kind. In addressing myself to such an audience, I may, if anywhere, act upon the assumption, Verbum sapienti sat est: a single word may suggest a train of thought. If I cannot wholly escape the charge of tediousness, I must still be content: for I am firmly convinced after the most careful consideration that I can pursue no course which is equally profitable, though I might take many others which might be more amusing.

It would now appear probable that the earliest extant remains of human handicraft or skill have as yet been found, not on the banks of the Nile or the Euphrates, but in the drift and in the caverns of Western Europe. Only yesterday, as I may say, it has been found out that in a geological period when the reindeer was the denizen of Southern France, and when the climate was possibly arctic, there dwelt in the caverns of the Périgord a race of men, who were unacquainted with the use of metals, but who made flint and bone weapons and instruments; who lived by fishing and the chase, eating the flesh of the reindeer, the aurochs, the wild goat and the chamois; using their skins for clothes which they stitched with bone needles, and their bones for weapon handles, on which they have etched representations of the animals themselves. Specimens of these things were placed last year in the British Museum; and a full account of the discoveries in 1862 and 1863 may be seen in the Revue Archéologique. Some distinguished antiquaries consider that they are the earliest human remains in Western Europe. Various other discoveries in the same regions of late years have tended towards shewing that the time during which man has lived upon the earth is much greater than we had commonly supposed. The geological and archæological circumstances under which the flint implements were found at Abbeville, and St Acheul, near Amiens, in the valley of the Somme, left no doubt that they were anterior by many ages to the Roman Empire. They have a few points of similarity to those found in the caverns of the Périgord, and as they occur along with the remains of the Elephas Antiquus and the hippopotamus, Sir Charles Lyell infers that both these animals coexisted with man; and perhaps on the whole we may consider them rather than those of the Périgord to be the earliest European remains of man, or of man at all. Similar weapons have been found in the drift in this country, in Suffolk, Bedfordshire, and elsewhere. At Brixham, near Torquay, a cavern was examined in 1858, covered with a floor of stalagmite, in which were imbedded bones of the reindeer and also an entire hind leg of the extinct cave-bear, every bone of which was in its proper place; the leg must consequently have been deposited there when the separate bones were held together by their ligaments. Below this floor was a mass of loam or bone-earth, varying from one to fifteen feet in thickness, and amongst it, and the gravel lying below it, were discovered about fifteen flint knives, recognised by practised archæologists as artificially formed, and among them one very perfect tool close to the leg of the bear. It thus becomes manifest that the extinct bear lived after the flint tools were made, or at any rate not earlier; so that man in this district was either the contemporary of the cave-bear, or (as would seem more probable) his predecessor. But shortness of time forbids me to do more than to indicate that in western Europe generally, as well as in Britain, we have an archæology beginning with the age of the extinct animals or quaternary geological epoch and connecting itself with the age of the Roman Empire, when the first literary notices of those countries, with slight exceptions, commence. The antiquaries and naturalists of Denmark conjointly (these indeed should always be united, having much in common; and I am happy in being able to say that a love of archæology has often been united with a love of natural science by members of this University, among whom the late and the present Professor of Botany may be quoted as examples)—these Danish archæologists and naturalists I say, have made out three distinct periods during this interval: the age of stone contemporary with the pine forests; the age of bronze commencing with the oak forests which lie over the pine in the peat; and the age of iron co-extensive with the beech forests which succeeded the oak, and which covered the country in the Roman times as they cover it now. The skulls belonging to the oldest or stone age resemble those of the modern Laplanders; those of the second and third are of a more elongated type.

The refuse-heaps along the shores of the islands of the Baltic, consisting of the remains of mollusks and vertebrated animals, mingled with stone weapons, prove the great antiquity of the age of stone; the oyster then flourished in places where, by reason of the exclusion of the ocean from the brackish Baltic, it does not now exist. None of the animals now extinct, however, occur in these Kjökkenmödding, as they are called, except the wild bull, the Bos primigenius, which was alive in Roman times; but the bones of the auk, now, in all probability, extinct in Europe, are frequent; also those of the capercailzie, now very rare in the southern districts of Scandinavia, though abundant in Norway, which would find abundant food in the buds of the pines growing in pre-historic times in the peat bogs. Similar refuse-heaps, left in Massachusetts and in Georgia by the North American Indians, are considered by Sir C. Lyell, who has seen them, to have been there for centuries before the white man arrived. They have also been found, I understand, very recently in Scotland in Caithness. The stone weapons have now been sharpened by rubbing, and are less rude and probably more recent than those of the drift of the Somme valley, or of the caverns of the Périgord. The only domestic animal belonging to the stone age, yet found in Scandinavia, is the dog; and even this appears to have been wanting in France. In the ages of bronze and iron various domestic animals existed; but no cereal grains, as it would seem, in the whole of Scandinavia. Weapons and tools belonging to these three periods, as well as fragments of pottery and other articles, are very widely diffused over Europe, and have been met with in great abundance in our own country (in Ireland more especially), as well as near the Swiss-lake habitations, built on piles, to which attention has only been called since 1853. It is strange that all the Lake settlements of the bronze period are confined to West and Central Switzerland: in the more Eastern Lakes those of the stone period alone have been discovered.

Similar habitations of a Pæonian tribe dwelling in Lake Prasias, in modern Roumelia, are mentioned by Herodotus, and they may be compared, in some degree, with the Irish Lake-dwellings or Crannoges, i.e. artificial islands, and more especially with the stockaded islands, occurring in various parts of the country: and which are accompanied by the weapons and instruments and pottery of the three aforesaid periods. Even in England slight traces of similar dwellings have been found near Thetford, not accompanied by any antiquities, but by the bones of various animals, the goat, the pig, the red deer, and the extinct ox, the Bos longifrons, the skulls of which last were in almost all instances fractured by the butcher.

As to the chronology and duration of the three periods I shall say nothing, though not ignorant that some attempts have been made to determine them. They must have comprehended several thousand years, but how many seems at present extremely uncertain. I should perhaps say that Greek coins of Marseilles, which would probably be of the age of the Roman Republic, have been found in Switzerland in some few aquatic stations, and in tumuli among bronze and iron implements mixed. The cereals wanting in Scandinavia appear in Switzerland from the most remote period; and domestic animals, the ox, sheep, and goat, as well as the dog, even in the earliest stone-settlements. Among the ancient mounds of the valley of the Ohio, in North America, have been found (besides pottery and sculpture and various articles in silver and copper) stone weapons much resembling those discovered in France and other places in Europe. Before passing from these pre-historic remains, as they are badly called, to the historic, let me beg you to observe a striking illustration of the relation of archæology to history. Archæology is not the handmaid of history; she occupies a far higher position than that: archæology is, as I said at the outset, the science of teaching history by its monuments. Now for all western and northern Europe nearly the whole of its early history must be deduced, so far as it can be deduced at all, from the monuments themselves; for the so-called monuments of literature afford scanty aid, and for that reason our knowledge of these early ages is necessarily very incomplete. Doubtless, many a brave Hector and many a brave Agamemnon lived, fought, and died in the ages of stone and of bronze; but they are oppressed in eternal night, unwept and unknown, because no Scandinavian Homer has recorded their illustrious deeds. Still, we must be thankful for what we can get; and if archæological remains (on which not a letter of an alphabet is inscribed) cannot tell us everything, yet, at least, everything that we do know about these ages, or very nearly so, is deduced by archæology alone.

We must now take a few rapid glances at the remains of the great civilised nations of the ancient world. Mr Kenrick observes that the seats of its earliest civilisation extend across southern Asia in a chain, of which China forms the Eastern, and Egypt the Western extremity; Syria, Mesopotamia, Assyria, and India, are the intermediate links. In all these countries, when they become known to us, we find the people cultivating the soil, dwelling in cities, and practising the mechanical arts, while their neighbours lie in barbarism and ignorance. We cannot, he thinks, fix by direct historical evidence the transmission of this earliest civilisation from one country to another. But we may determine with which of them ancient history and archæology must begin. The monuments of Egypt surpass those of all the rest, as it would appear, by many centuries. None of the others exercised much influence on European civilisation till a later period, some exception being made for the Phœnician commerce; but the connection of European with Egyptian civilisation is both direct and important. “From Egypt,” he remarks, “it came to Greece, from Greece to Rome, from Rome to the remoter nations of the West, by whom it has been carried throughout the globe^[7].” As regards its archæology, which is very peculiar and indeed in some respects unique, I must now say a few words. The present remains of Memphis, the earliest capital, said to have been founded by Athothis, the son of Menes, the first king of the first dynasty, are not great; but so late as the fourteenth century they were very considerable. Temples and gateways, colossal statues and colossal lions then existed, which are now no more. Whether any of them approached the date of the foundation it is useless to enquire. Now, the most remarkable relic is a colossal statue of Rameses II., which, when perfect, must have been about forty-three feet high. This monarch is of the XVIIIth dynasty, which embraces the most splendid and flourishing period of Egyptian history; and though much uncertainty still prevails for the early Egyptian chronology, it appears to be well made out and agreed that this dynasty began to reign about fifteen centuries before the Christian era. But the pyramids and tombs of Ghizeh, and of several other places at no great distance from Memphis, are of a much earlier date; and the great pyramid is securely referred to a king of the fourth dynasty. “Probably at no place in the entire history of Egypt,” says Mr Osburn, “do the lists and the Greek authors harmonize better with the historical notices on the monuments than at the commencement of this dynasty^[8].” The system of hieroglyphic writing was the same (according to Mr Kenrick) in all its leading peculiarities, as it continued to the end of the monarchy. I regret to say that some eminent men have tried to throw discredit, and even ridicule, on the attempts which, I think, have been most laudably made with great patience, great acuteness, and great learning, to decipher and interpret the Egyptian and other ancient languages. Many of us, doubtless, have seen a piece of pleasantry in which Heigh-diddle-diddle, The cat and the fiddle is treated as an unknown language; the letters are divided into words—all wrongly, of course—these words are analysed with a great show of erudition, and a literal Latin version accompanies the whole. If I remember (for I have mislaid the amusing production) it proves to be an invocation of the gods, to be used at a sacrifice. Now, a joke is a good thing in its place; only do not let it be made too much of. Every archæologist, beginning with Jonathan Oldbuck, must sometimes fall into blunders, when he takes inscriptions in hand, even if the language be a known one; and, of course, à fortiori, when but little known. My own opinion on hieroglyphics would be of no value whatever, as I know nothing beyond what I have read in a few modern authors, and have never studied the subject; but, allow me to observe, that I had a conversation very lately with my learned and excellent friend, Dr Birch, of the British Museum, who is now engaged in making a dictionary of hieroglyphics, and he assured me that a real progress has been made in the study of them, that a great deal of certainty has been attained to; while there is still much that requires further elucidation. To the judgment of such a man, who has spent a great part of his life in the study of Egyptian antiquities, though he has splendidly illustrated other antiquities also, I must think that greater weight should be attached than to the judgment of others, eminent as they may be in some branches of learning, who have never studied this as a specialty.

The relation of archæology to Egyptian history deserves especial notice. We have not here, as in pre-historic Europe, a mere multitude of uninscribed and inconsiderable remains; but we have colossal monuments of all kinds—temples, gateways, obelisks, statues, rock sculptures—more or less over-written with hieroglyphics; also sepulchral-chambers, in many instances covered with paintings, in addition to a variety of smaller works, mummy cases, jewelry, scarabæi, pottery, &c., upon many of which are inscriptions. By aid of these monuments mostly, but by no means exclusively, the history of the Pharaohs and the manners and customs of their people are recovered. The monumenta litterarum themselves are frequently preserved on the monuments of stone and other materials.

For the pyramids of Ghizeh and the adjoining districts, for the glorious temples of Dendera, of Karnak, the grandest of all the remains of the Pharaohs, as well as for those of Luxor, with its now one obelisk, of Thebes, of Edfou, of Philæ, likewise for the grottoes of Benihassan, I must leave you to your own imagination or recollection, which may be aided in some degree by a few of the beautiful photographs by Bedford, which are now before your eyes. They extend along the banks and region of the Nile—for this is Egypt—from the earliest times down to the age of the Ptolemies and of Cleopatra herself, and even of the Roman empire, in the case of Dendera, where the portico was added by Tiberius to Cleopatra’s temple. Before quitting these regions I would remark, that the extraordinary rock-hewn temple of Aboo-Simbel in Nubia, which includes the most beautiful colossal statues yet found—their height as they sit is more than fifty feet—bears some similarity to certain Indian temples, especially to the temple of Siva at Tinnevelly, and the Kylas at Ellora, which last has excited the astonishment of all travellers. “Undoubtedly,” says Mr Fergusson, “there are many very striking points of resemblance ... but, on the other hand, the two styles differ so widely in details and in purpose, that we cannot positively assert the actual connexion between them, which at first sight seems unquestionable^[9].”

The archæology of the Babylonian empire need only occupy a few moments. The antiquity of Babylon is proved to be as remote as the fifteenth century B.C., by the occurrence of the name on a monument of Thothmes III., an Egyptian monarch of the XVIIIth dynasty. It may be much older than that; but the archæological remains of the Birs Nimroud (which was long imagined to be the tower of Babel) hitherto found are not older than the age of Nebuchadnezzar. This palatial structure consisted, in Mr Layard’s opinion, of successive horizontal terraces, rising one above another like steps in a staircase. Every inscribed brick taken from it,—and there are thousands and tens of thousands of these,—bears the name of Nebuchadnezzar. It is indeed possible that he may have added to an older structure, or rebuilt it; and if so we may one day find more ancient relics in the Birs. But at a place called Mujelibé (the Overturned) are remains of a Babylonian palace not covered by soil, also abounding with Nebuchadnezzar’s bricks, where Mr Layard found one solitary fragment of a sculptured slab, having representations of gods in head-dresses of the Assyrian fashion, and indicating that the Babylonian palaces were probably similarly ornamented. A very curious tablet was also brought from Bagdad of the age of Nebuchadnezzar, giving, according to Dr Hincks, an account of the temples which he built. Besides these, “a few inscribed tablets of stone and baked clay, figures in bronze and terra cotta, metal objects of various kinds, and many engraved cylinders and gems are almost the only undoubted Babylonian antiquities hitherto brought to Europe.” Babylonia abounds in remains, but they are so mixed—Babylonian, Greek, Roman, Arsacian, Sassanian, and Christian—that it is hard to separate them. Scarcely more than one or two stone figures or slabs have been dug out of the vast mass of débris; and, as Isaiah has said, “Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods hath Jehovah broken unto the ground^[10].”

The most splendid archæological discovery of our age is the disinterment of the various palaces and other monuments of the Assyrian Empire. The labours of Mr Layard and M. Botta have made ancient Assyria rise before our eyes in all its grandeur and in all its atrocity. In visiting the British Museum we seem to live again in ancient Nineveh. We behold the sculptured slabs of its palaces, on which the history of the nation is both represented and written; we wonder at its strange compound divinities, its obelisks, its elegant productions in metal, in ivory, and in terra cotta. By patient and laborious attention to the cuneiform inscriptions, aided by the notices in ancient authors, sacred and profane, men like Sir H. Rawlinson and Dr Hincks have recovered something like a succession of Assyrian kings, ranging from about 1250 B.C. to about 600 B.C., and many particulars of their reigns, some of which bring out in a distinct manner the accurate knowledge of the writers of the Old Testament.

The remains of ancient Persia are too considerable to be passed over. Among other monuments at Pasargadæ, a city of the early Persians, is a great monolith, on which is a bas-relief, and a cuneiform inscription above, “I am Cyrus the king, the Achæmenian.” Here is the tomb of the founder of the empire.

At Susa, the winter seat of the Persian kings from the time of Cyrus, Mr Loftus and Sir W. F. Williams have found noble marble structures raised by Darius, the son of Hystaspes (424—405 B.C.), whose great palace was here: commenced by himself and completed by Artaxerxes II. or Mnemon (405—359 B.C.). Both here and at Persepolis, the richest city after Susa (destroyed, as we all remember from Dryden’s ode, by Alexander), are ruins of magnificent columns of the most elaborate ornamentation, and many cuneiform inscriptions, deciphered by Lassen and Rawlinson. Mr Loftus remarks on the great similarity of the buildings of Persepolis and Susa, which form a distinct style of architecture. This is the salient feature of Persian archæology, and to him I refer you upon it^[11]. I cannot dwell upon other ruins in these regions, or on the minor objects, coins, cylinders, and vases of the ancient Persian empire; and still less on the very numerous coins of the Arsacidæ, and Sassanidæ, who afterwards succeeded to it.

Of ancient Judæa we possess as yet very scanty archæological monuments indeed before the fall of the monarchy. The so-called Tombs of the Kings are now, I believe, generally considered to belong to the Herodian period. Of the Temple of Jerusalem, the holy place of the Tabernacle of the Most Highest, not one stone is left upon another. And we may well conceive that nothing less than its destruction would effectually convince the world of the great truth that an hour had arrived in which neither that holy mountain on which it was built, nor any other in the whole world, was to be the scene of the exclusive worship of the Father. The sites of the Holy Places, however, have naturally excited much attention, and have been well illustrated by several distinguished resident members of our University, and also by a foreign gentleman who for some time resided among us. Dr Pierotti had the singular good fortune to discover the subterranean drains by which the blood of the victims, slaughtered in the Temple, was carried off; and this discovery afforded valuable aid in determining various previously disputed matters in connexion with the Temple. He likewise came upon some masonry in the form of bevelled stones below the surface, which was not unreasonably supposed to belong to Solomon’s Temple; but it now appears that this opinion is doubtful. Besides these, we have the sepulchres of the patriarchs at Hebron, guarded with scrupulous jealousy; and tanks at the same place, which may be as old as the time of David, and perhaps one or two things more of a similar kind. We may well hope that the explorations which are now being set on foot for bringing to light the antiquities of Palestine may add to their number.

In the relation of Jewish archæology to Jewish history we have a case quite different to all those that have gone before it: there the native archæology was more or less extensive, the independent native literature scanty or non-existent; here, where the archæology is almost blotted out, is it precisely the reverse. We have in the sacred books of the Old Testament an ample literary history: we have scarcely any monumental remains of regal Judæa at all. With regard to the New Testament the matter is otherwise; archæological illustrations, as well as literary, exist in abundance, and some very striking proofs from archæology have been adduced of the veracity and trustworthiness of its authors. My predecessor bestowed great attention on the numismatic and other monumental illustrations of Scripture, and herein set a good example to all that should come after him. Archæology is worthily employed in illustrating every kind of ancient literature; most worthily of all does she occupy herself in the illustration and explanation and confirmation of the sacred writings, of the Book of books.

The antiquities of Phœnicia need not detain us long. Opposite to Aradus is an open quadrangular enclosure, excavated in rock, with a throne in the centre for the worship of Astarte and Melkarth; this is the only Phœnician temple discovered in Phœnicia, except a small monolithal temple at Ornithopolis, about nine miles from Tyre, of high antiquity, dedicated apparently to Astarte. I wish however to direct your attention to the characteristic feature of Phœnician architecture, its enormous blocks of stone bevelled at the joints. You have them in the walls of Aradus and in other places in Phœnicia. They are also found in the temple of the Sun at Baalbec, and may with great probability, I conceive, be regarded as Phœnician; though the rest of the beautiful architectural remains there are Greco-Roman of the Imperial period, and perhaps the best specimens of their kind in existence. Among other Phœnician antiquities we have sarcophagi, and sepulchral chambers for receiving them, also very beautiful variegated glass found over a good part of Europe and Asia, commonly called Greek, but perhaps more reasonably presumed to be Phœnician. Most of the remains found on the sites of the Phœnician settlements are either so late Phœnician, or so little Phœnician at all, as at Carthage, that I shall make no apology for passing over both them, and the few exceptions also, just alluding however to the existence of a remarkable hypæthral temple in Malta, which I myself saw nearly twenty years ago, not long, I believe, after it was uncovered. With regard to the strange vaulted towers of Sardinia, called Nuraggis, they may be Phœnician or Carthaginian, but their origin is uncertain. “All Phœnician monuments,” says Mr Kenrick, “in countries unquestionably occupied by the Phœnicians are recent^[12].” He makes the remark in reference to the Lycian archæology. Whether the Lycians were of Phœnician origin or not, their rock-temples and rock-tombs, abounding in sculptures (illustrative both of their mythology and military history), shew that they were not much behind the Greeks in the arts. With the general appearance of their Gothic-like architecture, and of their strange bilingual inscriptions, Greek and Lycian, we are of course familiarised by the Lycian Room in the British Museum. With regard to the relation of Phœnician and Lycian archæology to the history of the peoples themselves, it must be sufficient to say, that their history, both literary and monumental, is quite fragmentary; in the case of Phœnicia the literary notices perhaps preserve more to us than the monumental; in regard to Lycia the remark must rather be reversed.