proved to be not an exotic, but the result of natural growth. In Mr. Bandelier's judgment, the great number of ruins scattered through New Mexico and the neighboring Territories is by no means an evidence of a large population at any one time. His opinion, confirmed by the traditions of the Zuñis and the Pimas, is that a large number of ruined buildings were successively and not simultaneously occupied by the same people. While the variety in the architectural shapes, he continues, "is evidence that the population has fluctuated back and forth, and while it is hardly to be doubted that most of the different classes of houses were simultaneously occupied in sections distant from each other, it is scarcely probable that two or more kinds were inhabited at the same time in one and the same district. These variations indicate, therefore, the successive changes in population, and are the elementary guides to the local history of a pre-documentary past." In a report of the progress of his work in January, 1884, Mr. Bandelier mentions observations of dwellings in caves and "cave villages" on the head-waters of the Sapillo, a tributary of the Gila river, and on the Gila itself. In connection with these peculiar structures, which are perhaps larger than the open-air ruins, compactness compensating for the limitation in space," it is said that wherever the topography permits, villages were erected in open spaces. A report has been published, through the Archæological Institute, of an archæological tour that Mr. Bandelier made in Mexico in 1881. It contains accounts of the explorer's observations of the mounds of Cholula and of

the ruins at Mitla. Among the most remarkable relics of Aztec civilization are the "Sacrificial Calendar Stone," the "Sacrificial Stone," and the idol called Teoyaomiqui, all of which were dug up in the Great Plaza of Mexico. The Calendar Stone is of porphyry, and bears the

of Sargon, as about 3750 B. o. This is the earliest date yet established in ancient history. A text from a Babylonian terminus, or boundarystone, contains the charter of freedom granted

to the city of Bit Karziyabku in return for the aid rendered by its ruler, Ritti Merodach, to the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar I (B. O. 1120). Another tablet records how Nebobaladan, B. O. 900, set aside the revenues of certain royal fanes for the restoration of the temple of the sun-god at Sippara, which had been destroyed by the Sutû, and for its maintenance forever. This tablet contains important information respecting the services, sacrifices, and festivals of Babylonian sunworship. An inscription of Assur-nasir-pal, King of Assyria, B. o. 860, is remarkable for the insertion of straight lines between the sign that finishes one word and that which begins the next. Among other documents are a Babylonian calendar containing examples of the superstitions respecting lucky and unlucky days, etc., which prevailed among the people; letters, petitions, and dispatches, and business papers. Contrary to the impression that has prevailed that the old Babylonian libraries were destroyed by the Assyrian invaders after they had copied the tablets and carried them to Nineveh, the discoveries made by Mr. Rassam show that the libraries survived the invasion, and that the cuneiform literature endured and was vital till a

incloses some pattern or figure. In the center is the face of the sun-god surrounded by emblems of chronometry. The "Sacrificial Stone" has been the object of considerable controversy. It is a cylindrical disk of porphyry, three feet seven inches thick, and about twenty-eight feet in circumference. The top is convex, with designs in relief, but having a basin in the center, from which a deep channel is cut to the edge of the block. Around the cylinder are sculptured fifteen identical groups, each representing a warrior offering gifts to another, who accepts them. Mr. Bandelier finds that the block is not an accurate cylinder, and observes that the sculptors did not have means to correct the shape of the stone, but did the best they could with it without attempting to shape it nicely.

Edited Assyrian and Babylonian Inscriptions. The second part of the fifth volume of "Assyrian and Babylonian Inscriptions," published in 1884 by Sir H. Rawlinson, contains a number of valuable historical texts. The most important of them is probably the three-column terra-cotta cylinder of Nabonidus, 550 B. o., which, besides recording the battles of that sovereign, in describing his excavations and restorations of the temples, gives the date of repairs that were made upon the temple of the sun-god at Sippara, by Naramsin, the son

comparatively late period. The newly published volume contains the proofs that learning was revived in Chaldea after the fall of Assyria; that the study of the sacred texts, legends, and poems was continued during the period of the Persian kings, and under Greek and even Roman rule, and that distinct schools existed in the temples. Among the inscriptions published are some grammatical and lexicographical tablets from the temple school attached to the shrine of the great god of learning, Nebo of Borsippa, which are dated in the reigns of Cyrus and Artaxerxes; a cylinder of Antiochus Theos, of B. o. 280, and some tablets that bear dates proving them to have been written as late as B. O. 29.

Inscriptions of Nebuchadnezzar.-Two inscriptions, of little historical importance, of Nebuchadnezzar, have been found in the northern part of the eastern range of Mount Lebanon, at about two hours' distance from the village of Herme, on the river Orontes. They are en

graved on the rocks on opposite sides of the path up the Wâdy Brissa. Each of the inscriptions is accompanied by a basso-rilievo. The inscriptions relate to an account of the buildings the king was constructing in Babylon. An inscription of Nebuchadnezzar, deposited in the New York Museum of Art, was provisionally translated in November, 1884, hy J. F. X. O'Conor, S. J. It refers to the rebuilding and restoration by Nebuchadnezzar of the Temple of the Sun, at Sippara, and relates that "the God Merodach, the great Lord, in mighty power raised me up for the restoration of the city and the rebuilding of the temples. A lofty name he proclaimed. The Temple of Parra, the Temple of the Sun, at Sippara, which long before me was in decay and needed repair ... I rebuilt." Then, after relating that the work was not done by any special command of the god, but under the impulse of "the fear of his divinity" and with his encouragement, the king offers a prayer: "Samas, great Lord, upon the joyful entering into the Temple of Parra, thy glorious temple, into the works of my hands, truly be favorable, and may thy assistance complete my glory. In thy word of justice, grant me (?) a fullness of glory, a life unto a remote day, and the establishment of my throne for eternity."

The Wolfe Expedition.-Steps were taken in the autumn of 1883 for organizing an American expedition to visit and explore some of the Assyrian and Babylonian ruins. Funds were contributed toward the purpose by Mrs. C. L. Wolfe, of New York, and the enterprise was given the name of the "Wolfe Expedition." The work of exploration is to be carried on by the Rev. W. Hayes Ward, D. D., of New York, one of the few American gentlemen who have paid special attention to the study of cuneiform literature, and Messrs. Haynes, of Robert College, and J. R. S. Sterrett, of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Dr. Ward started on his journey in September, 1884, and was joined by bis companions in Constantinople, where he was furnished by the Turkish Government with all the papers necessary to secure the end he has in view. At the latest accounts the party were at Marash, examining the Hittite relics there. They expected to spend the winter in investigations of the ruins in Mesopotamia.

Operations of the Egypt Exploration Fund at Pithom and Zoan.-The society called the Egypt Exploration Fund was formed in England in 1882 for the purpose of promoting the examination of the ancient ruins in the Delta of the Nile, with especial reference to the identification of the places mentioned in the Bible in connection with the sojourn of the Israelites. Its first work was performed during the season of 1882-'83, under the immediate direction of M. Edouard Naville, at the mound known as the Tel-el-Maschuta, in the Wadi-et-Tumilat, on the line of the sweet-water canal, near the railroad station Ramses, and resulted in the iden

tification of that place with Pithom, one of the treasure cities which the children of Israel built for Pharaoh, as well as with the city known under the Roman dominion as Heroopolis. M. Naville also learned that Succoth, the place of the first encampment of the Hebrews on the journey of the Exodus, was here, and found an inscription pointing to Pikeheret, which is supposed to be the Pihahiroth of the Exodus, as being in the vicinity. A possible corroboration of this identification has since been found in a manuscript relating to the journey of a Frank woman in Egypt, in the fourth century of our era, in which the author mentions that she was shown a place called Pithona, as the city that the Hebrews built for Pharaoh, and speaks of the village of Hero as occupying the same site. Thence the lady relates that she went to Ramses, twenty miles distant.

The excavations of the Fund were carried on during the season of 1883-'84, under the direction of W. Flinders Petrie, at Sân, the Zoan of the Bible, where was the capital of the fifteenth and sixteenth dynasties of shepherd kings, and of the twenty-first and twentythird (or Tanite) dynasties. According to a passage in Numbers xiii, 22, Zoan was built seven years after Hebron. The mounds that mark its former site were prominent objects among the marshes of the Delta, and many interesting relics had been found among the fragments lying loose on the surface of the ground. A few preliminary excavations had already been made by M. Mariette, who, being unable to complete the work, had again covered up the objects he had found, to preserve them. According to M. Naville, there was no place in Egypt where destruction had been as complete and as unmerciful as there. Mr. Petrie began his work with the excavation of the temple, an imposing ruin of red granite from Syene, which occupied one of the numerous mounds marking the site of the ancient city. This building was surrounded by two inclosure-walls, one of them of sun-dried brick and of very remote antiquity. The other one was erected in the reign of King Pisebkhanu, of the twenty-second dynasty, and is described as being of "incredible strength. It extended round three sides of the building, and is yet standing to the height of about twenty feet. It is eighty feet thick, and built of colossal bricks about eight times the size and weight of our modern bricks." Against and upon this wall dwelling-houses had been built, at different periods, as determined by the coins and potsherds found in them. The relics appertaining to the temple range in age from the period of the sixth to that of the twenty-sixth dynasty. Among them are stones bearing the cartouch of Pepè, possibly of him of the sixth dynasty; statues in red granite of Amenemhe I, and in black granite of Osortasen I and Amenemhe II; a torso in yellow sandstone of Osortasen II, and an inscription of Osortasen III, all of the twelfth dynasty; a few relics of

less-known successors of those kings; numerous works and alterations by Rameses II and Menephthah I, and a block of Seti II, of the nineteenth dynasty; and a statue of Rameses III, of the twentieth dynasty. After this dynasty the city seems to have fallen into decay, and its stones to have been used for other buildings. Large numbers of stones were worked over by Siamen, of the twenty-first dynasty, and other kings who succeeded him. The later dynasties were represented by a stela of Tirhakah of the twenty-fifth, and an ornament of Psammetik II, of the twenty-sixth dynasty. The most striking monument found in the course of the temple-excavations was indicated in numerous stones worked into the building, which proved to be fragments of a statue of Rameses II, that exceeded in size any other statue known. It appears to have been a standing figure, crowned with the crown of Upper Egypt, and supported in the back by a pilaster. The great-toe measured eighteen inches across, and the figure is estimated to have been ninety-eight feet high from the foot to the crown, and, with its pedestal, one hundred and fifteen feet high, and to have weighed not less than twelve hundred tons. An avenue of granite blocks outside of the wall of Pisebkhanu was found to appertain to a temple of the Ptolemaic age, having a pavement of limestone and marked by fragments of statues and portions of bas-reliefs and sculptures.

Excavations in some of the houses near the temple brought to light relics of domestic articles, works of fine art, papyri, weights, etc. One house was called the "House of the Papyri," because of several baskets of manuscripts and waste-papers, partly or wholly burned, which were found in a closet under the cellar-stairs. In another house, called the "House of Statuettes," were many green porcelain figures of gods and sacred animals, and burned papyri; and a third house, the "House of the Glass Zodiac," furnished the fragments of a large sheet of colorless glass, which had been gilded on one side and painted on the other side with a square border-line, inclosing a circular zodiac and four heads of the seasons, while the corners between the border-line and the circle were covered with stars done in rhombs of gold-leaf. In one or other of these houses were also found domestic utensils, and vases in granite, basalt, alabaster, and bronze; in a niche in the wall the lamp used by the owner in going into the cellar; fine pottery curiously ornamented; specimens of blue glaze-ware; a portrait statue; coins and bronze fittings; a marble bust of a term; and specimens of weights, based on the units of the shekel, the kât, and the drachma. The papyri, of which some two hundred legible fragments have been saved, are of a miscellaneous character, and in various Egyptian and Greek handwritings. Among the documents in stone are the unpublished half of a tablet of Tirhakah, of

which the other half has been published; an inscribed obelisk of the twelfth dynasty; in a curious cruciform Græco-Egyptian character, a large inscribed stela of Ptolemy Philadelphus; and several smaller stele, a royal statuette, and sphinxes. Three cemeteries were examined, the most ancient of which dates from the twelfth dynasty. In it were found a broken sphinx of fine early work in black granite, on which Rameses III had cut his name; and a royal tomb containing a rifled sarcophagus, from which the lid had been lost, 14 feet long by seven feet nine inches in width, and without an inscription. The second cemetery was believed to be the chief necropolis of Tanis during the last stages of its civic history, and contained remains dating from just before the Ptolemies to about the time of Diocletian, during whose reign the city was burned. tained a "rich quarter" and a "poor quarter," and a department for the sacred ichneumons, of which remains were found in thousands of oblong pots. A cabalistic circle of human skulls was found, with the ground strewed with "sacred eyes," in blue and glazed-ware. Among the remains in the third cemetery, which was of Roman times, was the mummy of a woman laid in a kind of open-work basket covered with a board. The robe of the mummy was edged with a variety of woven borders, white on red and red on blue, and other borders in red, yellow, white, green, and purple; and the jewelry consisted of a nose-ring, ear-rings, and a necklace. The mummy is supposed to have been of the time of Constantine.

It con

None of the domestic and smaller articles as yet recovered at Tanis are of an earlier date than the Ptolemaic period, although the larger works give evidence that the city existed as early as the sixth dynasty. This is because the excavations have not yet reached the strata in which pre-Ptolemaic remains are imbedded. An idea of the magnitude of the work to be done before an expectation can be entertained of finding similar relics of any of the earlier dynasties, is given in the statement by Mr. Petrie in one of his reports that, "where there is least accumulation over the earlier remains, I find fifteen feet of Roman and post-Roman dust and rubbish; and this means that from forty to fifty tons of stuff have to be taken out of any hole we dig before we even begin to touch pre-Roman work." The excavations were continued during the season of 1884-'85.

Egypt Exploration Fund.-At the annual meeting of the Egypt Exploration Fund, held October 29th, Mr. Petrie reported that he had examined twenty sites of ancient cities and remains. The immediate results of the examinations were that some sites supposed to be of importance were really small, and this alone was of geographical value, for it prevented the formation of a mistaken expectation of finding a large city in such a situation, while other sites were of such size and so much encumbered with late deposits that their ex

amination should be postponed. Among places that promised to yield important discoveries was one so covered with early Greek pottery that the potsherds crackled under the feet as one walked over it. This pottery was of every date, from the prehistoric down through the Phoenician and black-figured to the finest period of red-figured pottery on a black ground, and on into still later times. Such a site was of the first importance for the study of Greek archæology, and, so far as was known, it had never been visited by a European. This site, with the one in which the great sarcophagus of red granite already mentioned, and one in which the jamb of a gateway of Amenemhe I were found, were spoken of as places not before known to Europeans, on which the agents of the fund hoped to make more thorough explorations. They had been foiled in finding relics of the Hyksos dynasties at Zoan, simply by the immensity of the area to be explored there, to clear which exhaustively would take centuries of work, rather than the few months that could be given to it between the rains and the heat of one season. The whole of that area, however, had been examined to depths of ten, twenty, or thirty feet, with shafts that left no spaces of more than three hundred yards untouched by excavations. The financial report showed a balance of £2,162 to the credit of the fund. It was proposed to spend £1,650 during the ensuing year, and to send out an English student of Egyptology to assist Mr. Petrie. American friends of the fund had contributed £260 to its treasury, through the Rev. W. C. Winslow, of Boston. It was resolved to present a selection from the objects collected in the excavations to the museum in Boston. Measurements of the Great Pyramid.-W. Flinders Petrie has published the results of measurements of the Pyramids of Gizeh, which he made during the season of 1880-'81 and 1882-'83, and in which he believes he has secured, by the systems of checks and triangulations he employed, a higher degree of accuracy than has been obtained in any previous survey. The dimensions of the Great Pyramid and its several parts, as calculated by him, differ from those announced by Prof. C. Piazzi Smith slightly, but sufficiently, if the measurements are actually more accurate, to overthrow the theory of mystic harmonies and proportions which Prof. Smith has founded upon his own surveys; and Mr. Petrie suggests new relations of proportion in the different parts of the pyramid, without attaching any particular significance to them. He controverts the theory of Lepsius, that the pyramids were built by successive accretions, or by the addition of new layers over the whole structure in the successive years of the king-builder's reign, and finds reason in his observations on the mode of structure for believing that they were constructed according to a predetermined plan. Mr. Petrie also inquired into the character of the tools that were used in build

ing the pyramids. Of these tools, a bronze plate or scraper, and a copper instrument, and traces of bronze saws and tubular drills, have been discovered, but not the tubes themselves. The drills are supposed to have been jeweled with tough, uncrystallized corundum or some other gem-mineral capable of cutting into granite, diorite, and basalt, and the saws were probably about nine feet long. An enormous levy of forced labor might have been made during the season of the overflow, without interfering with the regular industries of the country. Barracks have been discovered to the west of the second pyramid which were capable of accommodating about four thousand workmen. These, supposing them to have been masons, with relays of one hundred thousand men every three months, would have been adequate, Mr. Petrie supposes, for the construction of the pyramids. The accuracy with which the base is squared-so close that it is hardly conceivable that the angles could have been measured without the aid of telescopes-is mentioned as the most wonderful feature in the construction of the Great Pyramid.

One of the most interesting results of Mr. Petrie's investigations was the discovery of evidence that these works of the ancient empire had been at some period subjected to deliberate, determined attempts to destroy them. To this is owing the condition of the second pyramid of Aboo Roash, which had led to the supposition that it had never been finished. From the examination of the rubbish-heaps around this work, Mr. Petrie learned that the whole granite casing of the pyramid had been stripped off to be laboriously smashed. He found fragments of a sarcophagus of granite, which the structure had once contained, and pieces of a throne and of a statue in diorite as large as the statue of Khafra of the second pyramid of Gizeh, which had been seated on the throne, and part of the name of the king. Chips and fragments of precious vessels in alabaster, bronze, and basalt, were also discovered in this débris. The rubbish in which the ruins of the votive chapel, attached to the pyramid of Khafra at Gizeh, are half buried, yielded similar results. Considerable masses of chips of diorite and alabaster statues, fingers, toes, bits of drapery, fragments of diorite and alabaster bowls, and even of hieroglyphical inscriptions, were found in it. These discoveries may help to throw light on the character of the period from the seventh to the eleventh dynasties, the darkest epoch of Egyptian history, which it is supposed may have been a period of revolution, and upon the hitherto unexplained expression of Herodotus respecting the pyramid-builders, that "the Egyptians so detest the memory of these kings that they do not like even to mention their names."

A Theban Tomb of the Eleventh Dynasty.-M. Maspero discovered in February, 1883, among the hills near Thebes, the tomb of a person named Horhotpu, of the eleventh dynasty, a