Part 2 / Book 3 — CHAPTER IV. ANOTHER GROUP OF ARCHÆOLOGISTS AND EXPLORERS.—THE SPOILS OF XANTHUS, OF BABYLON, OF NINEVEH, OF HALICARNASSUS, AND OF CARTHAGE.

‘She doted upon the Assyrians her neighbours, ... when she saw men pourtrayed upon the wall,—the images of the Chaldeans pourtrayed with vermilion, girded with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads; all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea.’

Ezekiel xxiii, 12–15.

‘I do love these ancient ruins;

We cannot tread upon them, but we set

Our foot upon some reverend history.

· · · · ·

But all things have their end,

Castles and cities (which have diseases like to men)

Must have like death which we have.’

Webster, The Duchess of Malfi.

The Libraries of the East.—The Monasteries of the Nitrian Desert, and their Explorers.—William Cureton and his Labours on the MSS. of Nitria, and in other Departments of Oriental Literature.—The Researches in the Levant of Sir Charles Fellows, of Mr. Layard, and of Mr. Charles Newton.—Other conspicuous Augmentors of the Collection of Antiquities.

We have now to turn to that vast field of research and exploration, from which the national Museum of Antiquities has derived an augmentation that has sufficed to double, within twenty-five years, its previous scientific and 609literary value to the Public. In this chapter we have to tell of not a little romantic adventure; of remote and perilous explorations and excavations; sometimes, of sharp conflicts between English pertinacity and Oriental cunning; often, of great endurance of hardship and privation in the endeavour at once to promote learning—the world over—and to add some new and not unworthy entries on the long roll of British achievement.

Two distinct groups of explorers have now to be recorded. The labours of both groups carry us to the Levant. |The Libraries of the East.| What has been done of late years by the searchers after manuscripts, in their effort to recover some of the lost treasures of the old Libraries of the East, will be most fairly appreciated by the reader, if, before telling of the researches and the studies of Curzon, Tattam, Cureton, and their fellow-workers in Eastern manuscript archæology, some brief prefatory notice be given of the earlier labours, in the same field, of Huntington, Browne, and other travellers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Mention must also be made of the explorations of Sonnini and of Andréossi.

The researches of Robert Huntington in the Nitrian Monasteries;

About the year 1680, Robert Huntington, afterwards Bishop of Raphoe, visited the Monasteries of the Nitrian Desert, and made special and eager research for the Syriac version of the Epistles of St. Ignatius, of the existence of which there had been wide-spread belief amongst the learned, since the time of Archbishop Ussher. But his quest was fruitless, although, as it is now well known, a Syriac version of some of those epistles did really exist in one of the monasteries which Huntington visited. The monks, then as afterwards, were chary of showing their MSS., very small as was the care they took of them. The 610only manuscripts mentioned by Huntington, in recording his visits to three of the principal communities—St. Mary Deipara, St. Macarius, and El Baramous—are an Old Testament in the Estrangelo character; two volumes of Chrysostom in Coptic and Arabic; a Coptic Lectionary in four volumes; and a New Testament in Coptic and Arabic.

Towards the close of the following century, these monasteries received the successive visits of Sonnini, of William George Browne, and of General Count Andréossi. |and those of Sonnini, Browne, and others.| Sonnini says nothing of books. Browne saw but few—among them an Arabo-Coptic Lexicon, the works of St. Gregory, and the Old and New Testaments in Arabic—although he was told by the superior that they had nearly eight hundred volumes, with none of which they would part. |Browne, Travels in Africa, &c., p. 43.| General Andréossi, on the other hand, speaks slightingly of the books as merely ‘ascetic works, ... some in Arabic, and some in Coptic, with an Arabic translation in the margin;’ |Huntington, Observations (repr. in Ray’s Coll.).| but adds, ‘We brought away some of the latter class, which appear to have a date of six centuries.’ This was in 1799. |Andréossi, Vallées des Lac de Nation, pass.| Browne died in 1814; Sonnini de Manoncourt, in 1812; Count Andréossi survived until 1828.

In the year 1827, the late Duke of Northumberland (then Lord Prudhoe) made more elaborate researches. His immediate object was a philological one, his Lordship desiring to further Mr. Tattam’s labours on a Coptic and Arabic Dictionary. |Lord Prudhoe’s Narrative, &c., as abridged in Quarterly Review, vol. lxxvii, pp. 45, seq.| Hearing that ‘Libraries were said to be preserved, both at the Baramous and Syrian convents,’ he proceeded to El Baramous, accompanied by Mr. Linart, and encamped outside the walls. ‘The monks in this convent,’ says the Duke, ‘about twelve in number, appeared poor and ignorant. They looked on us with 611great jealousy, and denied having any books, except those in the church, which they showed us.’ But having been judiciously mollified by some little seductive present, on the next day, ‘in a moment of good humour, they agreed to show us their Library. From it I selected a certain number of Manuscripts, which, with the Lexicon (Selim) already mentioned, were carried into the monk’s room. A long deliberation ensued, ... as to my offer to purchase them. Only one could write, and at last it was agreed that he should copy the Selim, which copy and the MSS. I had collected were to be mine, in exchange for a fixed sum of dollars, to which I added a present of rice, coffee, tobacco, and such other articles as I had to offer.’ After narrating the acquisition of a few other MSS. at the Syrian convent, or Convent of St. Mary Deipara, his Lordship proceeds:—‘These manuscripts I presented to Mr. Tattam, and gave him some account of the small room with its trap-door, through which I descended, candle in hand, to examine the manuscripts, where books, and parts of books, and scattered leaves, in Coptic, Ethiopic, Syriac, and Arabic, were lying in a mass, on which I stood.... In appearance, it seemed as if, on some sudden emergency, the whole Library had been thrown down this trap-door, and they had remained undisturbed, in their dust and neglect, for some centuries.’

The researches in the Levantine Monasteries of Mr. Curzon.

Ten years later, Mr. Tattam himself continued these researches. But in the interval they had been taken up by the energetic and accomplished traveller Mr. Robert Curzon, to whose charming Visits to the Monasteries of the Levant it is mainly owing that a curious aspect of monastic life, which theretofore had only interested a few scholars, has become familiar to thousands of readers of all classes.

Mr. Curzon’s researches were much more thorough 612than those of any of his predecessors. He was felicitous in his endeavours to win the good graces of the monks, and seems often to have made his visits as pleasant to his hosts as afterwards to his readers. But, how attractive soever, only one of them has to be noticed in connexion with our present topic—that, namely, to the Convent of the Syrians mentioned already. ‘I found,’ says Mr. Curzon, ‘several Coptic MSS. lying on the floor, but some were placed in niches in the stone wall. They were all on paper, except three or four; one of them was a superb MS. of the Gospels, with a commentary by one of the early fathers. Two others were doing duty as coverings to large open pots or jars, which had contained preserves, long since evaporated. On the floor I found a fine Coptic and Arabic Dictionary, with which they refused to part.’ After a most graphic account of a conversation with the Father Abbot—the talk being enlivened with many cups of rosoglio—he proceeds to recount his visit to a ‘small closet, vaulted with stone, which was filled to the depth of two feet or more with loose leaves of Syriac MSS., which now form one of the chief treasures of the British Museum.’ The collection thus ‘preserved’ was that of the Coptic monks; the same monastery contained another which was that of the Abyssinian monks. ‘The disposition of the manuscripts in the Library,’ continues Mr. Curzon, ‘was very original.... The room was about twenty-six feet long, twenty feet wide, and twelve feet high; the roof was formed of the trunks of palm-trees. A wooden shelf was carried, in the Egyptian style, around the walls, at the height of the top of the door, ... underneath the shelf various long wooden pegs projected from the wall, ... on which hung the Abyssinian MSS., of which this curious Library was entirely composed. The books of Abyssinia 613are bound in the usual way—sometimes in red leather, and sometimes in wooden boards, ... they are then enclosed in a case, ... to which is attached a strap, ... and by these straps the books are hung on the wooden pegs, three or four on a peg, or more, if the books were small; their usual size was that of a small, very thick quarto.... Almost all Abyssinian books are written upon skins.... They have no cursive writing; each letter is therefore painted, as it were, with the reed-pen.... Some manuscripts are adorned with the quaintest and grimmest illustrations conceivable, ... and some are worthy of being compared with the best specimens of caligraphy in any language.’ Then follows an amusing account of the ‘higgling of the monks,’ after a truly Abyssinian fashion, ending in the acquisition of books, of the whole of which the travellers could not, by any packing or stuffing, make their bags containable. ‘In this dreadful dilemma, ... seeing that the quarto was the most imperfect, I abandoned it; and I have now reason to believe, on seeing the manuscripts of the British Museum, that this was the famous book, with the date of A.D. 411, the most precious acquisition to any Library that has been made in modern times, with the exception, as I conceive, of some in my own Collection.... |Curzon, Visits, &c., as above.| This book, which contains some lost works of Eusebius, has ... fallen into better hands than mine.’

In the following year (1838), the Rev. Henry Tattam (afterwards Archdeacon of Bedford), in furtherance of the purpose which had previously enlisted Lord Prudhoe’s co-operation, set out upon his expedition into Egypt. He arrived at Cairo in October, and in November proceeded up the Nile as far as Esneh, visiting many monasteries, and inspecting their Libraries, in most of which he only met with liturgies and service-books. Sanobon was an exception, 614for there he found eighty-two Coptic MSS., some of them very fine.

Continuing the narrative, we find that on the 12th of January they started across the desert for the valley of the Natron Lakes, and pitched their tent at a short distance from the Monastery of Macarius. |Miss Platt’s Journal (unpublished, but abridged in the Quarterly Review, as above).| The monks told them that of these convents there had once been, on the mountain and in the valley of Nitria, no less than three hundred and sixty. Of fifty or thereabouts the ruins, it is said, may still be seen. |Researches of Archdeacon Tattam.| At the Convent of the Syrians, the Archdeacon was received with much civility, not, however, unaccompanied by a sort of cautious circumspection. After a look at the church, followed by the indispensable pipes and coffee, the monks asked the cause to which they were indebted for the honour of his visit. He told them discreetly that it was his wish to see their books. ‘They replied that they had no more than what he had seen in the church; upon which he told them plainly that he knew they had.’ A conference ensued, and, on the next day, they conducted him to the tower, and then into a dark vault, where he found a great quantity of very old and valuable Syriac MSS. He selected six quarto volumes, and took them to the superior’s room. He was next shown a room in the tower, where he found a number of Coptic and Arabic MSS., principally liturgies, with a beautiful copy of the Gospels. He then asked to see the rest. The monks looked surprised to find he knew of others, and seemed at first disposed to deny that they had any more, but at length produced the key of the apartment where the other books were kept, and admitted him. After looking them over, he went to the superior’s room, where all the priests were assembled, fifteen or sixteen in number; one of them brought a Coptic and Arabic Selim, or Lexicon, which Mr. 615Tattam wished to purchase; they informed him they could not part with it, ... but consented to make him a copy. He paid for two of the Syriac MSS. he had placed in the superior’s room, for the priests could not be persuaded to part with more.... The superior would have sold the Dictionary, but was afraid, because the Patriarch had written in it a curse upon any one who should take it away.’ [It was the same volume which had been vainly coveted by Mr. Curzon, as well as by several preceding travellers, and of which he tells us he ‘put it in one of the niches of the wall, where it remained about two years, when it was purchased and brought away for me by a gentleman at Cairo.’] ‘In the Convent of El Baramous,’ continues Miss Platt, ‘Mr. Tattam found about one hundred and fifty Coptic and Arabic liturgies, and a very large Dictionary in both languages. In the tower is an apartment, with a trap-door in the floor, opening into a dark hole, full of loose leaves of Arabic and Coptic manuscripts.’ At the Monastery of Amba-Bichoi, Mr. Tattam saw a lofty vaulted room, so strewn with loose manuscripts as scarcely to afford a glimpse of the floor on which they lay, ‘in some places a quarter of a yard deep.’ At Macarius Convent a similar sight presented itself, but of these Mr. Tattam was permitted to carry off about a hundred.

As the reader may well imagine, the charms of the Syriac MSS. had made too deep an impression on Mr. Tattam’s heart to admit of an easy parting. Many were the longing, lingering looks, mentally directed towards them. Almost at the moment of setting out on his return to Cairo, he added four choice books to his previous spoils. In February, he resolved to revisit the convents, and once more to ply his most persuasive arguments. He was manfully seconded by his Egyptian servant, Mahommed, whose 616favourite methods of negotiation much resembled those of Mr. Curzon. ‘The Archdeacon soon returned,’ says Miss Platt, ‘followed by Mahommed and one of the Bedouins, bearing a large sack full of splendid Syriac MSS. on vellum. They were safely deposited in the tent.’ At Amba-Bischoi a successful bargain was struck for an old Pentateuch in Coptic and Arabic, and a beautiful Coptic Evangeliary. |Platt’s Journal; abridged, as above.| On the next day, ‘Mahommed brought from the priests a Soriana, a stupendous volume, beautifully written in the Syriac characters, with a very old worm-eaten copy of the Pentateuch from Amba-Bischoi, exceedingly valuable, but not quite perfect.’ The remainder of the story, or rather the greater part of what remains, must here be more concisely told than in the words of the reviewer.

The manuscripts which Mr. Tattam has thus obtained, in due time arrived in England. Such of them as were in the Syriac language were disposed of to the Trustees of the British Museum.... Forty-nine manuscripts of extreme antiquity, containing some valuable works long since supposed to have perished, and versions of others written several centuries earlier than any copies of the original texts now known to exist, constituted such an addition as has been rarely, if ever, made at one time to any Library. The collection of Syriac MSS. procured by Mr. Rich had already made the Library of the British Museum conspicuous for this class of literature; but the treasure of manuscripts from Egypt rendered it superior to any in Europe.

From the accounts which Lord Prudhoe, Mr. Curzon, and Mr. Tattam had given of their visits to the Monastery of the Syrians, it was evident that but few of the manuscripts belonging to it had been removed since the time of Assemani; and probable that no less a number than 617nearly two hundred volumes must be still remaining in the hands of the monks. Moreover, from several notes in the manuscripts ... already brought to England, it was certain that most of them must be of very considerable antiquity.... In several of these notices, Moses of Tecrit states that, in the year 932, he brought into the convent from Mesopotamia about two hundred and fifty volumes. As there was no evidence whatever to show that even so many as one hundred of these MSS. had ever been taken away (for those which were procured for the Papal Library by the two Assemani, added to those which Mr. Curzon and Mr. Tattam had brought to England, do not amount to that number), there was sufficient ground for supposing that the Convent of the Syrians still possessed not fewer than about one hundred and fifty volumes, which, at the latest, must have been written before the tenth century. Application, accordingly, was made by the Trustees to the Treasury; a sum was granted to enable them to send again into Egypt, and Mr. Tattam readily undertook the commission. |Treasury grant, in 1841, for further researches.| The time was most opportune. Had much more delay been interposed, these manuscripts, which, perhaps, constitute the greatest accession of valuable literature which has been brought from the East into Europe since the taking of Constantinople, |Quart. Review, as before.| would, in all probability, have been now the pride of the Imperial Library at Paris.

Mr. Tattam’s expedition to Nitria in 1842.

Mr. Tattam thought he could work most effectively through the influence of a neighbouring Sheikh with the superior of the convent. By which means he obtained, after some delays, a promise that all the Syriac MSS. should be taken to the Sheikh’s house, and there bargained for. ‘My servant,’ he says, ‘had taken ten men and eight donkeys from the village; had conveyed them, and already bargained for them, which bargain I confirmed. That night 618we carried our boxes, paper, and string, and packed them all.... Before ten in the morning they were on their way to Alexandria.’ But, as will be seen in the sequel, the monks were too crafty for Mr. Tattam to cope with.

Tischendorf’s visit in 1844.

In 1844, Tischendorf visited the monasteries already explored by Curzon and Tattam. His account reproduces the old characteristics:—‘Manuscripts heaped indiscriminately together, lying on the ground, or thrown into large baskets, beneath masses of dust.... The excessive suspicion of these monks renders it extremely difficult to induce them to produce their MSS., in spite of the extreme penury which surrounds them.... But much might yet be found to reward the labour of the searcher.’

In truth, the monks, poor and simple as they sometimes seemed to be, had taken very sufficient care to keep enough of literary treasures in their hands to reward ‘further researches.’ Nearly half of their collection seems to have been withheld.

Pacho’s negotiation for the recovery of the MSS. withheld by the monks of St. Mary Deipara.

A certain clever Mr. Pacho now entered on the scene as a negotiator for the obtainment or recovery of the missing ‘treasures of the tombs.’ They had been virtually purchased before, but the Lords of the Treasury very wisely re-opened the public purse, and at length secured for the Nation an inestimable possession. The new accession completed, or went far towards completing, many MSS. which before were tantalizingly imperfect. |See page 622, in this Chapter.| It supplied a second ancient copy of the famous Ignatian Epistles (to St. Polycarp, to the Ephesians, and to the Romans); many fragments of palimpsest manuscripts of great antiquity, and among them the greater part of St. Luke’s Gospel in Greek; and about four thousand lines of the Iliad, written in a fine square uncial letter, apparently not later than the sixth century. The total number of volumes thus added to the 619previous Nitrian Collections were calculated, roundly, to be from a hundred and forty to a hundred and fifty.

That the rich accession to our sacred literature, thus made amidst many obstacles, should be turned speedily to public advantage, two conditions had to be fulfilled. |William Cureton and his labours in Oriental Literature.| Skilful labour had first to be employed in the arrangement of a mass of fragments. Scholars competently prepared, by previous studies in Oriental literature and more especially in Syriac, must then get to work on their transcription, their gloss, and their publication. It could scarcely have been expected, beforehand, that any one man would be able to undertake both tasks, and to keep them, for some years to come, well abreast. The fact, however, proved to be so. The right man was already in the right place for the work that was to be done.

The late William Cureton had entered the service of the Trustees of the British Museum in 1837, at the age of twenty-nine, when he had been already for about eight years in holy orders. He was a native of Westbury, in Shropshire. His education, begun at Newport School, had been matured at Christ Church, Oxford. He had been just about to enter himself at Christ Church in the ordinary way, when his father died, suddenly, leaving the family fortunes under considerable embarrassment. Cureton, and a brother of his, showed the metal they were both made of, by instantly changing their youthful plans. That the whole of the diminished patrimony might be at their mother’s sole disposal, William Cureton went to Oxford as a servitor. His brother, instead of waiting for his expected commission in the Army, enlisted as a private dragoon. And certainly, in the issue, neither of these young men lost any ‘dignity’—in any sense of that word—on 620account of the step so unselfishly taken at their start in life.

William Cureton began his literary labours as a Coadjutor-Under-Librarian in old Bodley. Dr. Gaisford introduced him to Dr. Bandinel, in 1834, with the words:—‘I bring you a good son. He will make a good librarian.’ It was at Oxford that he laid the substantial foundation of his Oriental studies. After three years, he followed the fashion already set him by some of the best and ablest officers the Bodleian has ever had—Ellis, Baber, and H. O. Coxe, for example—by transferring, for a time, his services from the great Library of Oxford to that of London. |Cureton’s entrance into the British Museum.| His first (or nearly his first) Museum task was to set to work on the cataloguing of the Arabic and Persian MSS. In 1842, he began his earliest Oriental publication (undertaken for the ‘Oriental Text Society,’ to be mentioned presently), namely, Al Sharastani’s ‘Book of Religious and of Philosophical Sects.’

At the British Museum, he became quite as notable for the amiability of his character, and the genial frankness of his manners, as for his scholarly attainments and his power of authorship. I have a vivid recollection of my own introduction to him, in the February of 1839, and of the impression made on me by his kindly and cordial greeting. When I noted that pleasant face, which beamed with good nature as well as with intellect, I instantly appreciated the force of the words used by my introducer: ‘Let me make you known,’ said he, ‘to my father-confessor.’ I thought the choice to be obviously a felicitous one. Not less vivid is my memory of the delight Mr. Cureton manifested on receiving, within the Museum vaults, the first importation from the Nitrian Desert. The sight of such a mass of torn, disorderly, and dirty fragments, would have appalled many 621men not commonly afraid of labour, but to William Cureton the scholarly ardour of discovery made the task, from the first, a pleasure. When successive fresh arrivals gave new hope that many gaps in the manuscripts of earliest importation would, in course of time, be filled up, the laborious pleasure ripened into joy.

The collection, obtained by the long succession of labours already narrated, reached the British Museum on the first of May, 1843. When the cases were opened, very few indeed of the MSS. were perfect. |Fragmentary condition of the Syriac MSS. imported in 1843.| Nearly two hundred volumes had been torn into separate leaves, and then mixed up together, by blind chance and human stupidity. It was a perplexing sight. But the eyes that looked on it belonged to a seeing head. Even into a little chaos like this, almost hopeless as at the first glance it seemed, the learning, assiduity, and patience of Mr. Cureton gradually brought order. Of necessity, the task took a long time. First came the separation of the fragments of different works, and then the arrangement of the leaves into volumes, with no aid to pagination or catchwords. With translations of extant Greek works, the collection of their originals gave, of course, great help. But in a multitude of cases every leaf had to be read and closely studied.

Within about eighteen months of the reception of the MSS., Mr. Cureton had ascertained the number of volumes—reckoning books made up of fragments, as well as complete works—to amount to three hundred and seventeen, of which two hundred and forty-six were on vellum, and seventy on paper; all in Syriac or Aramaic, except one volume of Coptic fragments. With the forty-nine volumes previously acquired, an addition was thus made to the MS. Department of the National Library of three hundred and sixty-six volumes. Many of these volumes contain two, 622three, or four distinct works, of different dates, bound together, so that probably, in the whole, there were of manuscripts and parts of manuscripts, upwards of one thousand, written in all parts of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt, and at periods which range from the year 411 to the year 1292. Of the specific character and contents of some of the choicest of these MSS., mention will be made hereafter.

Dr. Cureton’s publications in Syriac, and in Arabic Literature.

For several years, the labour on the Syriac fragments did but alternate with that on the larger body of the Arabic MSS., a classed catalogue of which Mr. Cureton published in 1846,—only a month or two after he had contributed to the Quarterly Review a deeply interesting and masterly article on the Syriac discoveries. This paper was quickly followed by his first edition of the Three Epistles of St. Ignatius (I, to Polycarp; II, to the Ephesians; III, to the Romans). In an able preface, he contended that, of these genuine Epistles, all previous recensions were, to a considerable extent, interpolated, garbled, and spurious; and also that the other Ignatian Epistles, so-called, are entirely supposititious. In the year 1870 it need hardly be said either that this publication excited much controversy, or that competent opinion is still divided on some parts of the subject. But on two points there has never been any controversy whatever:—As an editor, William Cureton displayed brilliant ability; as a student of theology, he was no less distinguished by a single-minded search after truth. He was never one of those noisy controversialists of whom Walter Landor once said, so incisively,^[35] that they were less angry with their opponents for withstanding the truth, than for doubting their own claims to be the channels and the 623champions of Truth. To his dying day, Cureton owned himself to be a learner—even in Syriac.

Within three years of the publication of his Ignatius, Cureton gave to the world his precious edition of the fragmentary Festal Letters of Athanasius, which Richard Burgess soon translated into English, and Lassow into German. |The foundation of the Oriental Text Society.| The Syriac version was one of its editor’s earliest discoveries amongst the spoils of the Nitrian monasteries, and it was published at the cost of a new society, of which Cureton himself was the main founder. For the old Oriental publication society^[36] limited itself, as its name imports, to the publication of translations. The new one—the claims of which to liberal support Cureton was never weary of vindicating—was expressly founded to print Oriental texts. This new body had his strongest sympathies, but he co-operated zealously with the ‘Translation Fund’ as well as with the ‘Text Society,’

Among his other and early labours, was the publication of a Rabbinical Comment on the Book of Lamentations, and of the Arabic text of En Nasafi’s Pillar of the Creed of the Sunnites (‘Umdat Akidat ahl al Sunnat wa al Tamaat’), both of which books were printed in 1843. After 1845, Cureton’s literary labours were almost exclusively devoted to that Syriac field in which he was to be so large and so original a discoverer. The first distinctively public recognition of his services was his appointment as a Chaplain to the Queen, in 1847. Two years afterwards, he was made a Canon of Westminster and Rector of St. Margaret’s. Thenceforward, his energies were divided. The charms of Syriac discovery were not permitted to obstruct the due performance of the appropriate work of a parish priest; though it is much to be feared that they 624were but too often permitted to interfere, more than a little, with needful recreation and rest.

Among those of his parochial labours which demanded not a small amount of self-sacrifice were the rebuilding and the improved organization of the schools; |Parochial labours.| the building of a district church—St. Andrew’s—in Ashley Place; and the establishment of Working-Class Lectures, upon a wise and far-seeing plan.

Further contributions to literature.

In 1851, he gave to scholars the curious palimpsest fragments of Homer from a Nitrian manuscript (now Addit. MS., 17,210), and, two years afterwards, the Ecclesiastical History of John, Bishop of Ephesus. This was quickly translated into German by Schönfehler, and into English by Dr. R. Payne Smith. |MS. Addit. 14,640. (B. M.)| Then came the Spicilegium Syriacum, containing fragments of Bardesanes, of Melito of Sardes, and the inexpressibly precious fragments of an ancient recension of the Syriac Gospels, believed by Cureton to be of the fifth century, and offering considerable and most interesting divergences from the Peshito version.

In a preface to these evangelical fragments of the fifth century, their editor contends that they constitute a far more faithful representation of the true Hebrew text than does the Peshito recension, and that the remark holds good, in a more especial degree, of the Gospel of St. Matthew. This publication appeared in 1858.

Labour and its rewards in fresh labours.

Enough has been said of these untiring labours to make it quite intelligible, even to readers the most unfamiliar with Oriental studies, that their author had become already a celebrity throughout learned Europe. As early as in 1855, the Institute of France welcomed Dr. Cureton, as one of their corresponding members, in succession to his old master, Gaisford, of Christ Church. In 1859, the Queen conferred on him a distinction, which was especially 625appropriate and dear to his feelings. He became ‘Royal Trustee’ of that Museum which he had so zealously served as an Assistant-Keeper of the MSS., up to the date of his appointment to his Westminster parish and canonry. No fitter nomination was ever made. Unhappily, he was not to be spared very long to fill a function so congenial.

Yet one other distinction, and also one other and most honourable labour, were to be his, before another illustrious victim was to be added to the long list of public losses inflicted on the country at large by the gross mismanagement, and more particularly by what is called—sardonically, I suppose—the ‘economy’ of our British railways. Cureton’s life too, like some score of other lives dear to literature or to science, was to be sacrificed under the car of our railway Juggernaut.

In 1861, he published, from another Nitrian manuscript, Eusebius’ History of the Martyrs in Palestine. |The removal, and its circumstances.| Early in 1863, he succeeded the late Beriah Botfield in the Chair of the Oriental Translation Fund. On the twenty-ninth of May, of the same year, a railway ‘accident’ inflicted upon him such cruel injuries as entailed a protracted and painful illness of twelve months, and ended—to our loss, but to his great gain—in his lamented death, on the seventeenth of June, 1864.

He died where he was born, and was buried with his fathers. The writer of these poor memorial lines upon an admirable man well remembers the delight he used to express (thirty years ago) whenever it was in his power to revisit his birthplace, and knows that the delight was shared with the humblest of its inhabitants. Dr. Cureton was one of those genuine men who (in the true and best sense of the words) are not respecters of persons. He had a frank, not a condescending, salutation for the lowliest acquaintances 626of youthful days. And those lowliest were not among the least glad to see his face again at his holiday-visits; nor were they among the least sorrowful to see it, when it bore the fatal, but now to most of us quite familiar, traces of victimism to the mammon-cult of our railway directors.

The archæological explorations in the Levant.

Just as we have to go very far back indeed in the history of the Manuscript Department of the British Museum, in order to find an accession quite as notable as are—taking them as a whole—the manuscripts of the Nitrian monasteries, so have we also to do in the history of the several Departments of Antiquities, in order to find any parallel to the acquisitions of monuments of art and archæology made during the thirty years between 1840 and 1870. In point of variety of interest, in truth, there is no parallel at all to be found.

In archæology, however—as in scientific discovery, or in mechanical invention—every great burst of new light will be seen, if we look closely enough, to have had its remote precursive gleams, howsoever faint or howsoever little noticed they may have been.

Austen Henry Layard, for example, is a most veritable ‘discoverer.’ Nevertheless, the researches of Layard link themselves with those of Claudius Rich, and with the still earlier glimpses, and the mere note-book jottings, of Carsten Niebuhr, as well as with the explorations of Layard’s contemporary and most able French fellow-investigator, Monsieur Botta. In like manner, Nathan Davis is the undoubted disinterrer of old Carthage, but the previous labours of the Italian canon and archæologist Spano, of Cagliari, and those of the French geographers De Dreux and Dureau de La Malle, imperfect as they all were, 627helped to put him upon the quest which was destined to receive so rich a reward.

It is obvious, therefore, that a tolerably satisfactory account of the researches of the renowned archæologists mentioned at the head of this chapter must be prefaced with some notices of much earlier and much less successful labours than theirs; and a thorough account would need greatly more than that. But, at present, I cannot hope to give either the one or the other. Rapid glances at the recent investigations are all that, for the moment, are permitted me, and for the perfunctory manner of these I shall have to make not a little demand on the reader’s indulgence. The subject-matter is rich enough to claim a volume to itself; nor would the story be found to lack well-sustained and varied interest, even if retold at large.

The first inquiries and explorations in Lycia of Sir Charles Fellows began several years earlier than those in Assyria of Mr. Austen Layard, but an intelligible narrative of what Layard did, in 1845, must needs start with a notice, be it ever so brief, of what Botta had been doing in 1842. The Lycian excavations were also effectively begun in 1842. They were, in fact, contemporaneous with the first excavations at Nineveh. I begin, therefore, with the closely-linked labours of Botta and of Layard, prefacing them with a glance at the previous pursuits and aims in life of our distinguished fellow-countryman.

Austen Henry Layard and his early career.

Austen Henry Layard is an Englishman, notwithstanding his birth in Paris (5th of March, 1817), and his descent from one of the many Huguenot families who (in one sense) do honour to France for their sufferings for conscience sake, and who (in many more senses than one) do honour to England by the way in which zealous and persevering exertions in the service of their adopted country have 628enabled them to pluck the flowers of fame, or of distinction, from amidst the sharp thorns of adversity. Austen Layard is the grandson of the honoured Dr. Layard, Dean of Bristol, and he began active life, whilst yet very young, in a solicitor’s office in the City of London. But he had scarcely reached twenty-two years of age before family circumstances enabled him to gratify a strong passion for Eastern travel. Archæology had no share, at first, in the attractions which the Levant presented to his youthful enterprise. But a fervid nature, a good education, and a wonderful power of self-adaptation to new social circumstances, made the mind of the young traveller a fitting seedplot for antiquarian knowledge, whenever the opportunity of acquiring it should come.

The journey through Asia Minor and Syria in 1839–1840.

To a man of that stamp it would be impossible that he should tread near those ancient ruins, every stone of which must needs connect itself with some ‘reverend history’ or other—when the discerning eye should at length pore upon it and ponder it—without the ambition stirring within him to make at least an earnest attempt to explore and to decipher. To this particular man and his companion in travel, Fortune was propitious, by dint of her very parsimony. As he says himself: ‘No experienced dragoman measured our distances or appointed our stations. We were honoured with no conversations by pashas, nor did we seek any civilities from governors. We neither drew tears nor curses from the villagers by seizing their horses, or searching their houses for provisions; |Nineveh and its Remains (1849), vol. i, p. 2.| their welcome was sincere; their scanty fare was placed before us; we ate, and came, and went in peace.’

It was almost thirty years ago—about the middle of April, 1840—that Mr. Layard looked upon those vast ruins on the east bank of the Tigris, opposite Mósul, which 629include the now famous mounds of Konyunjik and of Nebbi Yunus. Having gazed on them with an incipient longing—even then—to explore them thoroughly, he and his companion rode into the desert, and looked with new wonder at the great mound of Kàlàh Sherghat, the site of which is by some geographers identified with the Assur of the book Genesis.^[37] After that hasty and tantalising visit, in the spring of 1840, Layard did not again see Mósul until the summer of 1842, when he was again travelling Tatar, and hurrying to Constantinople. In the interval, he had often thought of his early purpose, and had talked of it to many travellers. |Botta’s first discoveries.| Now, in 1842, he heard that what he had hitherto been able only to contemplate, as the wished-for task of the future, Monsieur Botta, the new French Consul at Mósul, had, for some months, been actually working upon; although, as yet, with very small success. Our countryman encouraged the French Consul in his undertaking, and presently learned that by him the first real monument of old Assyria had been uncovered. This primary discovery was not made at Kouyunjik, but at Khorsabad, near the river Khauser, many miles away from the place at which the first French excavations had been made, early in 1842.

The delighted emotions of Monsieur Botta, when he found himself, very suddenly, standing in a chamber in which—to all probability—no man had stood since the Fall of Nineveh, and saw that the chamber was lined with sculptured slabs of ‘gypsum-marble’ or alabaster, full of historic scenes from the wars and triumphs of Assyria, a 630reader can better imagine than a writer can describe. Botta himself rather indicates than depicts them, in the deeply interesting letters which he speedily addressed to his friend Mohl at Paris (and which by Mohl were not less promptly published in the Journal Asiatique, to be within a month or two pondered and wondered over by almost every archæologist in Europe). The delight, and also the surprise, were enhanced when the discoverer saw that almost every slab had a line of wedge-shaped characters carved above it, giving hope of history in legible inscriptions, as well as history in ruins. For, unhappily, nearly all the sculptures first discovered at Khorsabad were fractured. The durability of the Assyrian style of building had brought about the defacement of the sculptured records. The walls were formed of blocks of gypsum, backed and lined, so to speak, with enormous masses of clay. When the weight of such large earth-banks pressed down upon the sculptured slabs, these were thrust from their place. Many that were still in position, when first seen, fell, or crumbled, as the explorer was looking at them. He had to shore-up and underpin, as he went on; and to do this by unpractised hands. Else, the more diligent his excavations, the more destructive they would have been of the very end he had in view.

Layard was at Constantinople when the news came of M. Botta’s increasing successes. His detention there had been unexpected, as well as unavoidable. But he wrote to England without delay. He had a foresight that Botta would not lack encouragement in France. He felt no unworthy jealousy on account of the fact that it was a Frenchman who was now disinterring historic treasures of a hitherto unexampled kind, and who was rapidly 631securing historic fame for himself.^[38] Mr. Layard knew—few men just then knew more fully—that in all matters of learning and of discovery the gains of France are the gains of the world. |Layard’s overtures to the British Government.| For the staunchest of John Bulls amongst us must acknowledge that in the arts of scientific dissemination and exposition a Frenchman (other things being equal) has usually twice the expertness of an Englishman. But he was naturally desirous that France should not have all the glory of Assyrian discovery. What, then, was the reception with which his first overtures were met? ‘With a single exception,’ in the person of his London correspondent, ‘no one,’ he tells us, ‘in England’ ... |Nineveh and its Remains, vol. i, p. 10.| ‘seemed inclined to assist or take any interest in such an undertaking.’

What, on the other hand, were the encouragements given to the French explorer by the Government and the Nation of France? They were large; they were ungrudgingly given; and they were instantaneously sent. In Mr. Layard’s words: ‘The recommendation was attended to with that readiness and munificence which [has] almost invariably distinguished the French Government in undertakings of this nature. |Liberal aid extended to M. Botta by the French Government.| Ample funds to meet the cost of extensive excavations were at once assigned to M. Botta, and an artist of acknowledged skill was placed under his orders, to draw such parts of the monuments discovered as could not be preserved or removed.’ Who will wonder 632that at first it seemed as though France would carry off all the stakes, and England have no place at all in the archæological race?

Contrasts:—England and France.

Mr. Layard, however, was otherwise minded. And he found, presently, a powerful helper in the person of the British Ambassador at Constantinople, Sir Stratford Canning (now Lord Stratford de Redcliffe). Had it not been for the union, in that ambassador, of a large intellect, a liberal mind, and a strong will, and also for the absence, in him, of that shrinking from extra-official responsibilities which in so many able men has often emasculated their ability, Mr. Layard’s efforts, earnest and unremitting as they were, would assuredly have been foiled.

The reader will perceive that for what was achieved, in 1845 and in the subsequent years, on the banks of the Tigris, the British public owe a debt of gratitude to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, the encourager of the enterprise, as well as to Mr. Layard, its originator.

But neither does this fact, nor does the like of it, five years earlier, in the help given by Lord Ponsonby to the Lycian researches of Sir Charles Fellows, invalidate or weaken the remark I have ventured to make (on pages 348; 381, of the present volume, and elsewhere) about the discreditable and long-continued apathy of our Foreign Office in matters of art and literature; especially if we compare on that head British practice with French practice. Perhaps, at first blush, it might be thought somewhat presumptuous, in a private person, to remark so freely on what seem to him the shortcomings of statesmen. But it has to be borne in mind that, in such cases as this, outspoken criticism is rather the expression of known public opinion, than of mere individual judgment. The one writer, how humble soever, is very often the mouthpiece of 633the thoughts of many minds. Nor is other warrant for such criticism lacking.

Three years after beginning his excavations at Nimroud, Mr. Layard himself wrote thus (from Cheltenham):—‘It is to be regretted that proper steps have not been taken for the transport to England of the sculptures discovered at Nineveh. Those which have already reached this country, and (it is to be feared) those which are now on their way, have consequently suffered unnecessary injury; ... yet, ... |Nineveh and its Remains, vol. i, p. xiii.| they are almost the only remains of a great city and of a great nation.’

Part of the injury now observable in the Assyrian sculptures of the British Museum was, of course, inseparable from circumstances attending the discovery. Besides the injury already spoken of—from the pressure of the earth-banks—all the low-reliefs of one great palace had suffered from intense heat. From this cause, Mr. Layard’s experiences recall, in one particular, the impressive accounts we have all read of the opening of ancient tombs in Egypt and in Italy. The fortunate excavator suddenly beheld a kingly personage, in fashion as he lived. The royal forehead was still encircled by a regal crown. The fingers were decked with rings; the hand, mayhap, grasped a sceptre. But whilst the discoverer was still gazing in the first flush of admiration, the countenance changed; the ornaments crumbled; the sceptre and the hand that held it alike became dust. So it was, at times, at Nimroud. Some of the calcined slabs presented, for a moment, their story in its integrity. Presently, they fell into fragments.

Mixed nature of the causes of the mutilations observable in the Museum Sculptures from Assyria.

None the less, when the reader goes into the Kouyunjik Gallery; looks at the sculptures from Sennacherib’s palace; observes the innumerable ‘joinings,’ and then glances at his official ‘Guide’ (which tells him, at page 85, 634‘many single slabs reached this country in three hundred or four hundred pieces’), he is bound for truth’s sake to remember that, whilst some of the breakage is ascribable to the action of fire at the time of the Fall of Nineveh, another portion of it is ascribable to the want or absence of action, on the part of some worthy officials in the public service of Britain, just twenty-five centuries afterwards.

With Sir Stratford Canning’s help, and with the still better help of his own courage and readiness of resource, Mr. Layard surmounted most of the obstacles which lay in his path. There was a rich variety of them. To quote but a tithe of his encounters with Candian pashas, Turcoman navvies, Abou-Salman visitors, and Mósul cadis and muftis, would ensure the reader’s amusement beyond all doubt; but the temptation must be overcome. Happily, the original books are well known, though the anecdotes are more than racy enough to bear quotation and requotation.

Layard’s first discovery, 28th Nov., 1845.

Two incidents of the first explorations (1845–46) must needs be told. The earliest discovery was made on the twenty-eighth of November. The indications of having approached, at length, a chamber lined with sculpture, rejoiced the Arab labourers not less than it rejoiced their employer. They kept on digging long after the hour at which they were accustomed to strike work. The slab first uncovered was a battle-scene. War chariots drawn by splendidly equipped horses contained three warriors apiece, in full career. The chief of them (beardless) was clothed in complete mail, ‘and wore a pointed helmet on his head, from the sides of which fell lappets covering the ears, the lower part of the face, and the neck. The left hand (the arm being extended) grasped a bow at full stretch; whilst the right, drawing the string to 635the ear, held an arrow ready to be discharged. A second warrior urged, with reins and whip, three horses to the utmost of their speed.... A third, without helmet and with flowing hair and beard, held a shield for the defence of the principal figure. Under the horses’ feet, and scattered about, were the conquered, wounded by the arrows of the conquerors. I observed with surprise the elegance and richness of the ornaments, the faithful and delicate delineation of the limbs and muscles, both in the men and horses, and the knowledge of art displayed in the grouping of the figures and the general composition. |Nineveh and its Remains (1849), vol. i, p. 41.| In all these respects, as well as in costume, this sculpture appeared to me, not only to differ from, but to surpass, the bas-reliefs of Khorsabad.’

Thus cheered, the work of digging went on with fresh vigour, and in new directions. Parts of a building which had suffered from decay, not from fire, were at length uncovered. Slabs of still greater beauty were disclosed. ‘I now thought,’ says the explorer, ‘I had discovered the earliest palace of Nimroud.’

On the morning after the discovery of these new and more choice sculptures—middle of February, 1846—Mr. Layard rode away from the mound to a distant Arab encampment—wisely cultivating, as was his manner, a good understanding with a ticklish sort of neighbours. Two early Arabs, from this camp, had already paid a morning visit to the mound. They hastened back at a racing pace. Before they could well pull up their horses, or regain their own Oriental composure, the riders shouted at sight of Layard: ‘Hasten, O Bey, to the diggers. They have found great Nimrod himself. Wallah! it is wonderful, but it is true! We have seen him with our eyes.’

The ‘Bey’ did not wait for lucid explanations; but 636urged his horse to emulate the speed with which the grateful, though mysterious, tidings had been brought to him. No sooner had he entered the new trench at the mound, than he saw a splendidly sculptured head, the form of which assured him at a glance that it must belong to a winged bull or lion like to those of Persepolis and of Khorsabad. |Ibid., p. 65.| Its preservation was perfect, its features sharply cut. |1846, February.| The Arab workmen stood looking at it with intent and fear-expressing eyes—but with open palms. The first word that came from their lips begged a ‘back-sheesh,’ in honour of the auspicious occasion. The terror of one of them, only, had led him to scamper at full speed to his tent, that he might hide himself from the frightful monster whose aspect seemed to threaten vengeance on those rash men who had dared to disturb his long repose, in the bowels of the earth.

Scarcely had Mr. Layard glanced at ‘Nimrod’ before he found that more than half the tribe whose encampment he had just left had followed hard at his heels. They were headed by their Sheikh. It would be difficult to depict, in few words, the conflict of their feelings. Admiration, terror, anger, had each a part in the emotion which was evinced, no less in their gestures than in their words. ‘There is no God but God, and Mahomed is his prophet! |Ibid., p. 66.| This is not the work of men’s hands, but of those infidel giants whom the Prophet—peace be with him!—has said, that “they were higher than the tallest date-tree.” This is one of the idols which Noah—peace be with him!—cursed before the Flood.’ Such were the words of Sheikh Abd-ur-rahman himself. He showed great reluctance, at first, to enter the trench. But when once in, he examined the image with great and continued earnestness. All his followers echoed his verdict.

637But the townspeople of Mósul were more difficult to deal with. The Cadi called a meeting of the Mufti and the Ulema, to discuss the most effectual protest against such an atrocious violation of the Koran as that committed by the unbelieving explorer and his mercenary labourers. Their notions about Nimrod were very vague. Some thought him to have been an ancient true-believer; others had a strong misgiving that he, like his unearther, was but an infidel. They were all clear that the digging must be stopped. |Nineveh and its Remains; passim.| It tasked all Mr. Layard’s skill, experience, and force of character, to surmount these new difficulties. When they had been at length overcome—with the brilliant results known now to most Englishmen—he had to face the enormous difficulties of transport. The great human-headed lions he was obliged to leave in their original position. A multitude of smaller sculptures (many of them reduced in bulk by sawing) were safely brought to England. The first arrivals came in 1847.^[39] In 1849 and in 1850, the excavations in the mounds first opened were vigorously resumed, and new researches were made in several directions. Early in 1850, the explorers buckled to the task of removing the lions. That chapter in Mr. Layard’s familiar narrative is not the least interesting one.

638The explorations partially interrupted in 1847 were resumed in 1849. |Discoveries in the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon (1853), pp. 162, 163; 201–209; seqq. Dec., 1849.| From the October of that year until April, 1851, they were carried on with even more than the old energy, for the means and appliances were more ample, and the encouragements drawn from success followed each other in far quicker succession.

The suspension had been but partial, for Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, then British Vice-Consul at Mósul, had been empowered to keep a few men still digging at Kouyunjik. He had there unearthed several new sculpture-lined chambers of no small interest. But at Nimroud nothing worthy of mention had been done during Layard’s absence. That was now his first object. |1849, Oct. and Nov.| Kouyunjik, however, for a long time gave the best yield.

In December the south-east façade of the Kouyunjik Palace was uncovered. It was found to be a hundred and eighty feet in length, and contained, among other sculptures, ten colossal bulls and six human figures. The accompanying inscriptions contained the early annals of Sennacherib, and of his wars with Merodach Baladan.^[40]

Presently, the labours on the north-west palace at Nimroud were also richly rewarded. The somewhat higher antiquity of that building, as compared with the homogeneous structures of Kouyunjik and Khorsabad, had already impressed itself with the force of conviction on Mr. Layard’s individual mind. The fact now became manifest to all eyes that had the capacity to see.

These Nimroud monuments belong,—according to the opinion of the best archæologists,—most of them, to the 639eighth, some of them, however, to the earlier part of the seventh centuries B.C. They now occupy the most central of the Assyrian Galleries in the British Museum. The monuments of Kouyunjik and of Khorsabad are probably but little anterior to the supposed date (625 B.C.) of the destruction of Nineveh. These are exhibited in galleries adjacent to the ‘Nimroud Central Saloon.’ To describe only a few of them in connection with the interesting circumstances of their respective disclosures would demand another chapter. A word or two, however, must be given to one among the earlier discoveries (October, 1846), and to one among the latest of those made (in the spring of 1851), whilst Mr. Layard himself remained in the neighbourhood of Mósul.

Discovery of the black-marble obelisk, 1846, October (found in centre of the great mound).

At Nimroud many trenches had, in those early days, been opened unprofitably. Mr. Layard doubted whether he ought to carry them further. Half inclined to cease, in this direction, he resolved, finally, that he would not abandon a cutting on which so much money and toil had been spent, until the result of yet another day’s work was shown. |Nineveh and its Remains, vol. i, p. 345. (1849 edit.)| ‘I mounted my horse,’ he says—to ride into Mósul—‘but had scarcely left the mound when a corner of black marble was uncovered, lying on the very edge of the trench.’ It was part of an obelisk seven feet high, lying about ten feet below the surface. Its top was cut into three gradines, covered with wedge-shaped inscriptions. Beneath the gradines were five tiers of sculpture in low-relief, continued on all sides. Between every two tiers of sculpture ran a line of inscription. Beneath the five tiers, the unsculptured surface was covered with inscriptions. These, as subsequent researches have shown, contain the Annals of Shalmaneser, King of Assyria, during thirty-one years towards the close of the ninth century before our Lord. The tributaries 640of the great monarch are seen in long procession, bearing their offerings. In the appended cuneiform record of these tributaries are mentioned Jehu, ‘of the House of Omri,’ and his contemporary Hazael, King of Syria. |Ibid., 346.| Well may the proud discoverer call his trophy a ‘precious relic.’

We now leap over more than four eventful years. Mr. Layard is about to exchange the often anxious but always glorious toils of the successful archæologist, for the not less anxious and very often exceedingly inglorious toils of the politician. He will also henceforth have to exchange many a pleasant morning ride and many a peaceful evening ‘tobacco-parliament’ with Arabs of the Desert, for turbulent discussions with metropolitan electors, and humble obeisances in order to win their sweet voices. Just before he leaves Mósul come some new unearthings of Assyrian sculpture, to add to the welcome tidings he will carry into England.

The discoveries at Kouyunjik of the spring of 1851.

He found, he tells us—in one of the closing chapters of his latest book—that to the north of the great centre-hall four new chambers, full of sculpture, had been discovered. On the walls of a grand gallery, ninety-six feet by twenty-three, was represented the return of an Assyrian army from a campaign in which they had won loads of spoil and a long array of prisoners. The captured fighting men wore a sort of Phrygian bonnet reversed, short tunics, and broad belts. The women had long tresses and fringed robes. |Discoveries at Nineveh and Babylon (edit. 1853), pp. 582–584.| Sometimes they rode on mules or were drawn—by men as well as by mules—in chariots. The captives were the men and women of Susiana. The victor was Sennacherib.

In several subsequent years—1853, 1854, 1855, when most Englishmen were intently acting, or beholding with 641suspended breath, the great drama in the Crimea—a famous compatriot was continuing the task so nobly initiated by Austen Layard. Sir Henry Rawlinson (made by this time Consul-General at Baghdad) carried on new excavations, both at Nimroud and at Kouyunjik. In these he was ably assisted by Mr. W. K. Loftus, as well as by Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, the helper and early friend of Layard, and (in the later stages) by Mr. Taylor. Another obelisk, with portions of a third and fourth; thirty-four slabs sculptured in low-relief; one statue in the round; and a multitude of smaller objects, illustrating with wonderful diversity and minuteness the manners and customs, the modes of life and of thought, as well as the wars and conquests, the luxury and the cruelty, of the old Assyrians, were among the treasures which, by the collective labour of these distinguished explorers, were sent into Britain. |Early labourers on the deciphering of cuneiform inscriptions.| Another ‘recension,’ so to speak, of the early Annals of Sennacherib, King of Assyria, inscribed upon a cylinder, was not the least interesting of the monuments found under the direction of Sir Henry Rawlinson, whose name had already won its station—many years before his consulship at Baghdad—beside those of Grotefend, of Burnouf and of Lassen, in the roll of those scientific investigators by whose closet labours the researches and long gropings of the Riches, the Bottas, and the Layards, were destined to be interpreted, illustrated, and fructified for the world of readers at large.

For it is not the least interesting fact in this particular and most richly-yielding field of Assyrian archæology—that several men in Germany;—more than one man in France;—and one man, at least, in Persia, had been working simultaneously, but entirely without concert, at those hard and, for a time, almost barren studies which 642were eventually to supply a master-key to vast libraries of inscriptions brought to light after an entombment of twenty-five hundred years.

The travels and researches of Sir Charles Fellows in Lycia.

Scarcely smaller than the debt of gratitude which Britain owes to Mr. Layard and to Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, for the Marbles and other antiquities of Assyria, is the debt which she owes to the late Sir Charles Fellows for those of Lycia. Nor ought it to be passed over without remark that the admirably productive mission to the Levant of Mr. Charles Newton seems to have grown, in germ, out of the applications made at Constantinople on behalf of Sir Charles Fellows. In that merit he has but a very small share. The merit of the Lycian discoveries is all his own. He has now gone from amongst us,—like most of the benefactors whose public services have been recorded in this volume. How inadequate the record; how insufficient for the task the chronicler; no one will be so painfully conscious, as is the man whose hand—in the absence of a better hand—has here attempted the narrative. The Museum story has been long. What remains to be said must needs be put more briefly. But because Sir Charles Fellows has been so lately removed from the land he served with so much zeal and ability, I shall still venture to claim the indulgence of my readers for a somewhat detailed account of the work done in Lycia, and of the man who did it.

The analogies and the contrasts between Fellows and Layard.

In one respect, it was with Charles Fellows as with Austen Layard. A youthful passion for foreign travel, and what grew out of that, lifted each of them from obscurity into prominence. But Layard achieved fame at a much earlier age than did Sir Charles Fellows. Sir Charles was almost forty before his name came at all before the Public. Layard was already a personage at eight and 643twenty. This small circumstantial difference between the fortune of two men whose pursuits in life were, for a time, so much alike, deserves to be kept in mind, on this account: Sir Charles lived scarcely long enough to see any fair appreciation of what he had accomplished. Even those whose political sympathies incline them to a belief that Mr. Layard’s official services will never suffice to console Englishmen for the interruption of his archæological services, hope that he may live long enough to enjoy a rich reward for the latter in their yearly-increasing estimation by his countrymen at large. They will delight to see the fervid member for Southwark utterly eclipsed in the fame of the great discoverer of long-entombed Assyria.

The travels in Asia Minor, and what grew thereout.

Sir Charles Fellows was the son of Mr. John Fellows, of Nottingham. He was born in 1799. In the year 1837, he set out upon a long tour in Asia Minor. Archæological discovery no more formed any part of a preconcerted plan in Mr. Fellows’ case than it did, two or three years afterwards, in Mr. Layard’s. Both were led to undertake their respective explorations in a way that (for want of a more appropriate word) we are all accustomed to call ‘accidental.’

In February, 1838, he found himself at Smyrna. After a good deal of observation of men and manners, he betook himself to an inspection of the buildings. |Journal written during an Excursion in Asia Minor, pp. 8, seqq. (edit. 1852).| He soon found that not a little of the modern Smyrna was built out of the ruins of the Smyrna of the old world. Busts, columns, entablatures, of white marble and of ancient workmanship, were everywhere visible, in close admixture with the recently-quarried building-stone of the country and the period. But not only had the old marbles been built into the new edifices; they had been turned into tombstones. 644Certain Jews, of an enterprising and practical turn of mind, had bought, in block, a whole hill-full of venerable marbles, in order to have an inexhaustible supply of new tombstones close at hand. |Ibid., p. 9.| In another part of the suburbs of the town, the walls of a large corn-field turned out, on close examination, to be built of thin and flat stones, of which the inner surface was formed of richly-patterned mosaic, black, white, and red. From that day, the traveller, wheresoever he journeyed, was a scrutinising archæologist. And the traveller, thus equipped for his work, was busied, two months afterwards, in exploring that most interesting part of Asia Minor (a part now called ‘Anadhouly’), which includes Lydia, Mysia, Bithynia, Phrygia, Pisidia, Lycia, Pamphylia, and Caria; and much of which was never before trodden—so far as is known, and the knowledge referred to is that of the best geographers in England, discussing this matter expressly, at a meeting of the Geographical Society—by the feet of any European.^[41]

The explorations in Antiphellus and its vicinity. 1838, April.

On the eighteenth of April, Mr. Fellows found himself in the romantically beautiful, but rugged and barren, neighbourhood of Antiphellus. The ancient town of that name possessed a theatre, and a multitude of temples, grandly placed on a far-outjutting promontory. For miles around, the rocks and the ravines were strewn with marble fragments. The face of the cliff, which, on one side, overhangs the town, was seen to be deeply indented with rock-tombs, richly adorned. They contained sarcophagi of a special 645form. The lid of each of them bore a rude resemblance to a pointed arch. It sounds at first almost grotesquely, in the ear of a reader of Mr. Fellows’ Journal of 1839, to hear him speak of Lycian tombs as ‘Elizabethan’ in their architecture. But, in the sense intended, the term is strictly apposite. |Journal of an Excursion, &c., as above, p. 164.| If the reader will but glance at one of Mr. Fellows’ many beautiful plates of those rock-tombs, he will see at once that they look not unlike the stone-mullioned windows of our own Tudor age.

But the discovery which eclipsed all Mr. Fellows’ previous researches was that of the ancient capital of Lycia—Xanthus. Next in importance to that was his disinterment of Tlos. He saw the ruins of other and, in their day, famous towns. It was plain that he had now before him a fine opening to add to the stores of human knowledge in some of its grandest departments—artistic, historical, biblical. But, in 1838, he had not the most ordinary appliances of minute research. He went back to England; found (as Layard was also destined to find, very shortly afterwards) only a very little encouragement, at official hands; much more than a little, however, in his own reflections and foresight. |Further discoveries in the Valley of the Xanthus, and in other parts of Lycia; 1840–42.| In 1839, he went back to Lycia, taking with him George Scharf, then carefully described as ‘a young English artist,’ now widely known as an eminent archæologist. Fellows explored. Scharf drew. Early in 1840, ten Lycian cities were added to the previous discoveries. Each of them contained many precious works of ancient art.

In order to effectual excavation, and in order also to the safety of what was found from destruction by Turkish barbarities, the Sultan’s firman was essential. The difficulties were much like those which, as I have had occasion to show 646in ‘Book Second,’ lay in the path of Lord Elgin, under similar circumstances, more than forty years earlier. By Lord Ponsonby’s zealous efforts, they were at length surmounted. |See Book II, chap. 2; pp. 382, seqq.| At the earnest instance of the Museum Trustees, the Government at home seconded the exertions of their ambassador at Constantinople; and this combination of endeavour made that feasible which the best energies of Sir Charles Fellows, single handed, must have utterly failed to secure.

The reader will not, I incline to think, regard as an instance of overmuch detail, if I here add—for instructive comparison with the terms of the official letter procured by Lord Elgin—the words in which Rifaat Pasha, in June, 1841, describes the antiquities, the removal whereof was to be graciously permitted. In 1800, Lord Elgin (after enormous labour) was empowered to ‘take away any pieces of stone, from the Temples of the Idols, with old inscriptions or figures thereon.’ Now—in 1841—the ‘pieces of stone’ are described as ‘antique remains and rare objects.’ The schoolmaster, it will be seen, had been at work at Constantinople.

The researches at Cadyanda, Pinara, &c.

The explorations at Cadyanda, at Pinara, and at Sidyma, richly merit the reader’s attention, as an essential part of our present subject. But happily Sir Charles Fellows’ books are both accessible and popular. Here we must hasten on to Xanthus, and Sir Charles’ story must now be told in his own expressive and graphic words:

The excavations at Xanthus.

‘Xanthus certainly possesses some of the earliest Archaic sculpture in Asia Minor, and this connected with the most beautiful of its monuments, and illustrated by the language of Lycia. These sculptures to which I refer must be the work of the sixth or seventh centuries before the Christian era, but I have not seen an instance of these remains having 647been despoiled for the rebuilding of walls; and yet the decidedly more modern works of a later people are used as materials in repairing the walls around the back of the city and upon the Acropolis; many of these have Greek inscriptions, with names common among the Romans. The whole of the sculpture is Greek, fine, bold, and simple, bespeaking an early age of that people. No sign whatever is seen of the works of the Byzantines or Christians.

‘To lay down a plan of the town is impossible, the whole being concealed by trees; but walls of the finest kind, Cyclopean blended with the Greek, as well as the beautifully squared stones of a lighter kind, are seen in every direction; several gateways also, with their paved roads, still exist. I observed on my first visit that the temples have been very numerous, and, from their position along the brow of the cliff, must have combined with nature to form one of the most beautiful of cities. The extent I now find is much greater than I had imagined, and its tombs extend over miles of country I had not before seen. The beautiful gothic-formed sarcophagus-tomb, with chariots and horses upon its roof, of which I have before spoken and have given a sketch of a battle-scene upon the side, accompanied with a Lycian inscription, is again a chief object of my admiration amidst the ruins of this city. Of the ends of this monument I did not before show drawings, but gave a full description. Beneath the rocks, at the back of the city, is a sarcophagus of the same kind, and almost as beautifully sculptured; but this has been thrown down, and the lid now lies half-buried in the earth. Its hog’s-mane is sculptured with a spirited battle-scene. Many Greek inscriptions upon pedestals are built into the walls, which may throw some light upon the history of the city; they are mostly funereal, and belong to an age and 648people quite distinct from those of the many fine Lycian remains.

‘Two of my days have been spent in the tedious, but, I trust, useful occupation, of copying the Lycian inscription from the obelisk I mentioned in my former volume that I had seen: this will be of service to the philologist. Having, with the assistance of a ladder, ascended to a level with the top of the monument, I discovered a curious fact: the characters cut upon the upper portion are larger and wider apart than those on the lower, thus counteracting the effect of diminution by distance, as seen from the ground. As the letters are beautifully cut, I have taken several impressions from them, to obtain fac-similes. By this inscription I hope to fix the type of an alphabet, which will be much simplified, as I find upon the various tombs about the town great varieties, though of a trifling nature, in the forms of each letter; these varieties have hitherto been considered as different characters. This long public inscription will establish the form of all the letters of an alphabet, one form only being used throughout for each letter: if this should be deciphered, it may be the means of adding information to history. The inscription exceeds two hundred and fifty lines.

‘It is to be regretted that the obelisk is not perfect; time or an earthquake has split off the upper part, which lies at its foot. Two sides of this portion only remain, with inscriptions which I could copy; the upper surface being without any, and the lower facing the ground: its weight of many tons rendered it immoveable. I had the earth excavated from the obelisk itself, and came to the base, or probably the upper part of a flight of steps, as in the other obelisk-monuments of a similar construction. The characters upon the north-west side are cut in a finer 649and bolder style than on the others, and appear to be the most ancient. Should any difference of date occur on this monument, I should decide that this is the commencement or original inscription upon it.

‘This, which I must consider as a very important monument, appears to have on the north-east side a portion of its inscription in the early Greek language; the letters are comparatively ill cut, and extremely difficult at such an elevation to decipher; seizing favourable opportunities for the light, I have done my best to copy it faithfully, and glean from it that the subject is funereal, and that it relates to a king of Lycia; the mode of inscription makes the monument itself speak, being written in the first person. Very near to this stands the monument, similar in form, which I described in my last Journal as being near the theatre, and upon which remained the singular bas-reliefs of which I gave sketches. |Journal of an Excursion in Asia Minor, &c. (2nd Edit.), Appendix.| On closer examination I find these to be far more interesting and ancient than I had before deemed them. They are in very low-relief, resembling in that respect the Persepolitan or Egyptian bas-reliefs.

‘I have received,’ continues Sir Charles Fellows, ‘from Mr. Benjamin Gibson of Rome a letter in reference to these bas-reliefs: his interpretation of this mysterious subject appears far the best that I have yet heard; and from finding the district to have been in all probability the burial-place of the kings, it becomes the more interesting. Mr. Gibson writes—“The winged figures on the corners of the tomb you have discovered in Lycia, represented flying away with children, may with every probability be well supposed to have a reference to the story of the Harpies flying away with the daughters of King Pandarus. This fable we find related by Homer in the Odyssey, lib. xx, where they are 650stated to be left orphans, and the gods as endowing them with various gifts. Juno gives them prudence, Minerva instructs them in the art of the loom, Diana confers on them tallness of person, and lastly Venus flies up to Jupiter to provide becoming husbands for them; in the mean time, the orphans being thus left unprotected, the Harpies come and ‘snatch the unguarded charge away.’ Strabo tells us that Pandarus was King of Lycia, and was worshipped particularly at Pinara. This tomb becomes thus very interesting; which, if it be not the tomb of Pandarus, shows that the story was prevalent in Lycia, and that the great author of the Iliad derived it from that source. With this clue, we have no difficulty in recognising Juno on the peculiar chair assigned to that goddess, and on the same side is Venus and her attendants; upon another is probably represented Diana, recognised by the hound. The seated gods are less easily distinguished. |Travels and Researches in Asia Minor, pp. 336–340.| In the Harpies, at the four corners of the tomb, we have the illustration of those beings as described by the classic writers.”’

Many subsequent discoveries; (the details here necessarily passed over).

Every lateral excursion made by Sir C. Fellows, and by his companions in travel, added to his collection rich works of sculpture, and not a few of them added many varied and most interesting minor antiquities. But I must needs resist all temptation to enlarge on that head, though the temptation is great. The twentieth and subsequent chapters of the book itself (I refer to the collective but abridged ‘Travels and Researches in Asia Minor’ of 1852) will abundantly repay the reader who is disposed to turn to them—whether it be for a renewed or for a new reading.

The difficulties of transport. Jan., 1842.

When the task of removal had to be undertaken, difficulties of transport were found, under certain then existing circumstances, to be graver obstacles than had been Turkish 651prejudice or Turkish apathy at an earlier stage of the business. The maritime part of the duty had been entrusted to Captain Graves, of H.M. Ship Beacon. The captain left his ship at Smyrna; sailed with Fellows for the Xanthus, in a steam-packet; but omitted to provide himself with the needful flat-bottomed boats. |1841, February.| When they reached the site of the marbles which were to be carried away, Captain Graves said he would not have any of the stores taken down the river; that stores must be obtained from Malta; and that he would take all hands away from the diggings at the beginning of March. |Ibid., pp. 440, seqq.| The reader may imagine the reflections of the eager discoverer at this sudden check,—coming, as it did, at the very beginning of the burst.

He took a solitary walk of many hours, he tells us, before he could resolve upon his course of action. He saw before him, to use his own words, ‘a mine of treasure.’ He had willing hands to work it; ample firmans to stave off opposition; nothing deficient save boats and tackle. A year might possibly pass in awaiting them from Malta; and, meanwhile, the ignorance of the peasantry, the indiscreet curiosity of travellers, or the sudden growth of political complications, might destroy the enterprise irrecoverably.

He resolved, in his perplexity, to construct by his own exertions tackle that would suffice for the removal to the coast; got native help in addition to the willing efforts—however unscientific—of the honest sailors of the Beacon; succeeded in getting a portion of the precious objects of his quest to the waterside, before the arrival of the ship; and got them also strongly cased up. Then he sailed with Graves for Malta. The worthy captain resigned the honourable task—to him so unwelcome—into the hands of Admiral Sir Edward Owen. A new expedition started from Malta at the end of April, and brought away seventy-eight 652cases of sculpture in June; leaving the splendid but too heavy ‘winged-chariot-tomb’—so called by its discoverer in one place, and elsewhere called ‘horse-tomb,’ but since ascertained to be the tomb of a Lycian satrap named Paiafa; |Arrival in England of the first series of Xanthian Marbles. Dec., 1841.| it is adorned with figures of Glaucus, or perhaps of Sarpedon, in a four-horse chariot—until next year. The seventy-eight cases were brought to England by the Queen’s ship Cambridge in the following December.

On the fourteenth of May, 1842, the Trustees of the British Museum thus recorded their sense of Mr. Fellows’ public services:—‘The Trustees desire to express their sense of Mr. Fellows’ public spirit, in voluntarily undertaking to lend to so distant an expedition the assistance of his local knowledge and personal co-operation. They have viewed with great satisfaction the decision and energy evinced by Mr. Fellows in proceeding from Smyrna to Constantinople, and obtaining the necessary authority for the removal of the marbles; as well as his judicious directions at Xanthus, by which the most desirable of the valuable monuments of antiquity formerly brought to light by him, together with several others, of scarcely less interest, |Minutes of the Trustees of the British Museum; 14 May, 1842. (Appendix to Fellows).| now for the first time discovered and excavated, have been placed in safety, and—as the Trustees have every reason to hope—secured for the National Museum.’

This hope was more than realised. It shows the energy of Fellows, that the expedition to Lycia of 1841 was his third expedition. In 1846 he made a fourth. It was rich in discovery; but I fear somewhat exhausting to the strength of the explorer. He lived a good many years, it is true, after his return to England; but how easily he yielded when a sudden attack of illness came, I shall have the pain of showing presently.

653In the interval between his third and fourth journeys to Lycia, Fellows married a fellow-townswoman, Mary, the only daughter of Francis Hart, of Nottingham, but she survived the marriage only two years. A year after her death he married the widow of William Knight, of Oatlands, in Herts. On his final return from Lycia he was knighted, as a token (and it was but a slender one) of the public gratitude for his services. At the close of October, 1860, a sudden attack of pleurisy invaded a toilworn frame. On the eighth of the following month he died, at his house in Montagu Place, London, in the sixty-first year of his age.

Date and character of the monuments in the ‘Lycian Gallery.’

Taken broadly, the sculptures of Lycia may be described as works which range, in date, from the sixth century before our Lord to almost as many centuries—if we take the minor antiquities into account—after the commencement of the Christian era. Some of them rank, therefore, amongst the earliest original monuments of Greek art which the British Museum possesses; and date immediately after the casts of the sculptures of Selinus and of Ægina.

On some of the myths and on the habits of Lycian life there has been a sharp controversy, of the merits of which I am very incompetent to speak. Narrower and narrower as my limits are becoming, I yet feel it due to a public benefactor, who can no longer speak for himself otherwise than by his works, that in these waning pages he should be permitted to supply at least a part of his own explanatory comments upon the story of his discoveries. It is one of enchaining interest to the students of classical antiquity.

The famous ‘Harpy Tomb,’ thinks Sir Charles Fellows, is to be enumerated as among the most ancient of the remaining works of the ‘Tramilæ,’ or ‘Termilæ,’ mentioned both 654by Herodotus and by Stephen of Byzantium, as well as on the Xanthian obelisk or stele, now called the ‘Inscribed Monument,’ and numbered ‘141’ in the Lycian Gallery of the Museum.

Fellows’ account of the Lycian Marbles.

Sir Charles Fellows proceeds to say that ‘the shaft, frieze, and cap of this monument, weighing more than a hundred tons, has been by an earthquake moved upon its pedestal eighteen inches towards the north-east, throwing to the ground two stones of the frieze towards the south-west: in this state I found it in 1838. In 1841 the eight stones of this frieze were placed in the Museum. The only similar art which I know in Europe is in the Albani Villa near Rome. This slab is described by Winckelmann as being of earlier workmanship than that of Etruria. I shall not dwell upon these works, as they were found in sitû, and will therefore be as well understood in England as if seen at Xanthus. I may draw attention to the blue, red, and other colours still remaining upon them. The subject also being that of the family of King Pandarus, it should ever be borne in mind that this monument stood in the metropolis of Lycia, and within twelve miles of the city of Pinara, where we are told that Pandarus was deified. This and the neighbouring tombs stood there prior to the building of the theatre, which is probably of Greek workmanship. The usual form of this structure must have been partially sacrificed on account of these monuments, as the seats rising in the circles above the diazoma have abruptly ceased on the western side, and have not been continued towards the proscenium. Near to one of the vomitories in the south-eastern bend of the diazoma is a similar monument to the Harpy Tomb, which has had the capstone and bas-reliefs removed, and the shaft built over by the theatre. Upon one of its sides is a short Lycian 655inscription, and a few words referring to its repair remain upon another side in the Greek character.

‘Not far from these stands the inscribed stele, which is of the highest interest; of this, which is too heavy and too much mutilated to allow, without great labour, of its removal to the Museum, I have had casts taken in plaster. From my publications you would learn that a portion of the top of this [monument], weighing several tons, had been split off by the shocks of earthquakes: of this I have also had casts taken. In excavating around the monument on the south-west, and in the opposite direction to which the top had split off, I found the capstone had been thrown which had surmounted bas-reliefs; also two fragments of a bas-relief, but I think too high to have been placed upon this stele: they are the work of the same age, and are now placed in the Museum. The most important discovery here was of the upper angles broken from the monument, and having upon them the inscription on each side, thus perfecting, as far as they extend, the beginnings and ends of the upper lines of the inscription; these original stones I have brought home, being useless and insecure, if left in fragments with the monument. The exact form of the letters of the Greek portion of this inscription, compared with many others of which I shall speak, will do much to fix a date to these works.

‘Upon the point of rock on the north-west side of the Acropolis is a fine Cyclopean basement, which has probably been surmounted by a similar monument to those of which I have spoken. No trace is found of any of its fragments; and from its position, shocks in the same direction as those which have destroyed the others would have thrown this down the perpendicular cliff into the river which flows about three hundred feet beneath.

656‘The masses of Cyclopean foundations traced around and upon the Acropolis, have been too much worked in, and converted to the use of an after people to ascertain their original form: they certainly have not been continuous, forming a wall or defence for the Acropolis; indeed, its natural position would render this superfluous, the cliffs on the south and west are inaccessible. I observe that most of the forms are referable to vast pedestals or stoas for large monuments; and from their individual positions at various elevations, and upon angles and points, I believe that the Acropolis has been covered with the ornamented monuments of this early people. The walls and basements of these separate buildings have since been united by strong lines formed of the old materials, the most ready for the purpose, and all put together with a very excellent cement, of which I have brought away specimens. A wall of this formation, facing the south-west, attracted my attention in 1838, by displaying some sculptured animals and chariots built as material into its front. This wall we have, with great labour, owing to the hardness of the cement, entirely removed; behind a portion of it we found a fine Cyclopean wall, which had slightly inclined over from the weight of earth behind; the casing which we have removed strengthened it, and, connecting the old buildings with others, formed a line of fortification, probably in Roman times. From the great size of the blocks used in constructing this wall, from the similarity of the stone, as well as from the sculpture traceable upon almost the whole of them, I conclude that they must have been the ruins of monuments in the immediate neighbourhood; basements for such are on either side. The works found here are entirely those of the early people; and I may extend this remark to all found upon the Acropolis. The 657architectural fragments, many specimens of which I bring away, are all Lycian, and would form monuments imitative of wooden constructions—beam-ends, ties, mortices, and cornices, similar to the tombs shown in the drawings, but double the size in point of scale to any now existing; bearing this in mind, I do not think it improbable that the sculptures representing a chariot procession have filled the panels on either side; should this be the case we have nearly the whole complete. The cornice and borders of these strongly corroborate this idea. We have four somewhat triangular stones, with sitting sphinxes upon each; these would complete the two gable ends in similar form and spirit of device to the generality of the tombs of this people. There is also an angle-stone, interesting from its sculpture, and from its style and subject blending these works with the age of the “Harpy Tomb.”

‘To continue with the works of the early inhabitants: We must next notice the tombs at the foot of the rocky heights at the south-eastern parts of the city: of these the most beautiful are the kind having Gothic-formed tops; these can be seen in the various drawings. The structure generally consists of a base or pedestal which has contained bodies, the Platas, surmounted by a plinth or solid mass of stone, which is often sculptured; above this is a sarcophagus, generally imitative of a wood-formed cabinet, the principal receptacle for the bodies, the Soros; upon this is placed a Gothic lid, sometimes highly ornamented with sculpture, which also served as a place of sepulture, probably the Isostæ. From one of these, in which the lower parts were cut out of the solid rock, and the top had fallen and been destroyed, I have had casts taken, as the subject is intimately connected with the frieze of the wild animals on the Acropolis. On this tomb, the inscription 658is cut in the language of the early people. Not far distant from this is a tomb which, from the sculpture upon it, I distinguish as the “Chimæra-Tomb.” The lid of this, which I found in 1840, is perfect, but had been thrown to the ground by the effect of earthquakes; the chamber from off which it had slidden was inclining towards the lid; beneath the chamber a few stones forming the foundation and step (in the same block) are alone to be found. There is here no trace of the first two stories, and from the rock approaching the surface of the ground I found no depth of earth for research. Upon the chamber of this tomb is a Lycian inscription, of which I have casts, in order that they may be used in reconstructing the monument in the Museum. The other tomb of this character, and by far the most highly ornamented, was the tomb of Paiafa, and I call it, from its sculpture, the “Winged-Chariot-Tomb.” In finding this monument, in 1838, I observed that each part had been much shaken and split by earthquake, but no portion was wanting except a fragment from the north corner. This monument combines matters of great interest, showing in itself specimens of the architecture, sculpture, and language. I have stated that this style of monument is peculiar to Lycia; and I now add, from the knowledge derived from my research in that country, that Lycia contains none but these two of this ornamental description. These differ in minor points, making the possession of each highly desirable, and I am glad that these will be placed in our National Museum. The tombs of Telmessus, Antiphellus, and Limyra, are similar in construction, but have not the sculptured tops and other ornamental finishings seen in these.

‘Upon the Acropolis, and fallen into a bath, we found a pedestal having sculptured upon the side a god and goddess 659within a temple, in excellent preservation. On the opposite side of the pedestal is a very singular subject, which, had not certain points both of execution, material, and position occurred, I should have attributed to the Byzantine age. Amongst many other animals, the object of chase to a hunter is seen much mutilated: this may have been the representation of a novel idea of the Chimæra: the hind quarters of a goat remain, with a snake for its tail. It is greatly to be regretted that the other fragments could not be found. On observing in the ground some very ancient forms of the Greek letters, differing from all others found so commonly here, cut upon a slab of marble, I had it taken up, and was delighted to find that it was a pedestal, with a Lycian inscription upon the other side; this will be valuable, as showing the form of the Greek characters in use at the age of the language of Lycia. This same type is seen in all the bilingual inscriptions, of which we have only casts.

‘Of another pedestal at Tlos I have taken casts, which will be valued from the subjects of the bas-reliefs. The pedestal of one stone was formed of two cubes, a small one upon a larger. The fourth side of the upper one was not sculptured. One slab of the larger cube represents in bas-relief a view of the Acropolis of Tlos, the Troas of these early people: probably the hero whose deeds were by this monument commemorated, and whose name occurs twice upon it, was engaged in the defence or capture of the city. At Tlos I also found cut in the rock of the Acropolis a tomb with an Ionic portico. |Note.—The plans referred to are appended to the first edition of Sir C. Fellows’ book.| Within this are represented a panelled and ornamented door, and several sculptured devices and animals, as shown in the drawings and plans. On the side, and within the portico, is a very early bas-relief of Bellerophon upon Pegasus, and probably 660a chimæra beneath the horse; but this portion of the sculpture is unfinished, and the rock beneath is left rough; the columns of the portico are only blocked out from the rock. Of the bas-relief of Bellerophon I have casts, and the full detail of the colouring which now remains upon the figures. This is probably the earliest sculpture which we have obtained. From Cadyanda I have casts of parts of a beautiful tomb, which is so much in ruins, and shaken into fragments, that I could not even take casts of the whole of the sculptures that remain. The roof or lid is wanting. The tomb now consists of a chamber in imitation of a wooden structure, and in the panels is sculpture; surmounting this is a smaller solid block, or plinth, also sculptured, but the upper part is wanting. These bas-reliefs, of which I show many drawings in my ‘Lycia,’ derive great additional interest from several of the figures having near them names inscribed in two languages—the Greek and the Lycian. The casts of these, I doubt not, will be valued as important illustrations. From Myra I have casts of the whole of the figures ornamenting one of the rock-tombs. Three of these subjects from within the Portico retain so much of their original painting that I have had the casts coloured on the spot as fac-similes, and a portion of the paint is preserved for chemical examination. There are from this tomb eleven figures the size of life. Of the inscriptions of this people I have made many copies; I have had casts of one long one from the large Gothic-formed tomb at Antiphellus, also of the bilingual inscription from the same place, and of another from Levisse, near the ancient Telmessus.