To write of the progress of archÆology in this century is scarcely possible, as the idea of the subject was unknown a hundred years ago; it is, therefore, the whole history of its opening and development that we have to deal with. The conception of the history of man being preserved to us in material facts, and not only in written words, was quite disregarded until the growth of geology had taught men to read nature for themselves, instead of trusting to the interpretations formed by their ancestors. Even down to the present the academic view is that classical archÆology is more important than other branches, because it serves to illustrate classical literature. Looked at as archÆology, it is, on the contrary, the least important branch, because we already know so much more of the classical ages than we do of others.

It is only within the present generation that it has been realized that wherever man has lived he has left the traces of his action, and that a systematic and observant study of those remains will interpret to us what his life was, what his abilities and tastes were, and the extent and nature of his mind. Literature is but one branch of the archÆology of the higher races; another—equally important for the understanding of man—is art; these two give the highest and most complex and characteristic view of the nature of a race. At the opposite end of the scale are the rudest stone weapons which remain as the sole traces of the savages who used them. These highest and lowest evidences of mind, and all that lies between them, are the domain of archÆology.

We now purpose to review the growth of archÆology in contact with geology, where it concerns man as the last of the links of life on the globe; and then to notice the archÆology of each country in turn, as it leads on to the times of historical record, and so passes down to modern times.

A century ago the world of thought was divided between the old and new ideas very differently from what is now the case. Then there stood on one side the idea of a special creation of an individual man, at 4000 B.C.; the compression of all human history into a prehistoric age of about three thousand years, and a fairly logical solution of most of the difficulties of understanding in a comfortable teleology. On the other hand stood many who felt the inherent improbability of such solutions of the problem of life, and who were feeling their way to some more workable theory on the basis of Laplace, Lamarck, Erasmus Darwin, and others; vaguely mingling together questions of physics, geology, archÆology, anthropology, and theology, each of which we now see must be treated on its own basis, and be decided on internal evidence, before we can venture to let it affect our judgment on other points.

The great new force which thrust itself in to divide and decide on these questions is the scientific study of man and his works. Strangely shaped flints had been noticed, but no one had any knowledge of their age. One such, when found with the bones of a mammoth, was attributed to the Roman age, because no person could have brought elephants into Britain except some Roman general. The argument was excellent and irrefutable until geology found plenty more remains of the mammoth and showed that it was here long before the Romans. It was less than half a century ago that our eyes began to open to the abundant remains of flint-using man. Then a single rude stone weapon was an unexplained curiosity; now an active collector will put together his tens of thousands of specimens, will know exactly where they were found, their relation of age and of purpose, and their bearing on the history of man.

Not only have worked flint implements been found in the river gravels of France and England, where they were first noticed in the middle of this century, but also in most parts of Europe, in Egypt on the high desert, in Somaliland, at the Cape of Good Hope, in India, America, and other countries; and the most striking feature is the exact similarity in form wherever they have been found. So precisely do the same types recur, so impossible would it be to say from its form whether a flint had been found in Europe, Asia, or Africa, that it appears as if the art of working had spread from some single centre over the rest of the world. This is especially the case with the river-gravel flints—the earlier class—usually called Paleolithic. Soon after the general division had been made between polished stone-work of the later or Neolithic times, found on the surface, and the rough chipped work of the earlier or Paleolithic times, found in geological deposits, a further sub-division was made by separating the Paleolithic age into that of the river gravels and that of the cave-dwellers. The latter has again been divided into three classes by French writers, named, from their localities, Mousterien, Solutrien, Magdalenien; and, though these classes may be much influenced by locality, they probably have some difference of age between them.

And now within the last few years a still earlier kind of workmanship has been recognized in flints found in England on the high hills in Kent. Though at first much disputed, the human origin of the forms is now generally acknowledged, and they show a far ruder ability than even the most massive of the Paleolithic forms. The position also of these flints, in river deposits lying on the highest hills some six hundred feet above the present rivers, shows that the whole of the valleys has been excavated since they were deposited, and implies a far greater age than any of the gravel beds of the Paleolithic ages.

We, therefore, have passed now at the beginning of this century to a far wider view of man’s history, and classify his earlier ages in Europe thus:

First—Eolithic: Rudest massive flints from deposits 600 feet up.

Second—Paleolithic: Massive flints from gravels 200 feet up and less (Achuleen).

Third—Paleolithic—Cave-dwellers: Flints like the preceding and flakes (Mousterien).

Fourth—Paleolithic—Cave-dwellers: Flints well worked and finely shaped (Solutrien).

Fifth—Paleolithic—Cave-dwellers: Abundant bone working and drawing (Magdalenien).

Sixth—Neolithic: Polished flint working, pastoral and agricultural man.

What time these periods cover nothing yet proves. The date of 4000 B.C. for man’s appearance, with which belief the nineteenth century started, has been pushed back by one discovery after another. Estimates of from 10,000 to 200,000 years have been given from various possible clews. In Egypt an exposure of 7000 years or more only gives a faint brown tint to flints lying side by side with Paleolithic flints that are black with age. I incline to think that 100,000 years B.C. for the rise of the second class, and 10,000 B.C. for the rise of the sixth class will be a moderate estimate.

Passing now from Paleolithic man of the latest geological times whose works lie under the deposit of ages, to Neolithic man of surface history whose polished stone tools lie on the ground, we find also how greatly views have changed. For ages past metal-using man has looked on the beautifully polished or chipped weapons of his forefathers as “thunderbolts,” possessing magic powers, and he often mounted the smaller ones to wear as charms. At the beginning of this century well-finished stone weapons were only preserved as curiosities which might belong to some remote age, but without any definite ideas about them. The recognition of long ages of earlier unpolished stone work has now put these more elaborate specimens to a comparatively late period, and yet they are probably older than the date to which our forefathers placed the creation of man.

The beginning of a more intelligent knowledge of such things was laid by the systematic excavations of the burial mounds scattered over the south of England, which was done in the early part of this century by Sir Richard Colt Hoare. A solid basis of facts was laid, which began to supersede the romances woven by Stukeley and others in the last century. Gradually more exact methods of search were introduced, and in the last thirty years Canon Greenwell has done much, and General Pitt Rivers has established a standard of accurate and complete work with perfect recording, which is the highest development of archÆological study. These and other researches have opened up the life of Neolithic man to us, and we see that he was much as modern man, if compared with the earlier stage of man as a hunter. The Neolithic man made pottery, spun and wove linen, constructed enormous earthworks both for defence and for burial, and systematically made his tools of the best material he could obtain by combined labor in mining. The extensive flint-mines in chalk districts of England show long-continued labor; and the perfect form and splendid finish of many of the stone weapons show that skilled leisure could be devoted to them, and that Æsthetic taste had been developed. The large camps prove that a thorough tribal organization prevailed, though probably confined to small clans.

About the middle of the century a new type of dwelling began to be explored—the lake dwelling; this system of building towns upon piles in lakes had the great advantage of protection from enemies and wild beasts, and a constant supply of food in the fish that could be hooked from the water below. Though such settlements were first found in the Swiss lakes, and explored there by Keller, they have since been found in France, Hungary, Italy, Holland, and the British Isles. The earlier settlements of this form belong to the Neolithic age, but only in central Europe. In these earliest lake dwellings weaving was known, and the cultivation of flax, grapes, and other fruit and corn; while the usual domestic animals were kept and cattle were yoked to the plough; pottery was abundant, and was often ornamented with geometric patterns. The type of man was round-headed. Following the Neolithic lake dwellings came those of the Bronze age, and as the bronze objects are similar to those found in other kinds of dwellings we shall notice them in the Bronze age in general. The type of man was longer-headed than in the earlier lake settlement. The domestication of animals shows an advance; the horse was common, and the dog, ox, pig, and sheep were greatly improved. Pottery was better made and elaborately decorated, often with strips of tin-foil.

The Bronze age marks a great step in man’s history. In many countries the use of copper, hardened by arsenic or oxide, was common for long before the alloy of copper and tin was used. In other countries, where the use of metals was imported, copper only appears as a native imitation of the imported bronze. Hence there is a true age of copper in lands where the use of metals has grown. It must by no means be supposed that copper excluded the use of flint; it was not until bronze became common that flint was disused. The existence of a Bronze age was first formulated, as distinct from a Stone age, about seventy years ago; and the existence of a Copper age has been much disputed in the last thirty years, but has only been proved clearly ten years ago, in Egypt.

In the eighteenth century the bronze weapons found in England were attributed to the Romans by some writers, though others, with more reason, argued that they were British. In the first year of the century began the comparative study of such weapons with reference to modern savage products. The development of the metal forms from stone prototypes was pointed out in 1816; the tracing out of the succession of the forms and the modes of use appeared in 1847. Further study cleared up the details, and within the last twenty years the full knowledge of the Bronze age in other countries has left no question as to the general facts of the sequence of its history. In each type of tool and weapon there appears first a very simple form imitated from the stone implements which were earlier used. Gradually the facilities given by the casting and toughness of the metal were used, and the forms were modified; ornamentation was added, and thin work in embossed patterns gave the stiffness and strength which had been attained before by massive forms. The general types are the axe—first a plain slip of metal, later developed with a socket; then the chisel, gouge, sickle, knife, dagger, sword, spear, and shield; personal objects, as pins, necklets, bracelets, ear-rings, buttons, buckles, and domestic caldrons and cups. Most of these forms were found together, all worn out and broken, in the great bronze-founder’s hoard at Bologna.

Lastly in the prehistory of Europe comes the Iron age, which so much belongs to the historical period that we can best consider it in noticing separate countries.

From the recent discoveries in Egypt we can gain some idea of the date of these periods. We ventured to assign about 10,000 B.C. for the rise of the Neolithic or polished-stone period (it may very possibly be earlier); the beginning of the use of copper may be placed about 5000 B.C.; the beginning of bronze was perhaps 3000 or 2000 B.C., as its free use in Egypt is not till 1600 B.C.; and the use of iron beginning about 1000 B.C., probably in Armenia, spreading thence through Europe until it reached Italy, perhaps 700 years B.C., and Britain about 400 B.C. Such is the briefest outline of the greater part of the history of man, massed together in one general term of “prehistoric,” before we reach the little fringe of history nearest to our own age. The whole of this knowledge results from the work of the century.

We now turn to the historical ages of each of the principal countries, to review what advance has been made even where a basis of written record has come down to us, equally accessible in all recent times.

EGYPT

At the beginning of the century Egypt was a land of untouched and inexplicable mystery; the hieroglyphics were wondered at, and puzzled over, without any idea of how they were to be read, whether as symbols or as letters. The history was entirely derived from the confused accounts of Greek authors, the lists remaining of Manetho’s history, written about 260 B.C., and the allusions in the Bible. The attempt to make everything fit to the ideas of the Greeks, and to make everything refer to the Biblical history, greatly retarded the understanding of the monuments, and is scarcely overcome yet. The first great step forward was when an inscription was found at Rosetta, in 1799, written in two methods, the monumental hieroglyphic and the popular demotic, along with a Greek version. By 1802 some groups of each writing had been translated. Young identified more signs, and Gell, by 1822, could successfully apportion three-quarters of the signs to the Greek words. The next step was to apply the modern Coptic language, descended from the ancient Egyptian, to the reading of the words. Gell had been doing so, but it needed a student of Coptic—Champollion—to carry this out thoroughly, as he did in 1821–32. Since then advance in reading has been only a matter of detail, not requiring any new principles.

The knowledge of the art began with the admiration for the debased work of Roman times, the principal interest at the beginning of the century. Then the excavations among the Rameside monuments at Thebes, about 1820–30, took attention back to the age of 1500–1000 B.C. The work of Lepsius, and later of Mariette, from 1840–80, opened men’s eyes to the splendid work of the early dynasties, about 4000–3000 B.C. And lastly the excavations of 1893–99 have fascinated scholars by a view of the rise of the civilization and the prehistoric period before 5000 B.C.

Throughout the greater part of the century the archÆology of Egypt lay untouched; all attention was given to the language; and even Gardner Wilkinson’s fine view of the civilization (1837) depended largely on Greek authors, and had no perspective of history in tracing changes and development. It is only in the last ten or fifteen years that any exact knowledge has been acquired about the rise and progress of the various arts of life; this study now enables us to date the sculpture, metal work, pottery, and other art products as exactly as we can those of the Middle Ages.

The view that we now have of the rise and decay of this great civilization and its connection with other lands is more complete and far-reaching than that of any other country. In the early undated age, before the monarchy which began about 4800 B.C., a flourishing civilization was spread over upper Egypt. Towns were built of brick, as in later times; clothing was made of woven linen and of leather; pottery was most skilfully formed, without the potter’s wheel, hand-made, yet of exquisite regularity and beauty of outline, while the variety of form is perhaps greater than in any other land; stone vases were made entirely by hand, without a lathe, as perfect in form as the pottery, and of the hardest rocks, as diorite and granite; wood was carved for furniture; the art of colored glazing was common, and was even applied to glazing over large carvings in rock crystal; ornaments and beads were wrought of various stones and precious metals; ivory combs with carved figures adorned the hair; ivory spoons were used at the table; finely formed weapons and tools of copper served where strength was needful, while more useful were flint knives and lances which were wrought with a miraculous finish that has never been reached by any other people; and games were played with dainty pieces made of hard stone and of ivory. But all this tasteful skill of 6000–5000 B.C. had its negative side; in the artistic copying of nature the mechanical skill of these people carried them a very little way; their figures and heads of men and animals are strangely crude. And they had no system of writing, although marks were commonly used. They always buried the body doubled up, and often preserved the head and hands separately. Commerce was already active, and large rowing-galleys carried the wares of different countries around the Mediterranean. These people were the same as the modern Kabyle, of Algeria, and akin to the South European races, but with some negro admixture. Our whole knowledge of this age has only been gained within the last five years.

At about 5000 B.C. there poured into Egypt a very different people, probably from the Red Sea. Having far more artistic taste, a commoner use of metals, a system of writing already begun, and a more organized government, these fresh people started a new civilization in Egypt; adopting readily the art and skill of the earlier race, they formed by their union the peculiar culture known as Egyptian, a type which lasted for four thousand years. The same foundation of a type is seen in the bodily structure; the early historical people had wider heads and more slender noses than the prehistoric, but from 4000 B.C. down to Roman times the form shows no change.

From this union of two able races came one of the finest peoples ever seen, the Egyptians of the old kingdom, 4500—3500 B.C. Full of grand conceptions, active, able, highly mechanical, and yet splendid artists, they have left behind them the greatest masses of building, the most accurate workmanship and exquisite sculptures in the grand pyramids and tombs of their cemeteries. They perfected the art of organizing combined labor on the immense public works. In all these respects no later age or country has advanced beyond this early ability. The moral character and ideas are preserved to us in the writings of these people; and we there read of the ability, reserve, steadfastness, and kindliness which we see reflected in the lifelike portraiture of that age.

After a partial decay about 3000 B.C. this civilization blossomed out again nobly in the twelfth dynasty about 2600 B.C.; though the works of this age hardly reach the high level of the earlier times, yet they are finer than anything that followed them. At this period more contact with other countries is seen; both Syria and the Mediterranean were known, though imperfectly.

To this succeeded another decadence, sealed by the disaster of the foreign invasion of the Hyksos. But this was thrown off by the rise of a third age of brilliance—the eighteenth dynasty, 1500 B.C.—which, though inferior to early times in its highest work, yet shines by the widespread of art and luxury throughout the upper classes. Magnificence became fashionable, and the lower classes contented themselves with most barefaced imitations of costly wares. Foreign islands came closely in contact with Egypt. The ships of the Syrian coast and Cyprus continually traded to and fro, exchanging silver, copper, and precious stones for the gold of Egypt. Greece also traded its fine pottery of the MycenÆan age for the showy necklaces of gold and the rings and amulets with names of Pharaohs. Egypt then dominated the shores of the western Mediterranean, the plains of the Euphrates, and the fertile Soudan. But this power and wealth led to disaster. Like Rome, later on, she could not resist the temptation to live on plunder; heavy tribute of corn was exacted, large numbers were employed in unproductive labor, and national disaster was the natural consequence. Egypt never recovered the dominion or the splendor that were hers in this age. Of this period some slight notions are given us from literary remains in the Bible and Greek authors; but archÆology is, so far, our only practical guide, as in the earlier ages. The great temples and monuments of the eighteenth-twentieth dynasties (1600–1100 B.C.) bear hundreds of historical inscriptions, the tombs are covered with scenes of private life, the burials and the ruins of towns furnish us with all the objects of daily use. This age is one of the fullest and richest in all history, and hardly any other is better known even in Greece or Italy. Yet all this has been brought to light in the century, and the knowledge of the foreign relations of Egypt is entirely the result of the last fifteen years.

The final thousand years of the civilization of Egypt is checkered with many changes; sometimes independent, as in the ages of Shishak of Necho, and of the Ptolemies; at other times a prey to Ethiopians, Persians, Greeks, or Romans. Its arts and crafts show a constant decay, and there was but little left to resist the influence of Greek taste and design, which ran a debased course in the country. There was, however, a spread of manufactures and of cheap luxuries into lower and lower classes; and the wealth of the country accumulated under the beneficent rule of the earlier Ptolemies (300–200 B.C.).

The principal discoveries about these later ages have been in the papyri, which have been largely found during the last twenty years. The details of the government and life of the country in the Ptolemaic (305–30 B.C.) and Roman (30 B.C.–640 A.D.) periods have been cleared up; and many prizes of classical literature have also been recovered. The archÆology of the Middle Ages in Egypt has also been studied. Many of the Arabic buildings have been recently cleaned and put in good condition, and the splendid collection of manuscripts in Cairo has opened a view of the beautiful art of the thirteenth-fifteenth centuries so closely akin to what was done in Europe at the same time.

Egypt is, then, before all other lands, the country of archÆology. A continuous history of seven thousand years, with abundant remains of every period to illustrate it, and a rich prehistoric age before that, give completeness to the study and the fullest value to archÆological research.

MESOPOTAMIA

The valley of the Euphrates might well rival that of the Nile if it were scientifically explored, but unhappily all the excavation has been done solely with a view to inscription and sculpture, and no proper record has been made, nor have any towns been examined, the only work being in palaces and temples.

The earliest study on the ground was by Rich (1818–20), who gathered some few sculptures and formed an idea of Assyrian art. The French Consul, Botta, excavated Khorsabad (founded 700 B.C.) in 1834–35, and Layard excavated Nimrud in 1845–47; these were both Assyrian sites. The older Babylonian civilization was touched at Erech by Loftus, in 1849–52; and this age has attracted the most important excavations made since, at Tello by Sarzec (1876–81), and at Nippur by Peters and Haynes, of Philadelphia, during the last few years.

The cuneiform characters were absolutely unexplained until Grotefend, in 1800, resolved several of them by taking inscriptions which he presumed might contain names of Persian kings and comparing them alongside of the known names; thus—without a single fixed point to start from—he tried a series of hypotheses until he found one which fitted the facts. Bournouf (in 1836) and Lassen (1836–44) rectified and completed the alphabet. But the cuneiform signs were used to write many diverse languages, as the Roman alphabet is used at present; and the short Persian alphabet was only a fraction of the great syllabary of six hundred signs used for Assyrian. Rawlinson had independently made out the Persian alphabet, using the Zend and Sanskrit for the language. He next, from the trilingual Behistun inscription in Persian, Assyrian, and Vannic, resolved the long Assyrian syllabary, using Hebrew for the language. Since then other more obscure languages written in cuneiform have been worked with more or less success; the most important is the Turanian language, used by the earlier inhabitants of Babylonia before the Semitic invasion; this is recorded by many syllabaries and dictionaries, and translations compiled by the literary Semitic kings. The general view of the civilization which has been obtained by these labors of the century shows it to have been more important to the world than any other. Cuneiform was the literary script of the world for at least six thousand years, the only medium of writing from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean. The Babylonian culture was almost certainly the source of the oldest present civilization—that of China. And the arts were developed probably even earlier than in Egypt. The first inhabitants were called Sumirian (or river folk) in distinction from the Accadian (or highland) people, who came from Elam down into the Euphrates valley, bringing with them the use of writing. Their earliest writing was of figure symbols (like the Egyptian and Hittite); but as in the valley clay tablets were the only material for writing, the figures became gradually transformed into groups of straight lines and spots impressed on the clay; hence the signs were formalized into what we call cuneiform. The Semitic invaders were using cuneiform characters by about 3000 B.C.

The early civilization was intensely religious, the main buildings being the temples, which were placed on enormous piles of brick-work. The sculpture was at a high level in the time of Naram-Sinn, about 3750 B.C.; and yet below his ruins at Nippur there are no less than thirty-five feet depth of earlier ruins, which must extend back to 6000 or 7000 B.C. In early times stone implements were used alongside of copper and bronze, as we find in Egypt 4000 B.C. Pottery was well made, and also reliefs in terra-cotta. Personal ornaments of engraved gems and gold-work were common.

The main landmarks in the later time of this civilization are the Elamite invasion of Kudur-nan-khundi (2280 B.C.) which upset the Semitic rulers, and the Assyrian invasion of Tiglath-Adar (1270 B.C.), after which interest centres in the Assyrian kingdom and its development of the Mesopotamian culture which it borrowed. The main buildings of the Assyrian kings were their enormous palaces, the mass of which was of unbaked bricks, faced with alabaster slabs; such were the works of Assurnazir-pal (Nimrud, 880 B.C.), Sargon (Khorsabad, 710 B.C.), Sennacherib and Assurbani-pal (Kouyunjik, 700 B.C.). The later, Assyrian, form of the civilization was to the earlier Chaldean much what Rome was to Greece, a rather clumsy borrower, who laboriously preserved the literature and art. Some of the Assyrian sculpture of animals is, however, perhaps unsurpassed for vivid action. The systematic libraries, containing copies of all the older literature for general study, were most creditable, though the Assyrian himself composed nothing better than chronicles. Nearly all that we possess of Babylonian religion, and much of the history, is in the copies scrupulously made from the ancient tablets by the Assyrian scribes, who noted every defect in the original with critical fidelity.

The Mesopotamian civilization has left its mark on the modern world. Its religion greatly influenced Hebrew, and thence Christian, thought, the psalms, for instance, being a Babylonian form of piety. Its science fixed the signs of the zodiac, the months of the year, the days of the week, and the division of the circle in degrees, all of which are now universal. And its art, carried by the Phoenicians, was copied by the Greeks and Etruscans, and thus passed on into modern design.

SYRIA

The knowledge of Palestine was but slight, and of northern Syria nothing to speak of, a century ago. Travellers with some scientific ability, such as Robinson (1838 and 1852), De Saulcy (1853), and Van de Velde (1854), greatly extended our view and led up to the splendid survey by the Palestine Exploration Fund (1866 and on), which exhausted the surface study of the land. The more archÆological work of excavation was begun at Jerusalem (1867–70), and resumed (1892–99) at Lachish, Jerusalem, etc. The topographical results are all important, and leave nothing to be done until excavation can be freely applied; and the small amount of digging yet done has fixed the varieties of pottery back to 2000 B.C. and given some early architecture. But the ruins of Syria, and indeed of Turkey in general, are practically yet untouched. The discovery (1868) of the inscription of Mesha, King of Moab (896 B.C.), opened a new prospect of research which cannot yet be entered upon. In the north of Syria nothing has been done except the German work at Singerli, from which came an Aramean inscription of about 740 B.C. And in the south a large number of early inscriptions of the Arabian dynasties, reaching back some centuries B.C., have been copied; but there, also, excavation is impossible.

The main new light from Syria has been on the Hittite power. Burckhardt, in 1812, had noticed a new kind of hieroglyph at Hamath. After several ineffective copies, Wright made casts of the stones in 1872. Several other such inscriptions have been found, and from these and the Egyptian and Assyrian references to the Hittites we now realize that they were a northern people, with a great capital on the Euphrates, at Karkhemish, and ruling over nearly all Syria and Asia Minor. Little has yet been fixed about the writing; a few signs are read and some have passed into the Cypriote alphabet. A striking proof of the spread of Babylonian culture is seen in the tablets found in Egypt at Tel-el-Amarna in 1887, which show that all the correspondence between Egypt and Syria in the fifteenth century B.C. was carried on in cuneiform. These hundreds of letters give a vivid picture of life in Syria at that early date.

GREECE

The revival of interest in Greek civilization was at first purely literary, and remained so during two or three centuries. But during the last century various travellers and residents abroad made collections which awoke an interest in the art; and though most of these collectors were content with merely showy sculpture, greatly restored and falsified for the market, yet some—such as Hamilton—took a real archÆological interest in the unearthing and collecting of ancient art. The condition of study at the end of the eighteenth century was that many private men of wealth had bought large quantities of sculpture which was but little understood, and looked on more from a decorative than a scientific point of view, while there were the beginnings of a serious appreciation of it which had been just laid down by Winckelmann.

The nineteenth century opened with a grand work of publishing the principal treasures of classical art in England, which was finally issued in 1809 by Payne, Knight, and Townley; this marks the highest point of the dilettante collecting spirit, which was soon eclipsed by truer knowledge. Hitherto the best sculpture had hardly been known but at second hand through Roman copies; a closer acquaintance began with the travels of Dodwell, Gell, and Leake, all in the first decade of the century. The free opening of the British Museum, in 1805, and the accumulation there of all the best collections within the first quarter of the century, also served to educate a public taste. The first struggle of scientific and artistic knowledge against the dilettante spirit was over the Elgin marbles; by 1816 they were accepted as the masterpieces which all later criticism has proved them to be. The Æginetan and Phigaleian sculptures, brought to Munich and London, helped also to show the nobility of early Greek art; so that the last two generations have had a canon of taste to rely upon, the value of which cannot be overestimated.

Following on this noble foundation, other collectors worked in Greece and Asia Minor, and the British Museum profited by the labors of Burgon, Fellows, and Woodhouse between 1840 and 1860. The diplomatically supported work of Newton on the Mausoleum (1857–58), and Wood at Ephesus (1863–75), filled out our knowledge of the middle period of Greek art (350 B.C.). Comparatively little has been done since then by England, but the activity of the Germans at Olympia has given us the only original masterpiece that is known—the Hermes of Praxiteles (350 B.C.), and their work at Pergamon revealed the great altar belonging to the later age (180 B.C.). The excavations at Athens (in 1886) have produced the impressive statues dedicated to Athene about 520 B.C., which reveal the noble rise of Attic sculpture. But attention during the last quarter-century has been largely fixed upon the earlier ages. The discoveries of Schliemann at Hissarlik (Troy, 1870–82), MycenÆ (1876), Orchomenos (1880–81), and Tiryns (1884), opened a new world of thought and research. Though at first bitterly attacked, it is now agreed that these discoveries show us the civilization of Greece between 2000 and 1000 B.C. Lastly, during ten years past Egypt has provided the solid chronology for prehistoric Greece by discoveries of trade between the two countries.

We can now very briefly estimate the present position of our knowledge as gained during the century. Setting aside the early foreign pottery found in Egypt, which belongs probably to Greece or Italy at 5000 and 3000 B.C., we first touch a civilized city in the lowest town of Troy, where metal was scarcely yet in use, which is certainly before 2000 and probably about 3000 B.C. in date. Succeeding that is the finely built second Troy, rich in gold vases and ornaments, which—though mistaken by Schliemann for the Homeric Troy—must yet be long before that, probably before 2000 B.C. After the burning of that come three other rebuildings before we reach the town of the age of MycenÆ, about 1500 B.C. Of this, which was in Greece the climax of the prehistoric civilization, there are the splendid treasures found at MycenÆ, the magnificent domed tombs, the abundance of fine jewelry and metal-work, of beautiful pottery and glazed ornament. To this age belong the great palaces of MycenÆ, Tiryns, Athens, and other hill fortresses, of which hardly more than the plans can now be traced. And it is this civilization which traded eagerly with Egypt, exchanging the valued manufactures of each country. This period was at its full bloom from 1500–1200 B.C., and began to decay by 1100 B.C., this dating being given by the contact with Egypt.

This natural decadence of art in Greece was hastened by the invasion of the barbarous Dorians about 1000 B.C. Art, however, was by no means extinguished, but only repressed by the troubles of the age; and Athens, which was not conquered by the Dorians, was the main centre of the revival of the arts. Other examples of such a history are familiar in Egypt (after the Hyksos invasion) and in Italy (after the Lombards), where earlier abilities revive and bloom afresh when vigorous invaders become united to an artistic stock. After the centuries of warfare a quieter age allowed the growth of fine arts again in the seventh century B.C., largely influenced by Egyptian and Assyrian work at second hand, through the Greek settlements in Cyprus and Egypt. By 600 B.C. definite types of sculpture were started, and a course was begun which only ended in the fall of classical civilization. The century before the Persian invasion, in 480 B.C., was one of rapid development; and in sculpture and vase-painting we see that this century carried forward the arts to technical perfection and the highest power of expression. Immediately after the Persian wars came the supreme works of Pheidias and Myron, most familiar in the Parthenon and the Discobolus; and in vase-painting comes the reversal from vases drawn in black on a red ground to the blocking out of the ground in black, leaving the figure in red, thus giving far greater scope to the filling in of finely drawn detail. The civilization of Athens was also at its height in this age, under Pericles, and the minor arts received their most refined and perfect treatment. After this comes nothing but ripening to decay. It must always be remembered that we have but very few examples of original work of the great artists. Nearly all the actual marbles preserved are copies made in later times, which show little of the delicacy of the original; and the few original marbles that remain are mostly of unknown subjects by unknown men. The great work in Greek archÆology during the last fifty years has been comparing the records of ancient art (in Pliny, Pausanias, etc.) with the remaining sculptures, critically assigning the various types of statues to their celebrated originals, and thus forming some idea of the real history of Greek art.

From these studies, full of detail and controversy, we may briefly sum up the characteristics of the principal artists and their imitators. At about 440 B.C. Pheidias showed in the Parthenon the highest expression of divine and mythic forms, in a simple and heroic style which was never equalled. Half a century later Polykleitos followed a more human expression, using motives (as in the Doryphoros), but yet portraying an abstract humanity. By 330 B.C. Praxiteles brought the expression of moods to his works, graceful, animated, and with a full ripeness, as in the Hermes of Olympia, or the Faun. Skopas, slightly later, marked his work by his great vigor and strong personality. This was the second turning-point, when ripeness passed into decay; and in Lysippos there is mere vivid naturalism and an impressionist manner without much soul or thought, as in his Apoxyomenos, about 330 B.C. After this mere triviality and genre subjects are usual, portraiture is a common aim, and dignity was vainly striven for in colossal size. The glorification of showing dead and vanquished enemies is seen in the Dying Gaul and figures of slain foes at Pergamon. Later on, about 180 B.C., we see the violent, complicated, and straining action of the figures around the great altar of Pergamon, which also appears in the groups of the Laocoon and Farnese Bull. In the GrÆco-Roman age a conscious artificiality took the place of life and expression, as we see in the Apollo Belvidere, the Venus di Medici, and the Farnese Hercules. Art was saved in the first century A.D. by the devotion of portraiture, which gave a sense of reality and conviction which is entirely absent in the imaginative works. Lastly, a painstaking study and admiration of earlier works led, under the wealthy patronage of Hadrian (130 A.D.), to an eclectic revival which was wholly artificial, and passed away within a generation. We have fixed on sculpture as the most complete expression of Greek art; in other directions there is neither enough material nor enough research to give us a connected view. Not a single town, hardly a single house, in Greece has been excavated; there is no consecutive knowledge of the ordinary products and objects of life; and there is very little recorded of the discoveries of the tombs. The artistic interest of the sculpture and architecture has starved other branches of archÆology, and for Greece more remains to be done than for some less celebrated lands.

ITALY

The interest in Italy at the beginning of the nineteenth century was mainly for the sake of its second-hand version of Greek art, and for the architecture and painting of the Renaissance. On the contrary, now the objects from Greece itself have far eclipsed the Italian copies, and the interest lies in the early Italian civilization and its purely Roman derivatives; while modern taste values the mediÆval art of Italy far from the bastard products of the florid age which followed. The first detailed studies in Italy were those on Pompeii, especially by Gell (1817), which made that debased style very popular, and paved the way for appreciation of better work. The various isolated discoveries of Etruscan tombs were summed up in the admirable work of Dennis (1848), which presented a general view of that civilization which has not been superseded. The earlier Italic culture has been examined in many places where accidental discoveries have revealed it during the latter half of the nineteenth century, and especially in the systematic work of Zannoni, at Bologna (1870–75), and of Orsi, lately, in Sicily. The history of the city of Rome has been almost rewritten in the last thirty years owing to the great changes of the new government; these have been largely worked by Lanciani, and recorded by him and Middleton. The view of Italian history at present begins in the Stone age, which has been well studied, and has links with the later periods, as in the general use of black pottery. The earliest metal objects are very simple blades of daggers, found in graves, mingled with flint arrow-heads and knives. The admirable Italian plan of preserving whole burials undisturbed in museums enables us to see these graves complete in the Kircherian Museum. A special branch of the early Bronze age life was the system of lake dwellings (natural or artificially water girt), which abound in the northern Italian lakes and over the plain of Lombardy. These towns (“terra mare”) are arranged on a rectangular plan, and form the earliest stage of many of the present cities. The full development of the Bronze age civilization seems to have been later than in Greece, at about 800 B.C., to which belong the great discoveries of tombs, weapons, and tools at Bologna, and the cemetery of Falerii.

Upon all the native Italic civilization came an entirely different influence from the immigrant Etruscan. Traditionally coming from Asia Minor, he brought art and religion which had no relation to the Italic. The earliest Etruscan paintings are strongly northern in style, influenced by north European feeling (Veii). But soon the Etruscan borrowed largely from other races, from the Greek mainly, but also from Assyria and Egypt. Thus the fascinating problem in Italy is to distinguish the various sources of Italic, Etruscan, GrÆco-Etruscan, Oriental-Etruscan, and pure Greek, which are found in all degrees of combination before Roman times, and which can still be traced through the Roman age. The characteristics of Etruscan taste are: (1) The extraneous objects and figures, such as rows of pendants to a metal vase, monstrous heads standing out from a bowl, and statuettes placed for handles; (2) in forms of vases and furniture, the combination of many different parts and curves which never form a whole design; (3) and in sculpture the large round head and staring eyes. In general, an air of clumsy adaptation by a race deficient in originality. The glory of the Etruscan was his engineering, which he handed as a legacy to Rome. Strange to say, although thousands of Etruscan inscriptions are known, and many words are translated, yet the language is sealed to us, and none of the many attempts to read it has succeeded. The scientific study of Etruscan tombs has been well followed lately, as shown in the Florence Museum, where a separate room is devoted to each city.

In the south of Italy Greek art prevailed, and many of the finest works belong to this civilization. The Greek in Italy had rather different ideals to those of Greece; he started more from the level of Polykleitos and Praxiteles than from the severe age; his favorite type is that of youth and adolescence, never of maturity. The grace and feeling of such bronze statues as the Hermes and so-called Sappho of Herculaneum are peculiar to southern Italy. And when the Greek artist penetrated north and allied himself with the mechanical skill of the Etruscan, such splendid work was done as the Orator of Sanguineto.

Rome in the earlier centuries was an Italic town which came under Etruscan influence as Tuscany was conquered. But from the age of foreign conquest in the first century B.C., Greek art in a debased form ruled over all else, and ran into utter degradation in the third century A.D. It was this art that the power of Rome spread around the whole Mediterranean, from Palmyra to Britain, and is the parent of most modern decoration. But in the great reconstruction of the empire under Diocletian the debased Greek taste was mostly shaken off, and Rome went back to the old Italic-Etruscan style and motives. The statues have the round heads and staring eyes of old Etruria; the taste for quaint accessories, such as lions supporting objects, came back and passed into mediÆval art, and the exaggerated, lengthy forms of men and animals reappeared.

Of the Christian period De Rossi’s work in the catacombs has given a firm base of facts for the third to the sixth century A.D., the actual tomb and body of Saint Cecilia being the most striking result. The later Roman and mediÆval age in Italy is full of interest, but in that—as in the rest of mediÆval Europe—research has been mainly on architecture and objects which are not the result of excavation.

INDIA

The Hindus have never been chronologists or historians, and their great Sanskrit literature tells practically nothing about the rise of Buddhism, the invasion of Alexander, or the spread of civilization in Indo-China. All before the Islamic conquest in the tenth century A.D. is in a mist of Puranic mythology. Here, then, more than in other countries, archÆology has restored the history, and done so entirely within the nineteenth century.

The existence of Sanskrit literature was revealed to the West by Sir William Jones at the end of the last century, and this gave scope to Oriental scholars, while antiquities only interested the collector. But serious exploration was led by Prinsep, whose decipherment of the Asoka inscriptions in 1837, which ranks with the achievements of Champollion and Rawlinson, gave the key to a mass of inscriptions.

His assistant, Cunningham, excavated many sites and collected coins, being head of the ArchÆological Survey from 1861 to 1885. Fergusson was the historian of Indian architecture; Burgess has published the cave-temples in west and south India; Sewell in Madras and FÜhrer in the northwest have excavated and explored, and a few native pundits have been educated to such research. The government, in financial difficulty, has withdrawn from the work, but the congress of Orientalists in 1897 resolved to establish an Indian exploration fund.

Inscriptions abound in India, on copper plate, stone pillars, and native rock. Those in Sanskrit, or modern vernaculars, are records of land grants or local dynasties. The oldest—in two different alphabets (of Semitic origin)—are the famous edicts of Asoka (third century B.C.), who has been called The Buddhist Constantine. He placed these monuments of his power and religion around his frontiers of northern India; but their meaning was forgotten until Prinsep’s decipherment. The Hindus seem to have a coinage of stamped silver plate before Alexander; but regular coinage begins in the Bactrian kingdoms (200 B.C.–200 A.D.), with Greek and native inscriptions. Since then the coinage is continuous, and invaluable for history. No stone building or sculpture is older than Alexander (327 B.C.), or certainly earlier than Asoka (264–233 B.C.). Greek influence is plain in the Punjab, but native style is seen in the cave-temples. The richest results have been from the mounds, some of which are ruins of forts or palaces, but the more important are the stupas, lofty domes erected two to one thousand years ago to enshrine Buddhist relics. These domes are surrounded with sculptured reliefs of scenes in the life of Buddha, and are often dated by inscriptions. From one lately opened the Buddha relic has been sent to the King of Siam, the only Buddhist king. Much has been done by the government in publishing and providing casts and photographs; but India yet needs a scientific archÆologist to record details with the accuracy demanded by modern research.

AMERICA

ArchÆological work in the United States and in Central America was begun by Squier about the middle of the century, and the attention thus drawn to the subject has borne fruit in the more accurate and scientific explorations connected with the surveying and geological departments, and, above all, those of the Smithsonian Bureau of Ethnology. The names of Whitney, Wright, Cyrus Thomas, Holmes, Fowke, Mindeleff, and others, will be familiar to all American readers by their work of the last twenty years, and need no introducing here.

The earliest remains of man in America—or perhaps in the world—are those beneath the great lava beds of California; since those were deposited the rivers have cut their beds through two thousand to four thousand feet of lava rock, implying an erosion during tens, or perhaps hundreds, of thousands of years. But little can be assigned, however, with any certainty to a date before the Christian era, though mounds of refuse on both ocean shores may probably belong to an age before any human history.

The most important studies have been those on the highest civilization of the continent, that of Central America. The destroying Spaniards preserved but little of native record, except incidentally, and the first collector of Aztec manuscripts was Benaduci (1736), of whose treasures but an eighth survived his imprisonments and persecutions, one of the greatest disasters to history. The first great publication of manuscripts was the magnificent work of Lord Kingsborough (1830); and almost at the same time appeared Prescott’s history. Though the later researches have shown that the land was divided into many small kingdoms, rather than under one power, as Prescott supposed, yet his account of the calendar and chronology of the Aztecs has been verified and added to, and far more has been done in reading the manuscripts than he supposed possible. Aubin, after years of work in Mexico, brought to Europe manuscripts of an entirely new kind, showing a fully developed system of phonetic writing, which he has largely deciphered with success, having analyzed over one hundred syllabic values correctly.

One of the most complete studies has been that of the Mayan QuichÉ peoples, and especially of the Mayans of Yucatan. In 1864 Landa’s work on Yucatan (written 1566) was rediscovered, and the account of the calendar has sufficed to enable Goodman to discover the meaning of a very large number of signs (1897); these enable the numerical documents to be translated, and show that a period of as much as eight thousand years was dealt with by the Mayans, perhaps belonging to mythical ages. The alphabetic signs of Landa have proved useless so far, and Goodman even disbelieves in any record except that of numbers. Seler has shown the identical origin of the signs used by Aztecs and Mayans for the days and months. Little had been done to make known these remains until the recent explorations, casts, and publications of Maudsley, who has worked magnificently for seventeen years at Copan, Palenque, and Chichen-Itza; these, however, are but three of innumerable cities of Guatemala and Yucatan that need exploration.

In New Mexico the many ruins from the Colorado to the Rio Grande have been proved to resemble those of the modern Pueblo Indians, and to have none of the characteristics of Central American architecture; there are no sculptures, and the rock inscriptions are too primitive to be interpreted. Nothing points to an Aztec occupation, and probably the ancestors of the present people were the builders.

The innumerable earthworks of the Mississippi valley were formerly supposed to belong to some vanished race. And the view that they were connected with the Central American civilization is favored by the pyramid mound, which was hardly known otherwise, and by the excellence of the minor sculpture. But there are great differences between the two civilizations. The mound-builders were far inferior in metal-working, and their burial customs are peculiar. The use of materials from both east and west coasts shows an extensive commerce. The best summing up of the researches is that by Prof. Cyrus Thomas, after his extensive excavations. He concludes that the remains of the mound-builders show no great antiquity; that they were formed by tribes like the existing Indians; that the builders were of the same culture as were the Indians when discovered; that such mounds continued to be made and used for burial during the European period, and that the principal builders were the Cherokees.

It will be seen now how totally our view of man’s history has been changed by the study of archÆology, and how fundamentally this science affects our ideas of the past and our expectations for the future of our race. The main outlines have been dimly seen; but in every country the greater part yet remains to be done, and in Turkey, Persia, and China most important civilizations are as yet quite untouched by exploration. The new century will no doubt see a harvest from these lands; and it is to be hoped that what yet remains in the safe keeping of the earth may be found by able men, who will preserve it for instruction and enable posterity to trace the fortunes of our species.

[India and America are here treated with the assistance of Mr. J.S. Cotton and Mr. D. MacIver.]

W.M. Flinders Petrie.

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