uppermost and most recent of which he regarded as the historic or Roman Ilium. In his older surveys he supposed that the third city from the bottom was the Troy of Homer. His later researches showed that this was a mistake, and that it was the second city that should have been regarded as corresponding with that Troy. The mistake arose from the fact, which was made apparent on further examination, that the people of the third city had built their houses among the colossal masses of calcined ruins of the second city, without attempting either to level or remove them, and that these ruins were at first confounded with the houses of the same stratum in which they appeared, instead of being assigned to the stratum whence their foundations rose. From the more careful examination of the second stratum of ruins, and the extension of the investigations into the surrounding level, Dr. Schliemann now claims to have finally proved that "in a remote antiquity there was in the plain of Troy a large city destroyed of old by a fearful catastrophe; that the hill of Hissarlik was only the Acropolis of this city, occupied by its temples and a few other large edifices, while the lower city extended east, south, and west, on the site of the later Ilium; and that, consequently, this city answers perfectly to the Homeric description of the site of sacred Ilios." " This city was laboriously fortified, and its fortifications were in time renewed and extended. The walls and some of the chief edifices were constructed of sun-dried bricks, and were baked by fires raised against them after they were built up. The relics found in the ruins indicate that iron was not in use in this city; that implements and weapons of stone were equally prevalent with those of bronze; and that the gold-maker's art had attained a high degree of development.

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Of the later Ilium have been found inscriptions, coins, architectural and sculptural fragments of two Doric temples, parts of a theatre capable of accommodating six thousand spectators, and portions of the walls.

American Archæological Research at Assos.-The Archæological Institute of America, after two years of work, has completed its excavations of Assos in the Troad. This city, which Joseph T. Clarke identifies with the city described by Homer as the steep and lofty Pedasos, the capital of the Leleges and the residence of King Altes, the father-in-law of Priam, and with the "Pedasa" mentioned in an Egyptian papyrus as a state whose people assisted the Hittites in the wars of Rameses II, was situated in a volcanic crater that rises directly and steeply from the sea to a height of about eight hundred feet, and commands an imposing view. The remains discovered in the excavations display the various phases of Greek civilization during twenty-four centuries. Before the work of exploration was begun, Col. Martin Leake, an English archæologist, contemplating the solid and accurate masonry of a part of the

walls, which date from the fourth century B. C., had spoken of the ruins of Assos as presenting the most perfect idea of a Greek city that had hitherto been obtained. The first year's excavations of the Archæological Association were made about the temple upon the Acropolis. Among the archaic bas-reliefs and sculptures which decorated the building were found the crouching sphinxes that formed the coat-ofarms of the city, combats between lions, wild boars, and deer, in the Assyrian style, and a scene from the episode of Hercules and the Centaurs, which is worthy of especial mention as being the only known monumental work of art yet discovered in which the Centaurs are represented as having human fore-legs. An ancient bridge, which was partially excavated, is the only known example of a Greek bridge. The excavations made during the two years in the market-place revealed the Agora to be a more interesting work, and made it more completely known, than even the Forum of Pompeii. Along one of its sides extended a twostoried colonnade, or stoa, 350 feet long, made of the andesite of the mountain, which strikingly resembled the colonnade around the Temple of Athena at Pergamon. Next to it is the Bouleuterion, apparently of the same date, in which the archives of the city were kept. On the south side of the Agora stood a building that forms the only known example of a Greek bath, and is the only four-storied structure of antiquity ever recovered. A complete ideal restoration of it was made. It consisted, according to the description given by Mr. Joseph Thacher Clarke, "of an enormous hall, going through two stories, with twenty-six chambers upon one side; above this structure was a colonnade, the floor of which was upon a level with the Agora. In front of the stoa was an enormous basin for the reception of rain-water, covered by stone slabs, and so paved in that it was not visible to persons on the market-place; from it ran a subterranean conduit to the lower story of the bath, whence there were arrangements for the water to flow into the thirteen lower cells. The refuse water was drawn off into a larger basin beneath the bath-building, where there was again another reservoir to receive the clean water from its roof. This last reservoir was connected with the street, and so formed a grand public fountain, supplying pure water for the consumption of the people, while the water of the refuse basin adjoining it was used for the cooling of the theatre in the lower town. Next to the bath was built, in later times, a small temple (Heroon), in which the bodies of the benefactors of the city were deposited; their names were still found inscribed upon the entablature. At the east end of the Agora was the bema, the tribune of the orator in addressing a crowd. The level here was raised above the marketplace, and flagged, while the remainder, like all Greek streets before the Christian era, was unpaved." The theatre was well recovered;

the gymnasium was in a good state of preservation; and a great palace-hall, or atrium, of late date, has an arch appearing with purely Hellenic details. The Street of Tombs presents monuments of every period, one of which can not be later than the seventh century B. C., while many are as recent as the eleventh or twelfth Christian century. One of the large mausoleums offers a perfect parallel to the tombs of the kings at Jerusalem. One hun dred and twenty-four sarcophagi were opened for the first time, and many archaic cinerary urns were found. Inhumation and cremation appear to have been maintained side by side. In the sarcophagi were discovered ornaments of gold, terra-cotta figurini, small vases, and glasses, including some fine specimens of thin, transparent glass, and several thousand coins. The walls, of which the chief masses date from the fourth century B. C., are more than two miles in length, are remarkably well preserved, and rise in many places to within one or two courses of their original height of sixty feet and over.

Villas of Ancient Roman Nobles.-Advantage has been taken of the works of reconstruction and public improvement that have been going on in the city of Rome, to make a careful examination of the ruins and relics of ancient Roman life that are from time to time in the course of the work rendered accessible: and by this means much progress has been made toward an ideal restoration of the city as it was during the imperial period. The Via Nazionale, which has been in the course of opening and building during the past twelve years, passes close to the line of the ancient Vicus Longus, which ran through one of the most aristocratic quarters of the town. In this region, starting from the modern Piazza di Magnanapoli and advancing toward the baths of Diocletian, the remains of the "superb mansions" of between fifteen and twenty Roman nobles have been brought to light, but the explorations of them, which were made during the earlier period of the excavations, were "irregular and merely accidental," and the information that was gained respecting them was not as accurate or exhaustive as is desired. A more important and regular work, the building of the office of the Minister of War, is giving the opportunity of exploring under better auspices that portion of the district which extended from the Vicus Longus to the Vicus Porta Collinæ, and from the Templum Salutis to the baths of Diocletian. The war office covers an area of 15,000 square metres which formerly belonged to the monastery of the Barberine nuns. The ground was explored in a desultory manner when the monastery was built, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but the value of the information it might have yielded was not then appreciated. The new exploration of the same ground has been attended with the discovery of the town residence of Vulcacius Rufinus, the uncle of Juli

an the Apostate, who became consul in A. d. 347, prefect of the Prætorium, A. D. 349, and again, A. D. 368, governor of Numidia, member of the privy council, etc. The vestibule of the palace is a large hall, paved with marble incrustations of the rarest kind, and the lower part of the walls is covered with the same. On the left side of the entrance was found a marble pedestal dedicated to Vulcacius Rufinus by the township of Ravenna, the information contained in which, compared with that given by writers of the time, makes it possible to trace closely the successive steps of the distinguished citizen's career. This residence, which faced the street on the south, was surrounded by other palaces on the north and east sides, and an imperial warehouse on the west.

The remains of a very extensive villa containing numerous works of art have been discovered on the line of the road leading from Rome to Marino, near the railway - station called Il Sassone. The palace proves to have belonged originally to a Voconius Pollio, and to have afterward passed into the hands of the Valerii. It stands in the center of a platform, which was raised artificially above the level of the Campagna by a long line of arched substructures. It was built at the end of the first century, in the reticulated style of masonry, and was rebuilt two centuries later, with bricks and small cubes of peperino. It contained reception, bath, and sleeping rooms, a central hall shaped like a basilica, and gardens surrounded by porticoes, basins, and fountains. The pavements of the first period are laid down in chiaroscuro mosaics; those of the second period are incrusted with polychrome marble; and the columns of the porticoes are cut in rough local stone and coated with painted stucco. Among the numerous works of sculpture that have been brought to light are a Marsyas tied to a tree, in pavanazzetto marble; the statue of an athlete; a bearded satyr; a winged Victory; a group of an eagle carrying up to the skies a half-devoured lamb; a semicolossal Apollo, "equally remarkable for good preservation and for excellent workmanship"; an aged man, representative of a new type of sculpture, the exact character of which has not been determined; a Hercules with the spoils of the Nemean lion, from which the head and feet are missing; a youthful and merry Bacchus; and a bust of Paris.

Exploration of the Atrium Vestæ.-The house of the Vestal Virgins in Rome has been excavated, and several statues or parts of statues or inscriptions of chief Vestals of the third century have been recovered from it. The house, which appears to have been rebuilt after the destruction of the Atrium Vesta in A. D. 191, is a rectangular oblong building, and was surrounded by streets on every side. The entire block was 115 metres long and 53 metres wide, and the Atrium Vestæ proper, which gave its name to the whole building, was 67 metres long and 24 metres wide. The archi

tectural style of the building was somewhat like that of the double-storied cloisters of the medieval and Renaissance periods. The portico was furnished with 48 columns of cipollino marble on the ground-floor, and as many smaller columns of breccia corallina on the upper story. The Atrium was surrounded by state apartments in the lower story and by the private apartments of the Vestals in the upper story. A hall corresponding with the tablinum of a Roman house was paved with colored marbles and walled with marbles, and a number of smaller rooms around it are presumed to have been used for the deposition of archives. The situation having been very damp, elaborate arrangements were provided for warming and ventilating the building by means of hot-air furnaces and flues. The marks of the ruins indicate that the Atrium may have originally contained more than a hundred honorary pedestals with statues and eulogistic inscriptions of Vestales Maxima; but in several of these cases more than one of the pedestals appear to have commemorated the same lady. Most of these works have disappeared by having been burned into limestone. Twenty-eight of the inscriptions have been recovered in the Atrium, and eight other inscriptions, some of them older than any in the Atrium, have been found in other parts of the city. The earliest of the pedestals in the Atrium bears the name of Prætestata, daughter of Crassus, whose mother, Sulpicia, is mentioned by Tacitus in his history, iv, 42. These names occur, in the order of date: Numisia Maximilia, A. D. 201; Terentia Flavola, A. D. 215 (on four pedestals); Flavia Publicia, A. D. 247 (on seven pedestals); Coelia Claudiana, A. D. 286; a pedestal from which the name has been erased, A. D. 294; and Coelia Concordia, the last or the last but one of the Vestales Maximæ. Three statues were found in a comparatively perfect condition. One, which is supposed to represent Flavia Publicia, is described as an "exquisite statue." One upper part of a statue has the head in a fine state of preservation; and several headless parts of statues have been found.

Eight hundred and twenty-nine Anglo-Saxon coins, bearing the names of Alfred, Edward, Athelstan, Edmund, Onlaf, Sitrice, and Archbishop Plegmund, have been discovered within the Atrium.

Exploration of Palestine. The Palestine Exploration Fund has completed its survey of western Palestine, and has published the report of its work in seven volumes, with maps and drawings. It has identified, with more or less of certainty, the greater part of the more important places mentioned in the Bible, and has made as thorough examinations as local conditions and regard for the rights of property-owners would permit, of walls and ancient structures at Jerusalem and other cities. In its maps are noted down all of the springs, the caverns, the tombs; the ancient synagogues; the old "high places," now called

mukanes; the names of Roman temples constructed of materials previously used for synagogues; of Byzantine churches made of the same stones taken from the Roman temples; and of crusaders' forts made from these same stones worked over again; of which any relics have been found. Some ten thousand names have been corrected and translated or transliterated; and a plan has been drawn and published of every important ruin. A geological survey has been completed by Prof. Hull, which clearly illustrates the physical structure and topographical features of the country, and throws light on those parts of biblical history that are connected with such features.

An important identification has been probably fixed, independently of the surveys of the Palestine Exploration Fund, of the site of Kadesh-Barnea. The location of this place, which was an important station in the wanderings of the Israelites, had been a difficult problem to geographers, and they had not been able to agree upon it. The most generally accepted location was that of Robinson, who fixed it at a place called Wady-el-Jayb, where are certain springs called Ain-el-Weibeh. His identification was not sustained by any special evidence, either in the traditional name or the topographical features of the place. Shortly after 1842, the Rev. John Rowlands, whose attention had been directed to the spot, but who had not visited it in that year, made his way to a place called Gadis, or Ain Quadis, southwest of the Ain-el-Weibeh, and a little west of north of a third conjectural location at the Wady Jerafeh, where he found a spur of solid, naked rock, from the base of which issued a considerable stream that was lost in the sand at three or four hundred yards away. The conditions, in the name, the character of the situation, and its features, its position in the order of stations, and in other respects, all favored the identification of the spot with Kadesh Barnea. No one, however, had succeeded in finding this place after Rowlands's account of it was published, and his theory was ignored, while that of Robinson became current. In 1881 the Rev. Henry Clay Trumbull, of Philadelphia, whose account has been published during the past year, succeeded in reaching Ain Quadis, and found it to correspond accurately with the description given of it by Rowlands, nearly forty years before.

Survey of Moab.-Capt. C. R. Conder, R. E., has published, in a book entitled "Heth and Moab," an account of a survey of part of the land that is supposed to have been included in the empire of the Hittites, and of the Moabite country north of the river Arnon, which he made in connection with the work of the Palestine Exploration Fund. The primary object of the survey was the exploration of Moab proper, but this was prevented by the interference of the Turkish officials; so that the investigations in that region were confined chiefly to what formed the northwestern part of the territory

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allotted to the tribe of Reuben. It was during this survey that Capt. Conder visited and identified the site of the ancient Hittite capital of Kadesh. Three places had been indicated as possibly occupying the locality of this city Antioch, Emesa (the modern Homs), and an island in the middle of the long lake near Homs. Capt. Conder gained satisfactory evidence that the real site was not at either of these places, but was at a spot now called Kedes, on the river Orontes, south of Homs. Two pictorial representations of Kadesh are given on the Egyptian monuments, in connection with the documents relating to the wars between Rameses II and the Hittites; one, which is slightly injured, on the walls of the Ramesseum at Thebes, and another at Aboo Simbul, fifty-seven feet by twenty-five feet in dimensions, showing the battle of Kadesh. All the features of the scene, as depicted in these views by contemporary artists, correspond with the situation examined by Capt. Conder, while no agreement was found between them and the other situations. The features of the place also correspond with the requirements of the textual descriptions of the battle; and the very name of the mound by which the ruin stands -Neby Mendeh-the surveyor observes, recalls the Egyptian war-god Mentu, or Mando, whom Rameses is said in the poem of the Pentaur to have invoked during the battle. The supposed situation in the lake was visited, and found not to fulfill any of the conditions of the problem. On the way between these two places, the party passed a curious inclosure which is called the "Ark of Noah." According to the Koran, the Tannûr, at Oven, south of Kadesh, was the spot whence the flood is sued and whither it returned. This "Ark of Noah" is an earthen inclosure about three hundred yards square, with mounds at the angles, which may mark the place of corner towers, and is surrounded by a ditch forty feet deep and wide. The building within lies with its angles to the cardinal points. At Tyre, a Phoenician votive tablet to Moloch Astarte was unearthed, and a text in eight lines, invoking a blessing from Baal, Lord of Heaven. The temple of Melkarth was apparently one hundred feet wide and one hundred and eighty feet long, with three walls and a peristyle. It faced north of northeast, and its pillars were only eighteen inches in diameter. Among remains on the site were those of two altars similar to those of the so-called "libationtables" of the Egyptians. One of them had an eagle carved on the side, and in its upper surface were sunk two flat basins, a foot square and a few inches deep. The other altar was plain, and had a single basin of the same size as those in the former altar. A peculiar distinction is remarked between the altars of the Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Moabites, and those of the Israelites, that the former have been artificially prepared, and contain libation-vessels, while the latter were required to be made

of earth, or of stone on which no tool should be lifted. Before he was finally driven from the Moabite country, Capt. Conder succeeded in surveying nearly five hundred square miles of territory, discovered seven hundred rude stone monuments, and obtained a volume of notes, plans, and drawings, with forty photographs. Among the spots explored were the "Springs of Moses," the ancient "Ashdoth Pisgah," and the "Ridge of Nebo," the height of which was measured to be 2,648 feet. Here, at the "Field of Zophim," as well as at Banuth, Baal, and Peor, which was identified with a spot now called Minyeh, were found ancient stone monuments that appear to have been arranged in sevens, recalling how at each of these places, Balak, with Balaam, built seven altars. Passing the ancient Rabbath Ammon, where are distinguished the ruins of the Roman city of Philadelphia, dating from the second century, the party came, in the Wady es Sîr, upon the ancient trans-Jordanic Tyre, where were found, in the spot now known as the Arâk-el-Emir, or the Prince's Cliff, traces of the cave fortifications that were erected by Hyrcanus, when, after the death of his father Joseph, he was obliged to retire from Jerusalem before the superior force of his brothers.

The Empire of the Hittites.-Recent discoveries relating to the Hittites, and pointing to the former existence of a great empire of that people, were mentioned in the "Annual Cyclopædia" for 1882. The Hittites are often referred to in the Bible; they appear, under the name of the Kheta, on the Egyptian monuments, as formidable rivals and afterward as friends of the Egyptians, in the nineteenth dynasty, and under the name of the Khatti on the Assyrian monuments; and are probably the same as the Kretot enumerated by Homer among the allies of Priam. Numerous remains of hitherto unexplained origin that have been found in parts of Asia Minor and Syria, are now attributed to them. Among them are gigantic statues and stele, and inscriptions, which it has not yet been possible to decipher. Some of these inscriptions, called the Hamath inscriptions, from the place where they were found, have engaged the attention of antiquaries for several years. Two capitals of the Hittites have been identified, at Carchemish, on the Euphrates, and at Kadesh, on the Orontes, both of which are mentioned in the Egyptian or Assyrian records contemporaneous with the period of Hittite power. All that has been ascertained respecting these people and their empire, together with an exposition of the conclusions that have been deduced from the known facts, has been collated and set forth in a book on "The Empire of the Hittites," by W. Wright (London, 1884).

ARCTIC EXPLORATION. The Greely Expedi tion.-The commission appointed in December, 1883 (see "Annual Cyclopædia," 1883, p. 424), to consider plans for a new expedition for the relief of Lieut. A. W. Greely and his party of

observers at Lady Franklin Bay, received suggestions, orally and in writing, from various experts in Arctic navigation and exploration, including Capt. George E. Tyson, of the Hall Expedition; Lieut. W. I. Hunt, U. S. N., one of the officers of the Rodgers in her search for the Jeannette; Lieuts. Garlington and Colwell, and Capt. Pike, of the expedition of 1883, Lieut. Schwatka, and Dr. Emil Bessels, chief of the scientific corps of the Polaris Expedition. The report of the commission, based on the results of its inquiries, was submitted early in February. A programme for the expedition

expense, and to require that only volunteers should be sent on the relieving vessels. These restrictions were not adopted. The Secretary of the Navy had already made arrangements for the purchase of two Dundee sealers, the Thetis and the Bear, the former of which was obtained in London, and the latter at St. John's, Newfoundland, and an inquiry having been made as to the possibility of obtaining from the British Government the Alert, which had been the advance ship of the Nares Expedition, that vessel was presented to the Government of the United States without condition.