Deseret evening news. [volume] (Great Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1867-1920, 1890-04-04
DBSBRET EVENING NEWS
Friday. April 4. 1890
READING THE RIDDLES OF THE
PAST.
SOME DISCOVERIES THAT HAVE
BEEN MADE DURING a
CENTURY.


or from out-of-the-way corners above
ground, during the last hundred
years, and especially during the last
fifty years. Two Roman cities OF
the days Of the Apostles, that had
lain buried for seventeen centuries,
have been in large part excayated
out OF contracted earth and ashes,
or out Of soft volcanic rock, and
every year IN the streets Of Hercu-
laneum and Pompeii, or the corri-
doris Of the National Museum at
Naples, our tourists personally
conducted" stand face to face with
pagan Italy as she was at her fav-
orite watering places, with her
homes and shops, her parlor3 and
boudoirs and libraries, her small
politics, her fashionable temples,
her public amusements and her
private vices. Today the trained
scholar reads down the. side Of an
obelisk Of the days Of Moses rs he
would read down n column in a
newspaper.
1t was not till near the middle OF
the nineteenth century, while
| ''higher critics, ;, with that solemn
bumptiOusness which seems a ne
cessary incident Of their useful and
fascinating study, were assuring US
that the accounts Of Nineveh were
merely mythical-that there never
had really been any such place
that we were startled 10y the thrill
ing discoveries Of BOtta, the
Frenchman, and Layard, the Eng
lishman. From the weather-worn
, and grass grown mounds along the
| Tigris they had unearthed the
monuments and documents of a
civilization which had already
passed into ancient history when
( Rome was an infant. Here was a
vast and symptuOusly illustrated
volume % primeval history, legend
and literature, and all We could do
was 10 gaze and wonder NJ the Illus
tratiOns. Who should read us the
accompanying text-the miles Of
inscriptions carved on slabs OF ala
bA-tsr-the thousands Of columns
written on cylinders OF clay in
minute characters-unknOwn char
acters of an unknown language
upon unknown subjects? How 10
read the handwriting on the
walls" was the most impossible task
ever set before antiqusries = ali
equation in which all the quantities
were unknown quantities. Ii was
the most splendid piece Of patient
guess-work in the history Of scholar
ship, the first step in the reading OF
the cuneifOrm inscriptions, that
gave Us the new science Of Assyri- |
ology.
Following just In the line OF the |
recovery Of Nineveh and Babylon /
comes the sudden revelation, within
these dozen years, Of the mighty |
and splendid and hitherto unknown
Empire Of the Hittites. The dis
covery of the Hittite Empire by |
Professor Sayce and DIR. Wright
came Opportunely, just when the 4
learned world was ready for it. We
had had mention Of the Hittites in
the Old Testament, from Genesis 10
kings-nOt later. The records of
Egypt and Nineveh were beginning
10 talk cOpiously about some I'M
known people with n name like
Hittite; and the indubit2ble carv-
ings ''in the rock forever, " coming
TO light just at this juncture, fitted
into a vacant place in Biblical and
historical knowledge like the last
piece Of a dissected map. it is not
strange that the wonderful tales of
the unaarthing OF POmpeii, and
then of Nineyeh, should have worked
in the mind Of young Schliemann
in his HOmeric enthusiasm, making
him feel that he must see the inside
IF the mounds which all travellers
described Is on the tfBditionaEy
plain of Troy, but which not one Of
chem had ever bethOught himself To
tap with q pickaxe and spade.
Whit wonders revealed them
selves to his first strokes-the Toy
Of Homer and Of NiTgil-the ashes
OF that confiagratiOn from which
the pious !Eneas brought forth his
father, Anchisos, on his back-the
Treasury Of King Prism, with jew
els that false Helen may have worn,
and the helmet from which may
have nodded the plume or Hector TO
terrify the child Andromache-all
this, is il net written in the fascinat-
ing pages of the famous digger? In
toXicated with his success, he fol-
lows hack the willy Ulysse3 20 his
native Greece, and compels the ruins
of MycenR and Tiryns TO surrender
the treasures they have been keep
ing for us these thirty centuries. No
wonder that after such exploits of
Individual enterprise the matter OF
exploration, and especially this
underground work, should come to
he Organized by societies and by
Governments. The rules for sue
cessful digging are formulated into
a science. The pursuit OF hid treas
ure has grown from fad into
learned profession. This archeol-
ogical SOCIETIES that are at work in
Greece, and have given back the
city OF Olympia to the light Of day,
the Palestine Exploration Society,
the Egyptian Exploration Fund,
and the little party under the patron
age of the University of Pennsyl-
vania and the direction Of Professor
Peters, rummaging in the mounds
Of Babylon-thesea are the exploring |
organizations that are most attract
ing the worlds attention at present
And among them the Egyptian
explorers. by their amazing and
.twonders in the field OF |
The ssfnd'' which has most dsZZled |
the eyes Of the world-the congne-
sation OF the mummied PharaOhs at |
Deir-el- Bahiri-and that which is |
even more significant 10 scholars
the more recent discovery OF a great /
collection of manuscripts at Medinet- |
el-Fayum-stir the Imagination TO |
conceive what possibilities are just |
before us. The Fayum manu-
scripts are all in fragments, TO be |
sure, but there are thirty thousand
of them: on papyrus leaves, on pa
Ser. on parchment, on leather; in
eleven different languages, Of dates
covering a thousand years, and the
latest OF them n thousand years old.
They include what GibbOn would
aiIIIU-t iIa-S ssivSn oil the rest of
his library TO pOssess-R file Of I'M
perial edicts from SO q. ID. 10 Con-
stautine, and then down the Byzan-
tine line 10 A. d. 6il. They include
fragments OF Homer and Thucydi-
des Of the second century; hereto
fore the oldest known manuscript
Of Thucydides was Of the eleventh
century. They include Scriptural
fragments In Greek from the fourth
TO the seventh century. And they
include one little scrap Of Greek
writing on the story Of the Lords
Supper-onIy 3 few words-oyer
which the learned world held Its
breath for a time. Was II n part
of that Gospel Of the Gnostics,
Of which we know only bY the