The daily morning journal and courier., 1903-08-10

and revealed to us by the exertions of
 an unlettered rustic.
 In the center of one of the ground floor rooms of the British museum is an
 ordinary looking slab of black basalt,
 about three feet long and two and one
 half wide. Very, few among the thou sands of people who pass 1t day by day
 deem it worthy of second glance. Yet to it We owe practically all We know. or are ever likely to know, of the life and history of the ancient Egyptions. Un- earthed near the town of Rosetta by
 fellaheen in the employ of French of fcer, it was found to have inscribed upon it a message in three languages
 hieroglyphics, demotic or modified hier- oglyphics, and Greek. In its entirety II constituted the key to those mysterious
 inscriptions, which, although met with everywhere up and down the Nile val ley, had, nevertheless, baffied up till
 then all attempts at decipherment. A
 haphazard stroke of a laborer's pick,
 and, like flash, there was revealed the
 histories of dynasties that had flour
 ished and perished and passed into ob-
 livion thousands of years before Christ | was born, the life-story of peoples so ancient that to the ancients themselves they were as though they had never | been. Similarly, the unearthing in Asia | Minor, by an excavator employed i'll | well-digging, of little silver boss bear | ing a short and apparently unimportant inscription, enabled us to decipher cer- | tain other hitherto meaningless inscrip- I tions, with the result that there stood
 revealed to us might Hittite empire an empire that fiourished in the remo- test accessible antiquity. and main tained its existence. defying all enemies, for a period of longer duration than that of the empires of Babylon or As | syria or Greece or Rome. Niello-Work, produced by rubbing mixture of sil-
 yer, lead, copper, sulphur, and borax l into engrayings on silver, was an art known and practiced for centuries by | the ancients. -: l But it was utterly lost to us until an I English navvy named Watson, em- | ployed by Thomas Brassey on the rall- way he was building in France between | Rouen and Havre, rug up silver niel- | lo-work casket, with, inside it, an exact description on parchment of the method | by which the result was attained. The
 secret was immediately published to the world; and now examples of this ex-
 ceedingly beautiful art are produced in France, Italy, Russia, and elsewhere. which are fully equal in chasteness or design and delicacy of execution to any | thing turned out by the ancient or me diaeval metal workers. Tradition long | insisted that the early English Chris l tians were wont to meet together for
 worship in underground cavern chapels, 4 in order to be secured from Interruption
 by their as yet pagan neighbors But
 no one was absolutely certain that such
 was the case until, at Royston, in
 Herts, some workmen discovered acei- I dentally just such a subterranean meet | ing-house, it's walls all carved and dec- orated with sacred symbols and efrl- I blems just as it had been left by it's | read and gone congregation centuries on centuries before. This was, or course, genuine discovery; but, uiifor- tunately. all such finds are not by l any means above suspicion. And more | especially is this the case where isola- ted ecclesiastical relics and antiquities are said to have, been urearthed.
 During the building of the Shadwell docks, for instance, some years ago, 8 navvy asserted that he had dug up most valuable collection, which he pro duced for inspection, of patens, ewers, deliquaries and vessels of all shapes, besides numerous medallions and plaques. Even good authorities eonsid- I cred these genuine, but one antiquarian, | more suspicious than the rest, set | I trap for the discoverer by asking him | if he had come across a certain figure, a | sketch of which was produced. The an- swer was: No: but I think I have l seen something like 1t in the hands of one of my mates; can you lend me the | drawing?" The sketch was lent, and ! within a few days MT. Navy reop-
 peared, triumphant and bringing with
 him an ecclesiastical figure in metal, \ with the tell-tale inscription on the | base. "Bil anmena ethis" (Blll and me made this). Then it came out that l the whole thing was fraud, perpetra- ted by a couple of cunning mud-rakers,
 who prepared their moulds in plaster of-paris, cast their pseudo antiques in
 a mixture of lead and pewter. immersed them for a short time in bath of nitric
 acid, and, finally, after daubing them
 with a coat of mud, offered them for
 sale to inquiring antiquaries.- Pear
 sons Weekly. t: