Syria.— While the work of the Palestine Exploration Fund, from 1866 onward, has thor oughly mapped out the surface of the country, relatively little has been done in excavation here or in Turkey; for political reasons before noted) mainly, as the interest in Bibli cal sites and classical remains is the keenest of alL The chief part thus far has been at Jeru salem and the Philistine cities, and in, the north at Zinjirli; but few inscriptions have been found even where the excavation has been done, and no very ancient ones. The most important historically is that of Mesha, King of Moab (? 896 s,c.). It would seem that, by the time the Jewish nation was advanced enough to make inscriptions, its intellectual ac tivity was drawn off in other directions, and the hope of finding masses of archmological confirmation of or supplement to Biblical rec ords has been disappointed. The chief histori cal result of Syrian research has been to re store the Hittites (q.v.) to history : formerly regarded' as a• CanaaaitIsh tribe they. are now known to have been (a powerful people from Cappadocia; which formed for a couple of centuries a strong state ruling north Syria and much- of. Asia Minor, with its centre at Carchemish, till broken up by the great south ward Aryan movement of which the Dorian in vasion was a part. Its writing is almost unde ciphered. Curiously enough, the most import ant documents for ancient Syrian history have been found not in Syria, but in Egypt — the Tel-el-Amama tablets, containing a 15th cen tury correspondence with Egypt in cuneiform.
Classical Archaeology.— Till the very re cent excavations at Troy, Mycente, etc., result ing from enthusiasm for the Homeric poems, archaeological research in the classic lands was mostly confined to illustrating historical pe riods, and to a study of Greek and Roman art and architecture; even now light on pre historic times is not from written records and inscriptions as in the East, but inferential from material objects. It has, however, in confirma tion of Egyptian and other records, and by comparison of objects with those of known date in that country and Babylonia, given un mistakable proof of a hitherto unsuspected stratum of old Greek history. From foreign pottery found in Egypt, 5000-3000 s.c., Greece and Italy probably: had a Neolithic pottery making population at those times. But the first positive beginning of civilized settlement is in the lowest Troy, dating certainly before 2000 s.c., and perhaps 3000; almost no metal is found there. Still before 2000 is another Troy with fine vases and golden ornaments. This was, contemporary with the supremacy of Crete, then the mistress of the seas, as the Etruscans and Phcenicians were later; and there was a direct connection between Crete and Troy. The legends of the great law-making Cretan kings and their, suzerainty over Greece and exactions tribute from it are doubtless based on fact; even the Labyrinth has been uncovered, and a nucleus of fact in much of the old Greek leg endary lore made probable. Three times after
this was Troy abandoned and rebuilt before the contemporary of this Mycessman kingdom of about .1500 B.C. is reached. At this time the coasts of Greece and the ,iEgean islands were the seat of a high culture- radiating in all direc tions, and even influencing the East, so that this has been styled the 4( IEgean Period° of civiliza tion. There was .a powerful and wealthy king dom with its centre at Mycenm, where we find magnificent domed tombs, fine jewelry and metal work, exquisite pottery and ornaments, etc., as also at other great towns marked by hill fortresses, Athens, Tiryps and other places. This rich and prosperous land traded with all the Mediterranean countries, but chiefly with Egypt, in whose ruins are found hosts of Greek objects of this period. By 1100 B.C. this civiliza tipn had begun to droop, and about 1000 the in vasion of the barbarous Dorians from the north temporarily overwhelmed it on the mainland. But it was • only for a time : even where the Dorians had conquered, the union of old and new flowered into richer bloom, and Athens, the chief city which they had not conquered, became the head and heart of a far more splen did revival of every art and literature, the fore most in the world to the present time. By the 7th century the immortals had begun to spring up: Archilochus and Sappho were islanders, and the great time of Athens had not yet come, but the thronging masters show that society had become fairly settled once more.
The development of civilization was very much later in Italy than in Greece, and more slowly affected by outside civilizations except on the southern coast. The Neolithic Age, with black pottery and lake dwellings, lasted down to nearly or quite 1000 ac., the full development of the Bronze Age not taking place till about 800. The Etruscan invasion, which tradition brings from Asia Minor, cannot be dated, but was probably later than 1000 Lc. The art and religion of the Etruscans were entirely foreign, indicating rather a Northern than an Eastern origin; but they were not an original people, and borrowed elements of civilization and art from every nation they came in contact with,— Italians, Greeks, Egyptians and Assyrians. In this assimilativeness they remind one of the Northmen, and the tradition of their origin may be wholly wrong. The one great specialty of the Etruscans was engineering. Their history and affiliations remain a mystery chiefly because their language is such. Known since historic times, and in the last century thousands of in scriptions in it copied, and even many words translated for us, the language remains an ab solute secret to the laborious and penetrating scholarship directed on it.