Nous avons supprimé quelques phrases

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ded. ” I urged, in conséquence, that it was the right and duty of the Americans not to surrender to the Turks a single slab of the epistyle, but to insist on the application of the law. In fact, one of the gentlemen had been authorized to offer a large sum to redeemthe entire frieze and some other statues; but the Turkish officiais would not listen to him, and thus it was that two slabs were given over to the mission, while seven others made their way to Constantinople. A partition the resuit of which is that a most remarkable work of archaic art is now to be sought, partly in Paris, partly in Constantinople, and partly in America, may certainly be termed something worse than a failure — a real damage to civilization and learning.

Soon after my article had appearedin the Revue Archéologique, M. Ludlow, a member of the mission, wrote a brief letter to the same French periodical (1884, i., p. 52), stating that if the partition had been unfavorable to the excavators, the latter were not to be held responsible for it ; that they had done ail in their power to redeem the two-thirds of the discoveries claimed by the Turks, but had fmally i'ailed in presence of the obstinate réluctance shown by the Turkish officiais, “ perhaps alarmed ”, adds M. Ludlow, “ by the polemic of a recent article published in the Revue des Deux-Mondes. ” This is a stone flung into my garden and an allusion to a paper I conlributed in March, 1883, to the aforesaid Revue, under the title, “ Le Vandalisme en Orient. ” It lias several time been asserted that my attacks against the Turkish laws regulating antiquities had induced the Turks, and in particular Hamdi Bey, the director of Tchinli-Kiosk Muséum, to enforce the severity of these laws and thus retaliate upon the civilized world. I take this opportunity to state that there is no truth in that story, and that the new régulations, which I will mention below, were already decided upon long before my article went throughthe press. In February, 1882, living on familiar terms with Hamdi Bey at Constantinople — I was then working at the Catalogue of lhe Muséum — I soon understood Hamdi’s intention to modify, in a draconic sense, the laws on antiquities of 1874. Rightly alarmed by lhe prospect of such a reform, I tried, but quite in vain, to stir up a movement in an opposite sense ; my article was only the last and most energetical effort I made to awaken public interest on so important a question. Having foretold the storm and done my best to avert it, I should not be accused now of having brought it about.

On lhe other hand, I wish expressly to assert that I never held the American scholars responsible for the disgraceful partition agreed upon at Assos. I know too well by my own expérience that an archæologistin Turkey, when not energetically upheld by his Ambassador, can do nothing but preach and crv in the desert. In 1881 1 dug many tombs at Cyme, in Æolis, and made some very good discoveries. A dragoman of the United States Consulate in Smyrna, the name of whom I will charitably omit, thought he had some daims on the ground I was digging upon, and de-

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nounced me to the Turkish Government as having inj ured his rights. After three months wasted in scribbling reports and counter- reports, the Turks settled the quarrel by conflscating the whole of the discoveries and'eonveying them to Tchinli-Kiosk. The French Embassy vvas then very busy with Tunisian matters, and interfered only just enough to give the Turks thepleasure of taking no heed of it. A couple of months later, M. Schliemann, excavating at Troy, experienced ail possible annoyance frorn the Turkish commissary appoinled as his overseer. A telegram fron the Germain Chargé d’ Affaires, declining to give him further help, is said to hâve been intercepted at Dardanelles by a Turkish official, who immediately informed Hamdi Bey that he could act as he chose toward Schliemann. Accordingly, the discoveries of the German scholar were seized upon in great part by the director of the Ottoman Muséum. It is somewhat strange that Dr. Schliemann , in his work just published on his last compaign in the Troad, lias not a word about the partition of his discoveries ; his silence is ominous enough, and betravs the grievous annoyances which he could not manage to escape.

If I give these particulars, it is because I vvish your readers to understand that Turkish encroachments hâve been continually encouraged by the weakness or indifférence of foreign diplomatists. Hamdi Bey, who is the son of a Prime Minister, soon perceived that no one vvould check him in his altempt to exclude Western scholarship from Oriental archæology. Several reasons, the best of which are worth nothing, induced him and his friends to pursue that aim : firstlv, the dislike for civilized Europe, which is a prédominant instinct in the heart of every Turk, even if that Turk, as is the case with Hamdi, lias been educated in France; secondly, the somewhat childish desire of imitating lhe external apparence of European civilization. A new régulation, drawn up by Hamdi, was submitted to a Commission, and fmally, on the 21st of February of the current year, the new law on antiquities was issued and made known to the public by a French translation and extracts in the Constantinople papers La Turquie and the Eastern Express . The new law is a servile copy of the Greek one enacted in 1832, and may be briefly resumed thus : No excavation can be undertaken without the leave of the Governement; no antiquity whalever can be exported out of Turkey. It is not even admitted that private individuals can possess collections of antiquities without immediately making them known to the Governement. If a foreign state or an academy obtains the permission to dig, with archæological purposes, the excavators must pay the overseer appointed by the Government, but they will in no case be allowed to carry away any part of their discoveries. This is clear. enough : the excavator must pay everything (in Greece the overseer is naturally paid by the Greek Government), and he will get nothing unless he is on good terms with Sultan Bakshish — thatis to say, unless he succeeds in bribing the overseer and many others who will contrive to stand in his way.

I am sorry to state thaï not a European paper as yet, not one archæological review excepting the Revue Archéologique, lias prolested against that barbarous régulation, or, indeed, seemed to be aware of its existence. German philological reviews know or care nothing about it. There was a rumor in Constantinople, when the decree was ready to be issued, that some Ambassadors wished to interfère; and they certainly had the right and the duty to do so, in the naine of their respective national collections thus deprived of their main source of increase, and still more on behalf of ancient art and scientiflc research. It is reported that the German Ambassador discouraged the altempt, saying that Germany would always contrive to obtain favorable ternis for lier own archæological investigations. Unfortunately for the Muséum in Berlin, things hâve taken a quite different turn. When the statues discovered in the last campaign at Pergamon had to be divided two months ago— the old partition System being still admitted for excavations begun under the former régime— the Muséum of Tcliinli-Kiosk claimed and ohtained several beautiful fragments of the Gigantomachy and of the frieze of Telephus, the remainder ofwhich had been previously secured by the Berlin Muséum. M. Dennis, II. M. Consul-General in Smyrna, who possessed a firman for excavating at Sardes, immediately abandoned his plan, not caring to work under the absurd and leonine conditions imposed by the Turkish law of 1884. It is probable that the Austrians, who hâve lately ohtained a firman to dig at Elæa and al Lagina, vvill do exaclly like M. Dennis. Truly, Hamdi Bey has announced for the past twelvemonth in the Turkish papers that he was about beginning large excavations at the expense of the Ottoman Government; but who can be simple or foolish enough to suppose that the Turks will ever find money for archæological researches, in a country utterly destitute ol schools, bridges, and means of intercourse?

I must add a few words more to justify the severity of my censure respecting the new Turkish régulation and its authors. Europe and her diplomatists, by their benignant indifférence or silent complicity, are partly answerable for the injury thus inflicted upon science, and it seems fit that every scholar in the Old and in the New World should understand the nature and extent of the injury suslained and the far-reaching conséquences it involves. The law of 1874, enforced by that ol 1884, forbids, under the penalty of confiscation and of a heavy fine, the exportation ol Works of ancient art. Now the obvious resuit of that absurd prohibition being to increase the price of antiquities on the markets of Europe, and the Turkish Governement being quite unable and unwilling to purchase any works accidentally discovered in the country, the first conséquence of the law is that antiquities continue to be exported in secret, but with ail the fatal inconveniences attached to archæological smuggling : lst. The origin of the antiquities exported to Europe is systematically altered by the dealers, who fear to attract the notice of the Turkish officiais. 2d. Marhle statues, sometimes ofhigh value, are daily being broken to pièces,

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in order to be sold off in fragments by their owners, a head going to Paris and a foot to Berlin. I can vouch for the perfect certainty of my information 'wilh regard to that scandalous practice, which is particularly frequent in Asia Minor. As the Turkish Government confiscates without inilemnily the antiquities found by the natives, the latter are almost compelled to break vvhat they fmd, to be able to carry the pièces off and sell them secretlv.

Sueh facts speak for themselves and sufficiently condemn the régulations and the officiais who are alone answerable for them. I wish they could excite some indignation among the liberalminded readers of this journal. They will perliaps think with me that if diplomacy dared to interfère collectively in matters of such high interest for civilization, no intelligent man, to whatever nation he might belong, would accuse his ambassador or minister of wasting his time, paper, and ink in pleading the cause of learning against wantonness and vandalism.

Paris, June 10, 1884.

Salomon Rlina ;h.

(REVUE ARCHÉOLOGIQUE, 1884, t. II, p. 76-102.)

Nous avions promis à nos lecteurs de leur présenter un tableau d’ensemble des recherches et des découvertes faites dans le monde grec pendant les derniers mois de 1883 et la première moitié de l’année courante. Un résumé de ce genre, pour être utile, ne doit pas viser à une trop grande concision; aussi espérons-nous qu’on nous pardonnera d’avoir donné à cette Chronique semestrielle une étendue qu’elle ne comporte pas à l’ordinaire. Si longue qu’elle soit, d'ailleurs, elle est encore bien incomplète *, tant les trouvailles archéologiques, souvent fort difficiles à décrire, se multiplient en Grèce et dans l’empire ottoman. Le nombre croissant des archéologues, le prix rémunérateur des antiquités, les progrès mêmes de l’agriculture et la transformation en vignobles d’immenses terrains de l'Anatolie et de la Grèce, sont autant de causes qui expliquent celte recrudescence de belles découvertes dont la mise en œuvre est réservée à l’avenir. Il faudrait remonter jusqu’aux premiers temps qui suivirent la libération de la Grèce, ou même jusqu’à la glorieuse aurore de la renaissance italienne, pour trouver une époque aussi féconde que la nôtre en révélations de tout genre sur l'histoire et l’art de l’antiquité. Que serait-ce si la Grèce et la Turquie adoptaient des législations libérales et associaient sans réserves les étrangers à l’exploration de leurs richesses souterraines! Nous pouvons, il est vrai, enregistrer en partie

I. Nous ne nous occupons dans ces articles ni des découvertes de l’égyptologie et de l’assyriologie, ni en général des publications d’inscriptions et d'œuvres d'art dans les recueils qui sont très répandus, comme le Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique, les Mittheilungen des deulschen Instituts, 1 ’Archæologische Zeitung , etc. Quand nous faisons exception à cette règle, c'est qu’il s’agit d’un document de premier ordre ou que nous avons quelque observation à présenter.

ce qu’on découvre; mais qui peut dire, qui saura jamais ce qui se perd, ce qu’on démarque et ce qu'on détruit?

Épidaure. — Nos lecteurs connaissent déjà les fouilles de M. Cavvadias dans l’enceinte du temple d’Esculape1. Tout auprès du temple, il a découvert une grande maison de 7c mètres de long séparée en deux parties suivant la longueur par une rangée de colonnes ioniques; on a supposé que c'était l’hôtellerie où habitaient les malades. C’est dans le voisinage de ce monument que l’heureux explorateur a trouvé les deux grandes stèles avec inscriptions indiquant les noms des malades traités dans TAsclépiéion et les merveilleuses guérisons opérées par le dieu. L’une de ces stèles a été publiée dans T ’E®ï)[j,splç àp^ate- Xôyiy.ïj, 1883 (p. 199 et suiv.)2. La pierre lithographique sur laquelle l’inscription est gravée parait avoir été choisie à dessein pour que laconservation du texte n’eût rien à craindre des injures du temps : il se lit, en effet, avec une grande facilité et les fragments qui le composent ont pu être rajustés exactement. D’après l’orthographe et la forme des lettres, il ne paraît pas antérieur au iv° siècle avant J.-C. Nous ne pouvons, malheureusement, reproduire en entier un texte de 126 lignes; mais nos lecteurs nous sauront gré de leur en donner du moins quelques spécimens.

0eéç. T {i-/x àyxOâ.

’lâp.atx vol ’AxoXXwvO; '/.ai tou ’AaxXa-ioîS .

KXsù itsvO' etïj êxôrjae. Alita ttsvt’ èviautoùç ïjoy; xécuta itoi tcv Ocgv Iv.îv. ; à pi'/, etc y. ai svsxâOe uSs èv tô a 5âtco, ùç os rxy.G- S ta s^TjXOe s; aùtou y.al ex. tou tape 3 èysvs to, y.opov ètexe, o; si- Où; ysvo[J.svo; aùtè; àm ta; -/.pava; èXsuto y.al ap.a ta p.atpl luepifjpns. T ajouta 3s toûttov è~l to avOsp.a sstsypaiùatc « oh p.sye- Oc; Ttivay.o; Oaupaatiov àXXà te Gsfoy, ttsvG z~.rt w; èy.éïjae èy yaatpi KXeù (Jâpoç, êats èyxatexoip.â6ï) y.al p.tv ëQ-qy.s ùy.f;. »...