BATTLE SITE OF AGES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20112, 24 November 1928, Page 2 (Supplement)

BATTLE SITE OF AGES.

SLOPES OF ARMAGEDDON.

RELICS OF HISTORY'S DAWN.

EXCAVATIONS BY SCIENTISTS. • , • . \ • • 'ANCIENT CITY OP THE ORIENT. Tho Oriental Institute of tho University of Chicago has issued a pamphlet by Dr. •Tames 'Henry Breasted/ its' director, summarising tho activities of the staff archaeologists and investigators in the ancient Near East, over a period of nino years, during which tho institute has despatched six expeditions into tho field and is now maintaining five. Since 1919, tho growth of the institute has been duo largely to gifts from Mr. . John D. Rockefeller jun,, and also of several appropriations by tho General Education Board and gifts by Mr. Julius llosenwald and others.

Tho institute's permanent headquarters building in Egypt is at Luxor. In Asia its headquarters is at Armageddon in Palestine. The administrative centre of tho institute in America is Haskell Oriental Museum at tho University of Chicago, whoro tho original monuments and docuniputs from the field are housed and studied and homo research projects am carried on.

" Tho purpose of tho Oriental Institute,.'..'.. says Dr. Breasted, " is to contributo to tho understanding of human lil'o by furnishing a fuller knowledge of tho processes and stages of tho long development by which we have become what wo arc. This purpose involves us in tho task of recovering a great group of lost civilisations in tho Near East, which contributed to tho fundamentals of civilisation to tho Western World." Tho first venture of the institute, immediately after its foundation, was n preliminary survey of the Near East, beginning in Egypt and extending through Western Asia, especially Mesopotamia, with tho ptirpose of developing plans for field work. On its hazardous return from Bagdad to Aleppo, across tho Syrian Desert, in' tho spring of 1920, the expedition was ablo' to excavate further and inako a record of a romarkablo series of ancient wall paintings, first disclosed by British military digging in a» vast but little known fortress on the. middle Euphrates. Here within a massive bastion was a small temple with a holy of holies containing a shrine and the paintings.. A Vast Forest. Tho expedition identified t his lost fortress city as tliff ancient Dura-Europos. It. is now known to. tho: Arabs as. Salihiveh. Tho paintings, having since It en destroyed by the Arabs, survive only in tho records of the Oriental Institute. Tho oldest of them, dating from, the first century of our era, have turned out to bo the sole surviving.Oriental ancestry of Byzantine painting. "From tho beginning of its work the plans of tho institute • contemplated tho investigation cif the human career from tho earliest disceviiiblo stages of man's development," says Dr.' Breasted. " The prehistoric background of early civilisation in, 'Egypt and; Western Asia has been but littlo studied.' Wo new know that, Egyptian civilisation was preceded by several hundred thousand years of Stone Ago savagery. Where now stretch the desolate wastes oF the Sahara there wore vast, well ■watered forests, and tho Stono Ago hunters ranged for across all North Africa and deep into Asia. Tho desert heights which now look down upon the desolate valley cemetery of tho Pharaohs •and the tomb of 'i'ut-ankh-Amen wero cince occupied by the flint workshops of tho North African stone age hunters. " The fragments from their flint chipping cover the surface for a long stretch above the cemetery of the Pharaohs. The stone weapons and implements of theso piehistoric men are likewise found widely scattered and still lying on the surfaco from Algiers to Egypt and tho Red Sea. Theso hunters must eventually havo descended into tho Nilo Valley as its onco higher waters, sank. Secrets of the Nile Valley. Tho stono implements aro still found lying on < tho ancient Nilo terraces, abandoned at a time long before the great river had begun to desposit tho thirty feet or more of black soil, which has since accumulated to form tho present fertile tloor of the Nile Valley, '.file traces which they left at lower levels in tho Nilo havo since, been covered by the rising accumulations of soil. " Throughout all theso prehistoric epochs .North Africa was connected with Europa by land bridges at Gibraltar and through Sicily, permitting theso prehistoric hunters to pass at will from Africa 'to Europe. They have likewise left their traces in Western Asia, in Sinai, Palestine Syria and the Euphrates Valley. The collection of such evidence in North Africa and Western Asia has heretofore always been confined to stone implements lying on tho surface, which have littlo value because they cannot bo dated." " The Oriental Institute therefore organised a prehistoric survey, which began work on this task in December, 1926. under Dr. K. S. Sandford, as field director, assisted by Mr. W. J. Arkell. The plan of this expedition was to find human handiwork embedded in tho geological strata and t.her«foro dated in terms of geological periods. It was accessary also to study and elucidate the heretofore littlo understood geology of tho Nile Valley."

Discovery of a Temple. Last winter tho geological relations of the Nile Valley to tlto western depression called the Faiyuin have been for the first time thoroughly investigated, and Hint implements of human origin have been dated in lower Pleistocene time —tho earliest, artcra/ts as yet found in the ancient Near East. Among the most important discoveries has been a large temple enclosiro inside a spacious rectangle of dark sun-dried brick (adobe) .wall, within which are darker masses ol ruins onto forming the palace and offices of Ilameses HI.

Covering the temple from one end to tlio oilier tlio reliefs and inscriptions furnish a vast body of largely unstudied sources, especially important in tlio case of this temple, which was built just as the incoming Greek barbarians of the twelfth century 15.wero driving out tlio highly civilised Aegeans, who endeavoured to settle in Egypt, Palest,ino and Syria. " Olio group were the Philistines of Hebrew history." says Dr. Breasted.

" '1 ho declining Egyptian Empire under Tlainesc.-i 111. was called upon to repel these earlier European 'nvuders of the .Orient (lying before the Greeks. It. nil recorded bv Kameses IJ I. in this temple of Medinet Mabu, where this earliest advent of* Europe m histoiical documents is disclosed riot only in writing, but also in pictures. We see the invaders thrown back by the Egyptian war fleet in the earliest naval battle of which we lmve any representation. Under Oriental conditions uo such record is safe until it. has been fully and accurately published in careful facsimiles. Pharaoh's Home Preserved.

"We may now walk through tho Pharaoh's fine apartments, all of thern essentially alike, for tho accommodation of tho sovereign, Ins queen and three ladies of tho harem. Each of these ■apartments was supplied with its private hath, and tho drainage arrangements and even the walls of theso ancient bathrooms are stiil preserved. The adjoining apartments of tho royal officers and clerical force, together with the administrative >, olfkcis, storerooms and magazine of the will be cleared next season." r*f<v ' Another great body of documents which have been slowly perishing is tho group /, .jO* writings known to modem scholars as

■MI

the Coffin Texts. They are written with pen and ink on the inner surfaces of the wooden coffins in Egyptian burials beginning as far ba,ck as the twenty-third century B.C. The writings were hfterwards largely absorbed tn the Book of the Dead, which cannot be understood without a thorough study of the Coffin Texts. The work of copying and editing theso texts has been going on since 1922. Concerning the task of the expedition at Armageddon, Dr. Breasted says:— " Passing from Egypt to Asia, a glance at the map discloses the fact that Palestine, the land of tho Hebrews, lies directly between tho great centres of Oriental civilisation; that is, Egypt on the one hand and Assyria and Babylonia on tho other! Tho point at whicli these powers in their struggle for mpramacy very commonly met was a transverse ridge in Palestine, of which the seaward end is (failed Mount Carmel. Guarding (ho pass through this ridge is the famcus fortress-city of Armageddon, or Megiddo, which is tho older Hebrew form of tho same word.

Tho Plain of Megiddo lias been the battlefield of the ages, and tho stronghold of tho city itself has been tho key fortress guarding the highway between two continents. This fact was dramatically illustrated in the course of the World War.

" Tho great mound has never been investigated beyond n few trial shafts and exploratory trenches undertaken by a German expedition over a quarter of a century ago. As a whole it still awaits systematic clearance and may be

expected to yield historical monuments of the greatest importance. As far as known to us,'the earliest battle fought here was tho combat between the Cana--anites and tho Egyptian army of Thutmose 111, in tho middle of the fifteenth century B.C.'.The Egyptiaii records <lescribo the rich spoil of tho allied Asiatic _ kings which Thutmose captured in tho city. " Through tho generosity of John D. Rockefeller jun., in 1925, tlio Oriental Institute was able to expand its work in Asia and to undertake tho systematic oxploration and excavation of the mound of ancient Armageddon. Tho tusk of building a headquarters was more or less of a race with tho oncoming autumn and winter rains, and members of the expedition wero nioro than onco driven from their tents by tho drenching rains of October before they wero able to shift to tho welcome shelter of the new house. The neighbouring marshes, long undrained also exposed the expedition to attacks of malarial mosquitoes, and all tho members of tho expedition have, at one time or another, been laid low by these insidious enemies.

" Built each upon the ruins of i.'s predecessor. any ancient city of the Orient usually rose in tho form of a hill, or.d when sucli a city was destroyed for the last timo bv some catastrophe or war, its mound lay like a series of stratified geological deposits. Such is die present condition of the historic mound of Armageddon. In modtfi'n excavation tho entire area to be cleared is carefully surveyed and laid out in a seriefe of small squares, each of which is numbered, so that tho exact position of everything discovered

may bo accurately marked in these squares. The particular level at which each object is found is also accurately noted. Eor it will bo obvious that tho latest remains are on the top; as tho excavation proceeds downward, each successive level is older than the one abovo it.

In order to remove the rubbish it is carried by the nativo workmen in baskets on their heads and loaded into modern steel dump cars running on tho tracks in the cent.ro of tho excavation, where one of theso cars is in process of being filled and will presently be trundled off down the track to the slope of tho mound and dumped. " Thousands of years ago the Stone Ago men settled on this bill of Armageddon. Our excavations along the slopes have disclosed their stone 'mploments. Above tho earliest settlements will bo found tho first metal users in Palestine, some 5000 years old, and ovei these levels will lie the strata of successive historic ages, cul ruinating in tho wealthy eity captured bv Tluitmoso 111, of Egypt, in tho early fifteenth century B.C. Tho city remained in Egyptian hands for centuries and must bo filled •with monuments of tho Pharaohs."