DIGGING UP CARTHAGE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17033, 5 May 1923, Page 10

DIGGING UP CARTHAGE.

“ In all the world there is no more awe-inspiring view than the ruins of Carthage, seen, from the heights with the blue of the Mediterranean on the three sides—Carthage stretching forth in a panorama so vast that it hardly can be described.” These are the words of Count de Prorok. who, with other members of a- French expedition, has during the past few years uncovered many of the remains of the ancient. Punic city. In an account of seme of his experiences appearing in the “ New York Times,” Count de Prorok said:—‘‘Encamping amid the ruins of Carthage, we made this historic site the headquarters for our scientific researches. Three-quarters of the city of Queen Dido, Hannibal, Scipio. Salammbo, St Augustine. St I.ouis of France, and a. host of others lies concealed in the ground, and its artistic treasures lie buried with it. There has been a, legend that after Scipio destroyed Carthage in 146 B.C. nothing remained. Our researches have dispelled this idea, for we have found that a c*eat deal remains, that every foot of the ancient site contains lelic-s of its past glory. “ In a few months we discovered a Carthaginian temple, a. Roman palace r.nd baths, an early Christian basilica, and the Punic to-mbs of 700 R.C. Every day we made some new and interesting discovery. In the Temple of Tanit we dug out inscriptions relating to the family of Hannibal, and we unearthed sacrificial altars and urns containing the bones of hundreds of little children who had been offered up to the insatiable god of the Carthaginians, Moloch-Baal. “On the average of every six minuiee the pickaxes and shovels of our Arab workmen laid bare some object of museum value. In one vaultev corridor, fifty yards under the hillside, we found a room full of iridescent glass, a room which probably had been the boudoir or dressing-room of a Carthaginian actress or priestess. AVe found, also, perfume bottles, jewels, tear glasses, bracelets in gold, bronze mirrors, ivory hairpins, scissors for the nails, and even the little ivory sticks used to put black paint on the eyes. Many of the perfume bottles had melted in the general destruction into odd forms. When we found them they sparkled like jewels in the darkness of tli© ruin, their iridescent colours scintillating in the light of our electric torches. Where now is the fair maiden who once charmed the Carthaginian thousands of years ago—of whom nothing now remains but these pathetic utensils for her adornment? In the Punic tombs that we excavated above the precipices of Cape Carthage were the remains of bodies interred seven hundred years before Christ. Their sepulchres were built among the blood-red rocks that tower above the Mediterranean. AVe excavated them by means of a nope, a precarious work, something like climbing in the Alps, with a sheer drop of several hundred feet to the Gulf of Tunis below. There, buried 30ft in the solid rock, we discovered the chambers of the dead, lying in all their regalia, undisturbed for thousands of years. In the entrance to the tombs were grinning masks, pur there to frighten away evil spirits. Grinning in the dark, they almost frightened us away. The bodies lay with all the implements of life about them—table ware, arms, jewels, stone gods.”