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If the buried cities of the East had been altogether destroyed and lost, and we possessed only a brief record of their disappearance, the subject might not possess much interest for us, and there would be no material for writing a book. But we are now witnessing a resurrection of some of them, and are recovering a story of the past, such as revived Egyptian mummies might be able to tell. Nay, not only Egyptians who walked about—

“In Thebes’s streets three thousand years ago,

When the Memnonium was in all its glory,”

but Chaldean shepherds who watched the stars and were perhaps the first to give names to the signs of the Zodiac. The ancient relics and records which are now being recovered from Egypt, Palestine, Assyria, and Babylonia, revive forgotten stories of human struggle, and furnish material for new chapters in the history of Art, Science, Laws, and Language, of Mythology, Morals, and Religion. They also throw frequent side lights upon the Bible narrative, and enable us to compare the Israelites more fairly with their contemporaries and predecessors.

The catastrophes which led to the partial destruction, and the eventual burial of the cities of the East must have seemed nothing less than pure calamities at the time; but one of the results has been the providential preservation of the remains for the enlightenment of the present generation. When a buried city is unearthed, it serves to confute the scepticism which had been growing up, and to rectify the errors which had found their place in books of history. We are familiar with the fact that the cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii were overwhelmed—the former by streams of lava, the latter by showers of ashes, pumice, and stones, from the crater of Vesuvius, in A.D. 79. The existence of those cities had come to be doubted, and for ages they were spoken of as “the fabulous cities;” nevertheless, after sixteen centuries, they were brought to light, and they present us with a picture of Roman life, such as history by itself could never have supplied. The site of Pompeii had always borne the name of Civita, or the city; and in 1748, a Spanish colonel of engineers, having heard that the remains of a house had been discovered, with ancient statues and other objects, obtained leave to excavate. In a few days his labours met with encouraging reward, and eventually about one third of the ancient city was uncovered. We may now walk about in Pompeii, observing how its houses were built, and how its streets were paved. We see the ruts worn by the wheels of chariots, we note the public fountains, the temples, the theatre, which would seat 10,000 people. We notice the corn-mills in the bakers’ shops, the vats in the dyers’ shops, and in private houses we observe with interest the many articles of domestic use. Excepting that the upper stories of the houses have been destroyed—either burnt by the red-hot stones, or broken down by the weight of matter which fell upon them—“we see a flourishing city in the very state in which it existed nearly eighteen centuries ago—the buildings as they were originally designed, not altered and patched to meet the exigencies of newer fashions; the paintings undimmed by the leaden touch of time; household furniture left in the confusion of use; articles, even of intrinsic value, abandoned in the hurry of escape, yet safe from the robber, or scattered about as they fell from the trembling hand, which could not pause or stoop for its most valuable possessions: and in some instances, the bones of the inhabitants, bearing sad testimony to the suddenness and completeness of the calamity which overwhelmed them.”[6]

Remains of Roman London are found 16 or 17 feet underground, in the neighbourhood of the Bank of England and the Mansion House, although London has not been buried in volcanic ashes. Rome itself is a buried city, for the capital of modern Italy stands upon the ruins of the city of the Cæsars. In Eastern countries the site of an ancient city is sometimes occupied by a squalid village, which is its degenerate successor; in other instances the site is quite deserted, and only a tell or mound remains to call attention to it. Ancient sites have also occasionally become submerged beneath the waters of seas or lakes. Thus the Lake of Aboukir in Egypt was drained lately, in order to reclaim the area for cultivation, and when the floor was laid bare from the water, there appeared everywhere traces of streets, of stone-covered ways, and of fields for tillage marked out by lines of shells.

Professor Maspero describes the process by which Egyptian temples become buried. “Just as in Europe during the Middle Ages the population crowded most densely round about the churches and abbeys, so in Egypt they swarmed around the temples, profiting by that security which the terror of his name and the solidity of his ramparts ensured to the local deity. A clear space was at first reserved round the pylons and the walls; but in course of time the houses encroached upon this ground, and were even built up against the boundary wall. Destroyed and rebuilt, century after century, upon the self-same spot, the débris of these surrounding dwellings so raised the level of the soil that the temples ended for the most part by being gradually buried in a hollow, formed by the artificial elevation of the surrounding city. Herodotus mentions this of Bubastis, and on examination it is seen to have been the same in many other localities. At last, when the temple had been thrown down and was forsaken, the rubbish covered it up, and so the ruins have been preserved to reward the modern explorer.”

EGYPT & PENINSULA OF SINAI

London; Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. F. S. Weller, F.R.G.S.