that might well have developed into the best that Greece has produced. But De Morgan has only begun to scratch the surface of the mounds of Elam, and a multitude of scholars believe that out of Elam came the first civilization of Chaldea. We shall find out yet; for the record is in the earth, and only waits the man who will dig it out, and then the man who will read it. We are tempted to go further east and recall that in India, the land where Alexander made his most distant conquests, a multitude of English scholars have been searching the ruins of old temples for the earliest memorials of the worship of Buddha. Just now they have found his birthplace and precious relics. But that takes us too far afield, and would tempt us to further excursions in Burmah and China. We must come back to Western Asia and the shores of Europe. As has been indicated, the greatest puzzle of ancient history is that of the Hittite empire, which seems to have ruled all Asia Minor at some uncertain time, and to have extended over Syria and Palestine. No sooner had the greatest Egyptian kings, Thothmes and Rameses, ventured their armies into Asia, perhaps in vengeance on the incursions of Ionian pirates, perhaps in requital of the tyrannies of the hated Shepherd Kings, than they learned of the Hittites on the shores of the Euphrates. Then, a century or two later, a mass of official correspondence sent by the Kings of Palestine and Syria, dug up in Egypt, reports that the Hittites had appeared as invaders from the north and beseeches military aid. But the power of Egypt had waned, and the Hittites were supreme until the Assyrians began and carried on for five centuries the uncertain war which ended in the utter overthrow of the Hittites and all their allies in a great battle at Carchemish. That great mound of Carchemish needs to be thoroughly explored. Already an English expedition has very carelessly just opened the hill and exposed, but not fairly published, some few as fine friezes as are to be found in the Assyrian capitals, with unread Hittite inscriptions, and a fine statue of the Hittite Venus; but much remains to reward the student of Oriental history and art. At Senjirli a German expedition under Von Luschan has done more and better work, handsomely published, but this was a smaller Syrian town, and less was to be expected; and yet here, and near by, were found what was not expected, steles (upright slabs or pillars) with the portraits of kings in high relief, covered over with long inscriptions in Aramaic, the oldest and longest as yet discovered anywhere in that language. It was a magnificent result of very moderate labor,--Hittite friezes, Assyrian and Aramean inscriptions all in one little mound. But for the most part we know the art and writing of the Hittites from what we have found above ground, in their towns and fortresses in the hills, for little digging has been done. At Pterium was a principal sacred capital, and there, on a natural corridor of