"In 1897 an arrangement was completed between the French Government and the Shah of Persia by which the former obtained the exclusive right of archeological explorations in the latter's empire, coupled with certain privileges for the exportation of different kinds of antiquities that might be unearthed. Soon afterwards, M. J. de Morgan, late director of excavations in Egypt, who had made archeological researches in the regions east of the Tigris before, was placed at the head of a French expedition to Susa, the ancient capital of Elam, the upper strata of which had been successfully explored by M. Dieulafoy. {18} In the Babylonian cuneiform inscriptions Elam appears as the most terrible foe of the Babylonian empire from the earliest time: and the name of its capital, Susa, or Shâsha, was discovered by the present editor several years ago on a small votive object in agate, originally manufactured and inscribed in southern Babylonia, in the first half of the third pre-christian millennium, several hundred years afterwards carried away as part of their spoil by the invading Elamites, and in the middle of the fourteenth century B. C. recaptured, reinscribed, and presented to the temple of Nippur by King Kurigalzu, after his conquest of Susa. It was therefore evident that, if the same method of excavating was applied to the ruins of Susa as had been applied so successfully by the University of Pennsylvania's expedition in Nippur, remarkable results would soon be obtained, and amply repay all labor and money expended. M. de Morgan, accompanied by some engineers and architects, set hopefully to work, cutting his trenches more than fifty feet below the ruins of the Achæmenian dynasty. The first campaign, 1897-98, was so successful, in the discovery of buildings and inscribed antiquities, that in October of last year the French government despatched the Assyriologist Professor Scheil, in order to decipher the new cuneiform documents, and to report on their historical bearings.