And the key to all this varied literature, this medley of languages, the very names of which had perished, was a simple guess! But it was a scientific guess, made in accordance with scientific method, and based upon sound scientific reasoning. It is true that it needed the slow and patient work of generations of scholars before the guess could ripen into maturity; the discovery of the value of a single letter in the Old Persian alphabet was sometimes the labour of a lifetime; but, like the seed of the mustard tree, the guess contained within itself all the promise of its future growth. On the day when Grotefend identified the names of Darius and Xerxes, the decipherment of the cuneiform inscriptions, and therewith of the history, the theology and the civilization of the ancient Oriental world, was potentially accomplished. CHAPTER II THE ARCHÆOLOGICAL MATERIALS; THE EXCAVATIONS AT SUSA AND THE ORIGIN OF BRONZE The modern science of archæology has been derisively called “the study of pots.” As a matter of fact, the study of ancient pottery occupies a prominent place in it, and we cannot turn over the pages of a standard archæological work without constantly coming across photographs and illustrations of the ceramic art or reading descriptions of vases and bowls, of coloured ware and fragmentary sherds. Questions of date and origin are made to turn on the presence or absence of some particular form of pottery on a given site, and fierce controversies have arisen over a single fragment of a vessel of clay. A knowledge of ancient pottery is a primary requisite in the scientific excavator and archæologist of to-day.