Phoenicia has yielded some of its treasures. The first of importance, found in 1855 in the Necropolis of Sidon, was the sarcophagus of Eshmunazar, king of Sidon. Since then various other sites have been examined, and much material has been unearthed, throwing light on the history, religion, art, and civilization of these ancient neighbors of Israel. In the year 1868 a German missionary, the Rev. F. Klein, discovered at Diban, the site of an ancient royal city of Moab, a large stone, with an inscription of Mesha, a king of Moab in the ninth century B.C. Between 1888 and 1891 investigations were conducted, for the Royal Museum in Berlin, at the mound of Zenjirli, once a city in the land Shamal, near the northern limits of Syria, south of the Issus, about forty miles inland. The old citadel was uncovered, and various sculptures, showing Hittite influence, a magnificent statue of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, a huge statue of the god Hadad, and several Aramaic inscriptions of great value, as illustrating early Syrian civilization, were found. More recently, in 1906 and 1907, Professor Winckler visited Boghaz-koei, in Asia Minor, a center of {122} early Hittite civilization, where he uncovered thousands of tablets which throw new light upon the history of western Asia in ancient times. Thus, generation after generation, amid dangers and hardships, a body of enthusiastic, self-sacrificing men have toiled almost day and night in order to restore to life a civilization buried for many centuries beneath the sands of the desert and the ruins of ancient cities, and we are only at the beginning. What revelations the next fifty years may have in store! The results of these expeditions have been enthusiastically welcomed by all who are interested in antiquity: the students of history, art, science, anthropology, early civilization, and many others. They are, however, of special interest to the Bible student; and it is well to remember that, whatever additional motives may be responsible for excavations at the present time, from the beginning until now the desire to find illustrations, or confirmations of scriptural statements, has played a prominent part. "To what end," says Professor Delitzsch,[5] "this toil and trouble in distant, inhospitable and danger-ridden lands? Why all this expense in ransacking to their utmost depths the rubbish heaps of forgotten centuries, where we know neither treasures of gold nor of silver exist? Why this zealous emulation on the part of the nations to secure the greatest possible {123} number of mounds for excavation? And whence, too, that constantly increasing interest, that burning enthusiasm, born of generous sacrifice, now being bestowed on both sides of the Atlantic upon the excavations in Babylonia and Assyria? One answer echoes to all these questions, one answer which, if not absolutely adequate, is yet largely the reason and consummation of it all--the _Bible_."