which is now being rewritten on the basis of the many thousands of inscriptions that have been found in the great centres of ancient Greece. As the work of excavation continues, each year brings its quota of new facts, and it is safe to predict that the recovery of ancient Greece will be noted in future ages as one of the most notable achievements of the nineteenth century. [Illustration: THE SO-CALLED SARCOPHAGUS OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT IN MARBLE FROM MOUNT PENTELIKON. ABOUT B. C. 320. (Imperial Ottoman Museum, Constantinople.)] PHŒNICIAN RUINS.—With Egypt, Babylonia, and Greece we are still far from having exhausted the field covered by archæology in this century. At Cyprus much has been done by Löhr, Cesnola, and Ohnefalsch-Richter. The cities of Cyprus are interesting as forming a meeting-ground for such various civilizations as Phœnician, Egyptian, Proto-Grecian, and to a limited extent Babylono-Assyrian. The result is a curious mixture of art and of equally strange syncretism in religious rites. It is one of the disappointments of scholars that we as yet know so little of the Phœnicians who played such an important role in history. The traces of this people of wanderers and merchants have been found in tombs and votive inscriptions throughout the lands bordering on the Mediterranean, in Northern Africa, in Southern Spain, in Sicily, Malta, Asia Minor, Cyprus, Crete, Italy, and even Southern France; but in Phœnicia itself but few inscriptions have been unearthed, and only scanty remains of the important cities of Sidon and Tyre, which once flourished on the coast of the Mediterranean. The fate of these cities, subjected in the course of centuries to so many different powers, is a sad one. Almost everything that belonged to a high antiquity has disappeared, and such scanty excavations as have been undertaken, the most notable of which is that of Um-el-Awamid by the late Ernest Renan, in 1861, have been of little value. Tombs have been discovered, but only few of them belong to the Phœnician period in the proper sense. The Sarcophagus of Eshmunazar, king of Sidon, with a long Phœnician inscription, is however a most notable monument and of great historical importance. But the most remarkable find within the limits of ancient Phœnicia was made a few years ago by Hamdi Bey under the auspices of the Turkish government. In the necropolis at Sidon a series of sarcophagi were unearthed which, belonging to the Greek period, are valuable as furnishing a specimen of the art of Greece transplanted in foreign soil. [Illustration: FRONT VIEW. REAR VIEW. CUNEIFORM LETTER FROM LACHISH, PALESTINE. ABOUT B. C. 1400. (Imperial Ottoman Museum, Constantinople.)]