A SON OF THE SPADE.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 829, 30 May 1910, Page 4

A SON OF THE SPADE.

THE ROMANCE OF AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXPLORER'S LIFE. INCIDENTS AT EPIIESUS AND IN EGYPT.

Mr. D. Hogarth, who is now Keeper of the Ashmolcati Museum at Oxford, lias had a most interesting career as an archaeological explorer, and has had a hand in most of tho recent romances of the spade. In Asia Minor, by the Euphrates, in Crete, and by tho Nile ha has seen tho spado turn up its treasures, bringing back to life the people of other days.

In his new book lie tells us some of tho "Accidents of an Antiquary's Life" (Jlacmillan, 7s. 6d.. net), and a most entertaining chapter of accidents it is. In the near days to come such exploration as ho has done will bo at an end. It does not seem probable that ill tho world's future history will there ever again bo such trophies of the spado as have been revealed in these last one hundred years. Lot us watch Mr. Hogarth as ho digs at Ephesus and by the Nile. Unique Discoveries at Ephesus. Tho famous Artomisium of Ephesus was discovered by Mr. Wood; but ho did not find all that was to be, found of this most famous of ancient temples. It was left for Mr. Hogarth to dig down below the sito of a building reared nearly 30G0 years ago.

"Tho sito looked as hopeless as an ancient sito can look. ... I got to

work with little delay on tho platform of tho temple which King Croesus had helped to build." Then, digging below where tho "Great Altar" stood, Mr. Hogarth mado a memorable find. Ho camo across a splendid collection of treasures whigli faithful people of other days had deposited layer on layer as the first builders were laying course on course on the pedestal of that great temple on ■ which stood tho goddess Diana in effigy. "For tho rest of that day hours passed as minutes. Every handful of mud-mortar washed through tho meshes left, treasure behind —women's gauds for tho most part, earrings of all patterns and weights, beads of sundered neclclacc strings, pins for tho hair, and brooches for the sjioulder or throat, some of theso'last fashioned after the likeness of hawks in tho finest granular work of lonian smiths. With them appeared "primitive electrum coins. . . . When all tho ground had been searched, wo had recovered from tho treasures of the first House of Artemis in tho Ephesian plain liard on three thousand objccts. "Under Egyptian temples Petrio has found many such deposits, whether beneath corner-stones or the main threshold, or in the central axis of a building ; but under Greek shrines tho hid-ing-placo of foundation records had never yet been divined. Yet what spot inoro fitting than tho pedestal of tho most sacred statuo at tho very heart of tho sacred plain?"

A Search for Virgin Tombs. In Egypt Mr. Hogarth's great work was to discover virgin tombs —tombs which had never been rilled.' Ho was bidden to search the tombs in part of the hill behind Shit. "First and last wo had the fortune to find nearly thirty sealed graves. . . . Tho deep shaft of entry would often seem as tho masons had left it in the distant days of the Twelfth Dynasty, fillod, _to its brim with their clean limestone"' chips;' but none tho less the coflins would be found at tho la'st, smashed or removed, the best of tho furniture withdrawn, and tho rest heaped pell-mell'in litter ruin, after the chamber had • been entered from below by a passage rudely hewn from a neighbouring grot.

"Yet even then it could not bo abandoned unsearched, and for another and many days the men must turn over tho piles of earth and bones and scraps, in faint hope ,that something of value had boon overlooked or despised by earlier robbers. Doing this slow, blind work, they must needs be watched by the dim light' of smoky candles in the choking, dust-laden air..of a narrow coll, which recked of mummy clothes and tho foul rags of fellaheen.

What Research Means. "Crawling on all fours in ■ the dark, ono often found tho passago barred by a heap of unswaddled mummies, turned out of their coffins by somo earlier snatcher, of bodies; anil over those, ono had to go, feeling their breastbones crack under ono's and their swathed heads shift horribly this way or that under one's hands., I have dug for twenty years and Get 11? Xt -foot after the sexton's . iii very many ancient sepulchres, but I still feel, as at first, tho flutter of poignant hopo that the tomb mav bo virgin, and an' indescribable thrill at tho sight of grave-furniture undisturbed since thousands of years.

"There lie tho dead man's bow and arrows in their place on his coffin-lid ■string snapped and plumes in dust and there his stout staff and his boomerang ; the littlo Nile boats are propped, fully manned, by his side- the wooden servants, who answer his call businesses j and his effigy, with his wire s, stands at his head." "You may talk of scienco and think of loot while the chattering diggers ar° working like fiends to lift the last of tho filling from tho shaft, but tho first ™v n s M lO dimness of tho sepulchre itself will silence them, hardened robbers though they bo, and will silence yon bcionco and your own glory and the'lust i -if ,- !. ro a " for eottcn in the awe winch falls, as in fairy talos, on adventurers 111 underground chambers where-kings of old sifc asleep." Here is a glimpse of tho peasant Greek in Crete to-day :-"Thi peasant Urebk is neither brute nor butterfly, but tins ho is—a man who is essentially inert, a man born physically outworn. J. ho wholo race, as it seems to me, is snlFormg from over-weariness It lived fast in the forefront of mankind very long ago, but now is far gone in years • and 111 its homo you feel that you have passed into tho shadow of what has been, into an air in which men would rather bo than do."

What He Learned of Sir W. M. Ramsay. It is interesting to know that Mr. Hogarth was trained under Sir AY. 51. Kamsay. When ho received an 'endowment for scholarly travel abroad ho. heard that "William Martin Ramsay, llio well-known traveller in Asia, Minor, needed an apprentice. I offered myself, and was accepted. Ramsay had made himself a European reputation as an explorer of Asia Minor at a cost which another man would think scarcely sufficient for tlio tour of Germany. It is not the least of my many debts to Ramsay that I gained in my first tour of exploration the will and tho capacity to go farther at loss cost than perhaps anyono but my master."—"Public Opinion."