SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading we =tics such Books of the week as have sot ban reserved for review in other forms.] Explorations in Bible Lands during the Nineteenth Century. By H. V. Hilprecht. (T. and T. Clark. 12s. 6d. net.)—Nearly three. fourths of this massive volume are assigned to Assyria and Babylonia. Palestine, Egypt, and Arabia have to be crowded, with more abridgment of detail than could be desired, into the remaining space, in which room has also to be found for a dis- quisition upon the Hittites. It is impossible, however, to complain. Professor Hilprecht has himself taken an active part in the recent explorations in Babylonia and Assyria, carried on under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania, and it is as desirable as it is natural that he should give a prominent place to his own work. In positive results, too, these researches occupy a place second only to those that have been made in Egypt. Egypt, of course, might well demand the whole volume for itself. Professor Sterndorff's sketch of the last century's results is interesting and instructive, but it is necessarily incomplete. It does not even mention the papyri of Oxyrrhynchue, discoveries which, from the literary point of view, surpass everything that has been achieved during the latter part of the nineteenth century. The later explorations in Assyria and in Egypt have this in common, that they carry back history to very remote times. Professor Flinders Petrie has revealed the existence of a settled society in Egypt anterior to the First Dynasty ; Professor Hilprecht and his colleagues have attained very similar results in Babylonia. Some of their finds belong to the fifth millen- nium B.C. Nor is it their antiquity alone that is remarkable. A. head of a goat, worked in copper, and referred to 4000 B.C., is quite surprising, fully equal to Mycenaean work. Not less interesting is a child's exercise tablet dated five centuries earlier. It must be understood that the plan of Professor Hilprecht's book includes a review of all the exploring work done in the nineteenth century. It is a striking survey, but it excites not a few regrets, so many opportunities have been lost or misused. International jealousies have hindered the work. It was the interference of a French official that brought about the destruction of the Moabite Stone, and the protests of Russia led to the abandonment of the Euphrates Expedition of 1836. The management of even the most recent expeditions is apparently open to criticism. There has been too great a desire for tangible results ; scientific investigation has been postponed to the quest for curiosities. Professor Hilprecht is very precise in his censures in this respect. We cannot pretend to say whether these censures are just, but it is right to give them publicity. We have purposely omitted to mention the chapter on Palestine by Dr. S. Benziger, but we must express our disagreement with him when he refuses to attach any value to the Christian tradition of the pre-Constantine period. At the same time, we welcome his praises of Robinson, a great explorer whom it is now the fashion in a certain school to depreciate.
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