NEW EXCAVATIONS AT EGINA'

ADOLPH FURTWÄNGLER, Munich.

The splendor of the ancient world is long since battered and decayed. But mother earth with kindly care has covered over what time and dissolution have spared. And now with inquisitive zeal we burrow into the earth's crust to bring to light what may assist us in gaining some conception of the glory of the past.

How Winckelmann would have rejoiced, if he could have lived to see the revelations of our day, when everywhere the ancient soil is opening and the genuine, real, old Greek art is rising, even though it be in fragments! In the last few decades a noble emulation has been kindled, in which each of the civilized nations is trying to discover the most and best possible relics of ancient art. This has come about since the seventh decade of the century just past, since Schliemann's surprising and brilliant achievements and the methodical archæological investigation of Olympia.

The excavation of Olympia under the patronage of the German Empire was the first work of this kind to be accomplished by a foreign nation on Greek soil, on a large scale, and from purely scientific motives. This has since been followed by many similar undertakings, such as the excavations of Delphi by the French, and of the Heræum at Argos by the Americans.

(1) Translated by Professor W. H. Carruth of the University of Kansas. Copyright, 1902, by Frederick A. Richardson.

Indeed one is almost inclined to ask, Is there not too much excavating rather than too little? Are not those who are now so zealously disturbing the funereal repose of ancient civilization often altogether too unconscious of the responsibility that rests upon them? Does not the too hasty exhumation of ancient remains often destroy forever what the earth had so well preserved for us in its bosom ?

I fear that every one who has any practical knowledge of the excavations that have been conducted in classic lands will feel constrained to answer these questions in the affirmative. Not only the mercenary diggers after treasure, who carry on their work by stealth, but even scientific investigators, despite the best intentions, have certainly often destroyed many things of value without being aware, and without being able to prevent it.

This happens even now occasionally, and especially in former times was a frequent occurrence at the hands of investigators of too limited experience. Gradually, however, a fund of experience has been accumulated, and is still increasing, which can be transferred from one to another by living tradition.

The scientific method of excavation is not learned at the author's desk nor in the study. And it was a great mistake, which was always sorely atoned for, to believe that any one who was a good interpreter of classic authors would also be able to meet all the requirements in the field of excavation.

The error is still committed today, for however much change and improvement may have been made as compared with former conditions, the right relation has not yet been established between scholastic and practical work upon the relics of antiquity. The old conflict between thought and action, which so long dominated Germany, has not yet entirely subsided. There still exists a gap, not yet entirely bridged, between classical scholars of the narrow, academic school and men who investigate by the fact,-by the spade. This division is most perceptible in the realm of our domestic German archæology,—and this greatly to the detriment of both sides! Only very recently has there been a serious effort made to establish concord.

In the realm of classical archæology the division was very sharp thirty years ago; it was shown in the way in which Schliemann was depreciated by the scholars of that day. Schliemann, to be sure, was anything but a systematically trained scholar; he was a dilettant and an enthusiast, but a man of action, and he revealed to a wondering world what unsuspected secrets were still concealed beneath the soil of Greece. It was characteristic of the situation, that the circle which stood by Schliemann from the beginning consisted, not of scholars, but of dilettants, who had learned to carry on investigations by excavations upon their native soil. From them Schliemann took his method, and from that moment classical archæologists also began to discover that even inconspicuous fragments have a historical value, and should be collected; for, until that time, attention had been given only to such remains as bore some inscription or a picture susceptible of mythological interpretation. On the other hand, our domestic archæology, which depended on excavations, had long recognized the importance of even the most humble fragments.

Two young classical archæologists (Löschke and myself) took the next step, about the end of the seventh decade of last century, by making a critical historical examination of the mass of fragments that were brought to light by Schliemann in his excavations at Mycenae, and published a selection from the results. With that work began a great development for this method of research within the field of classical archæology. Incessant efforts are now being made to extract from the soil of Greece the evidences of ancient civilization, and even the slightest remains are studied and applied in reconstructing the panorama of the past.

A similar change took place in Italy at about the same time. There, too, it was the domestic search for the remains of the oldest, so-called pre-historic, time which stood in opposition to classical archæology; there, too, the latter finally learned from the former; and from this concession dates a new epoch in Italian archæology.

It is a very characteristic fact that the well-known, distin

guished, and discriminating archæologist, Heinrich Brunn, who lived so long (until 1865) in Rome, took no part in the actual investigation of the classic soil or in the excavations. He, too, like almost all the scholars of his time, paid serious attention only to those individual portions of the past, often separated from their real surroundings, which had some immediate relation to what was to be found in books, that is, to mythology, poetry, or antiquities. Things could not be properly judged when thus isolated, and this fact alone can explain Brunn's adoption of the erroneous theory that Greek vases are, for the most part, not genuine products of early times, but late imitations. His successor in Rome, W. Helbig, had already become an advocate of the new tendency; he established a union with practical archæology and excavation, and from this standpoint recognized immediately that Brunn's theory could be explained only from his lack of living touch with the details of actual excavations. Furthermore, Helbig was the first classical archæologist to shape the inconspicuous remains of the earliest times, brought to light by domestic research in Italy, into an historical picture of civilization.

Another instance of the division that formerly existed between experimental excavation and academic archæology is found in the achievements of the German scholar Ludolf Stephani, in St. Petersburg, notably during the sixth and seventh decades of last century. It fell to his lot to work up the results of the Russian excavations in the territory of the Euxine Greeks and Scythians. He performed his task entirely after the old fashion, that is, without paying any attention whatever to the excavations themselves. He chose from the material found whatever gave him themes for learned essays; but he had no idea that his proper task was to consider the entire collection from an historical point of view. He had really no respect for anything that was not already in books; monuments had no existence for him unless they were identified with the title of a book. He was a thorough scholar and had great merits, but he is a particularly striking example of the wide separation that existed, only thirty years ago, between narrowly academic archæology and the study of antiquity that was

built upon facts and discoveries and excavations, instead of uponbooks. And although the traces of this division are not, as has been said, entirely obliterated, yet there has been a general change : axe and spade have conquered, all along the line, the disposition to cling to the book and to the letter.

In Greece considerable excavations have been undertaken in all important places, such as Athens, Olympia, Delphi, Delos, Epidaurus, and Corinth, so that those who are seeking new and promising places for excavation are already obliged to be content with those of the second rank. Yet no one of the chief places is exhausted, and least of all the capital Athens, where much still remains to be done. Corinth, also, where the Americans are at work, still promises many a surprise, as there seems to be preserved here under the later strata much more from classic Greek times than could be expected from the reports of the destruction of that city by the Romans.

It is very human and natural that in this race for results the thing right before our eyes should be overlooked. Every one who sails into the harbor of Athens passes the wooded heights of Ægina, upon which the pillars of one of the noblest Greek temples tower into the blue atmosphere. There a group of travelers had the fortune some ninety years ago to find, almost wholly upon the surface and scarcely covered, the precious remains of pediment sculptures which soon after were to become an ornament of the newly founded Glyptotheca of King Ludwig of Bavaria.

Now, although it must be conceded that the superficial examination of those travelers could not possibly satisfy the demands that are made of a scientific excavation, as this is understood today, yet the place has not been touched from that time until the presBut it was evident that when the time came the possessor of the Æginetan sculptures had the chief occasion for desiring more thorough investigation.

ent.

Through the generous decision of his Royal Highness, PrinceRegent Luitpold of Bavaria, I was commissioned, in the spring of 1901, to undertake the delayed task and to make a