Abstract
DURING the past year British archæologists have carried on the work of disinterring the remains of the ancient civilisations of Greece, Egypt, and Mesopotamia with energy. The excavations of the Trustees of the British Museum at Ephesus have resulted in interesting discoveries. The work was intended to supplement and complete that carried out under the auspices of the Trustees from forty to thirty years ago on the site of the Great Temple of Diana of the Ephesians. That work, carried out by the late Mr. J. T. Wood, resulted in the planning of the temple and the removal to England of many valuable antiquities now in the British Museum. The present work was entrusted by the trustees to the distinguished archæologist Mr. D. G. Hogarth. It has resulted in the discovery, undreamt of by Wood, of the remains of two earlier temples below that of the Crœsus temple, which he supposed to be the earliest, and of a vast number of votive objects of the eighth and seventh centuries B.C., among them many of gold and silver, besides Egyptian blue Composition scarabs of the early twenty-sixth dynasty period. These were found underneath the second or “præ-Crœsus” temple. By the laws of Turkey, the antiquities, especially those of precious metal, must go to the Museum of Constantinople, but duplicates will come to the British Museum. Much new knowledge of the third or Crœsus temple, discovered by Wood, has also been gained. The two earlier ones seem to have been of interesting construction. Much heavy pumping work had to be carried out in the temple area, which had become filled with water. Mr. Hogarth is to be congratulated on having brought this interesting work to a successful conclusion.
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British Excavations in the Near East, 1904–5. Nature 73, 102–104 (1905). https://doi.org/10.1038/073102b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/073102b0