Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/167

 powerful interests at work to dwarf or deny the extension and influence of the Turanian races, both in Elam and in Babylonia, and till these have been surmounted, it will be difficult lo estimate correctly the exact state of the evidence.

It was not till thirty-three years had elapsed from the date of Mr. Loftus's discoveries that Susa was again visited. Upon this occasion (1885) the enterprising traveller was M. Dieulafoy, whom we have already mentioned, and it is to these two travellers that we owe nearly all we know of its Achaemenian remains. Mr. Loftus must always enjoy the honour of being the first to reconstruct the Columnar Hall, and it was he also through whom the two inscriptions of Artaxerxes Mnemon became first known. M. Dieulafoy, on the other hand, has largely increased our knowledge of Persian art by the discovery of the enamelled friezes. The service he has rendered towards the reconstruction of the buildings is more problematical, for a large portion of it depends upon the justness of the imaginative faculty, which is never a very sure guide in such matters. He found three or four bases in the central cluster of the Hall not previously excavated by Loftus: but they add nothing to our knowledge of its construction. which the earlier traveller had already fully determined. M. Dieulafoy's most successful work was achieved on the occasion of his second visit to Susa, in 1885. At first it was difficult to collect workmen, but a few deserters from the army were attracted, when it became known that the pay offered was about equal to that of their colonel. Before the end of the month nearly three hundred men were collected, and excavations were energetically pursued upon each of the three hills, a double-headed bull, broken into convenient fragments, was found in the eastern colonnade of the great Hall,