Page:Discovery and Decipherment of the Trilingual Cuneiform Inscriptions.djvu/170

Rh Turkish Government to surrender the fifty-five cases still in their possession, that the travellers re-appeared in the Persian Gulf on board a French man-of-war, which had not been seen in those waters for three years. On their way they stopped at Muscat, and the officers were duly entertained at the Lawn Tennis Club by the ubiquitous English.

M. Dieulafoy resumed operations at Susa on December 13, 1880. The firman was to expire on April 1, and their funds were now reduced to 15,000 francs. They accordingly determined to abandon the hope of a thorough investigation and to content themselves with the humbler task of filling the Museum. They now concentrated all their efforts on the Palace Hill: by the end of the year they had come upon the foundation of the Palace of Darius, which had been buried beneath the ruins of the later Palace of Artaxerxes. At this depth they made their second great discovery of enamelled tiles, bearing the design of the archers, an ornament attached to an earlier structure. It was, however, found sixty metres from the Apadana and could not, therefore, have been a portion of the decoration of the palace. At a little distance, in the plain, they came upon a small Achaemenian building which Dieulafoy declared to be a covered fire temple. By the middle of February the exhausted state of their finances compelled them to dismiss a hundred of their workmen. The clearance of the palace, however, continued. Several more bases were found, and another double bull, which was shattered into portable form by a stroke from the powerful arm of the lady Chevalier. A sketch was also completed of the fortification for two-thirds of its circum-