Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/57

 42 History of Art in Antiquity. stratum of the hillock is almost entirely composed of Persian palaces buried under their own ruins. That of Artaxerxes Mnemon was identified and disengaged in 185 1 by the English traveller Loftus; and between 1884 and 1886 Dieulafoy completely cleared the site» when he came upon the remains of a palace raised by Darius» son of Hystaspes, which the inscription copied by Loftus specified as having preceded, on the same spot, the one erected by Artaxerxes.^ Trenches cut at various points of the mound enabled the French mission to gain an idea of the trace and construction of the formidable defensive works that surrounded the royal residence and turned it into an impregnable fortress. Thanks to Dieulafoy, Persian art is now represented in the Louvre as in no other European museum. Before him the few and very secondary pieces of sculpture from Persepolis in the British Museum, were all the collections of the West had to show in connection with the art of Persia. Of far greater merit are the treasures displayed in the two rooms set apart for them at the Louvre and opened to the public in 1888. Never- theless, the tumulus at Susa, as its bold and fortunate explorer is the first to own, has not by a long way yielded its secret. Owing to lack of time and insufficient means, the excavations that have hitherto been made have disturbed but a feeble portion of the mound's surface, and in no instance have they gone very deep. Yet we cannot doubt for a moment that, buried in its flanks, are remains of monuments much older than the Persian dominion, monuments that would cast floods of light on the origins of Chaldaean culture and cuneiform writing, and enable us, perhaps, to restore a whole chapter of the lost history of the Account of Excavations at Warka and HJius/if tn 1849-1852, London, 1857, 8vo. The figures are on a small scale and undotted. The original design of ChurduU, the artist who accompanied Loftus, will be found in Ae Depanment of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum, where I went to consult them {Second Su/plc' mentary Volume of Drawings from Objects found at Susa, executed by A. Churchill, W. K. Loftus, and Lieutenant Jackson). Despite the merit of some of these drawings, they have lost mudi of their interest since Dieulafoy's journey to Susa. Consult Revu€ ArAKf 3(d series, tom. vi. and torn. viii. ; Rapports sur Us Fouilki 4§ Suse; and Jane Dieulafoy, A Suse, Journal des Fonilhs, 1884-1886, 410, Hachette, 1888, 131 wood engravings and map. The same hrm pubUshed last year (1890) LAcropoU de Suse, by Dieulafoy, which is but an amplification of the former ; the book is piofiiseljr illustrated with thirty-two pbtes, of which twenty^two are in lithochromy. Digitized by Google
 * W. Ken NET Loftus, Trm'eh and Research fs in ChaUaa and Susiana, with an