Page:History of Art in Sardinia, Judæa, Syria and Asia Minor Vol 2.djvu/21

 Recent Discoveries in Northern Syria. Tyrwhitt Drake, the joint author of Unexplored Syria, as their representative, with instructions to make copies of the stones. His perfect knowledge of the country and of the Arabs was in- valuable in dealing with them. After a good deal of manoeuvring, he contrived to take a photograph and copy of the most important text ; but it soon became known, and the other stones had to be abandoned, for fear of a general uproar. Captain Burton, then British consul at Damascus, also visited Hamath. He managed to see all the monuments, noting carefully their position and size ; but he too was obliged to be content with copies made by a Greek, Kostantin-el-Khuri by name. These he published, in ten sheets, in Unexplored Syria, at the same time warning the public that, in places, '' the imagination of the * painter ' had run wild with him." His attempt to purchase one of the stones was unsuc- cessful, owing to the greed of the owner of the house in which the stone was embedded, who began by asking a hundred napoleons. Further negotiations led to no better result, for Levantine dealers began to barter for the monuments, in the hope of selling them in Europe at enormous profit. Fears began to be entertained lest these stones, which had lain forgotten and been held of no account for so many ages, but which had suddenly acquired a fabulous value and importance in the eyes of the natives, since they had seen them coveted by those who were supposed to know, should share the fate of the Moabite tablet. Nor were these apprehen- sions ill-founded, for in 1872 Messrs. Smith and Drake, in their visit to Aleppo, lit upon a basalt slab similarly engraved, of which they made an indifferent copy ; the following year, wishing to obtain a proper cast, they discovered that the stone had been broken up by the natives. At this juncture, an opportunity, which was promptly accepted, offered itself to Dr. W. Wright, of the English Mission at Damascus, to visit Hamath. The results of this expedition were presently published in book form, entitled The Empii^e of the Hittites, from which we shall freely borrow in the sequel of these pages. ^ During his residence at Damascus he had become acquainted with the Governor-General of Syria, a post then filled by Subhi Pasha, of Greek extraction, a man of rare intelligence and integrity. ^ Second edition, Nisbct and Co., 1886, i vol. in 8vo, xxxiii.-246 pages, and 26 plates ; with decipherment of Hittite inscriptions by Professor Sayce, a map by Sir C. Wilson, and a complete set of Hittite inscriptions revised by Mr. W. H. Rylands.