In the "Land of Goshen" where the Israelites in a state of servitude worked for the oppressing Pharaoh (Rameses II), excavators have found bricks made without straw as mentioned in Scripture, undoubtedly the work of Hebrew slaves, also glazed bead necklaces. They are looking for the House of Amran, the father of Moses, where the great leader was born.
The site of Arbela, where Alexander the Great won his mightiest victory over Darius, has been discovered. It is a series of mounds on the Western bank of the Tigris river between Nineveh and Bagdad. All the treasures of Darius were taken and Alexander erected a great palace. Bronze swords, cups and pieces of sculpture have been unearthed and it is supposed there are vast stores of other remains awaiting the tool and patience of the excavator. The famous Sultan Saladin took up his residence here in 1184 and doubtless many relics of his royal time will be discovered.
The remains of the city of Pumbaditha have been identified with the immense mound of Abnar some twenty miles from Babylon, on the banks of the Euphrates. This was the centre of Jewish scholarship during the Babylonian exile. One of the great schools in which the Talmud was composed was located here. The great psalm, "By the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept." was also composed on this spot, and here, too, Jeremiah and Isaiah thundered their impassioned eloquence. Broken tombs and a few inscribed bowls have been brought to light. Probably the original scrolls of the Talmud will be found here. Several curiously wrought vases and ruins have been also unearthed.
Several monuments bearing inscriptions which are sorely puzzling the archaeologists have recently been unearthed at the site of Boghaz-Keni which was the ancient, if not original capital, of the mysterious people called the Hittites who have been for so long a worry to Bible students. Archaeology has now revealed the secret of this people. There is no doubt they were of Mongolian origin, as the monuments just discovered represent them with slant eyes and pigtails. No one as yet has been able to read the inscriptions. They were great warriors, great builders and influenced the fate of many of the ancient nations.
In many other places throughout these lands, deep students of Biblical lore are pushing on the work of excavation and daily adding to our knowledge concerning the peoples and nations in whom posterity must ever take a vital interest.
A short time ago, Professor Doerpfeld announced to the world that he had discovered on the island of Ithaca, off the west coast of Greece, the ruins of the palace of Ulysses, Homer's half-mythical hero of the Odyssey. The German archaeologist has traced the different rooms of the palace and is convinced that here is the very place to which the hero returned after his wanderings. Near it several graves were found from which were exhumed silver amulets, curiously wrought necklaces, bronze swords and metal ornaments bearing date 2,000 B.C., which is the date at which investigators lay the Siege of Troy.
If the ruins be really those of the palace of Ulysses, some interesting things may be found to throw a light on the Homeric epic. As the schoolboys know, when Ulysses set sail from Troy for home, adverse winds wafted him to the coast of Africa and he beat around in the adjacent seas and visited islands and spent a considerable time meeting many kinds of curious and weird adventures, dallying at one time with the lotus-eaters, at another braving the Cyclops, the one-eyed monsters, until he arrived at Ithaca where "he bent his bow and slew the suitors of Penelope, his harassed wife."
In North America are mounds, earthworks, burial sites, shell heaps, buildings of stone and adobe, pictographs sculptured in rocks, stone implements, objects made of bone, pottery and other remains which arouse the enthusiasm of the archaeologist. As the dead were usually buried in America, investigators try to locate the ancient cemeteries because, besides skeletons, they usually contain implements, pottery and ornaments which were buried with the corpses. The most characteristic implement of early man in America was the grooved axe, which is not found in any other country. Stone implements are plentiful everywhere. Knives, arrow-points and perforators of chipped stone are found in all parts of the continent. Beads and shells and pottery are also found in almost every State.
The antiquity of man in Europe has been determined in a large measure by archaeological remains found in caves occupied by him in different ages, but the exploration of caves in North America has so far failed to reveal traces of different degrees of civilization.