3. Exhaustion may prove a point; as, for instance, the Iconoclasts in Greece or Reformers and Puritans in England were the only destroyers of images and pictures, or Akhenaten was the only man who erased the name of Amen. Such destructions therefore are evidence of the age and the man.
Probabilities.
4. Probabilities, as, for instance, the fact that the Saxons erased the Romano-Britons, makes it probable that Silchester, Uriconium, and other late Roman towns which were burnt, were destroyed by the Saxons.
We see thus that each kind of proof which is accepted legally is also used archaeologically, and is subject to much the same failings. Legal evidence may fail by mistaking the nature of the facts, such as that some rabbit’s blood on a knife is human blood; so may archaeology mistake by ignorance, as when the Mykenaean treasure was called Byzantine.
Or legal evidence may fail by wrong inferences from facts, such as that some human blood on a knife is due to a murder, while it has come from the owner’s finger. So archaeology erred from a wrong inference in calling the treasure of Troy “the treasure of Priam.”
Or legal evidence may fail owing to mere prejudice, thus ignoring the truth. So archaeology has suffered from the prejudice that nothing in Greece can be older than the VIIIth century B.C.
Legal proof.
It is supposed sometimes, by those unfamiliar with the subject, that archaeological evidence is so doubtful or so slight that it cannot be relied upon, and is not to be compared with the certainties of legal proof. Let us see then what legal proof is in important cases. In one case a will was lost, and the mere memory of its contents, stated by a survivor who had assisted in writing it, was accepted as sufficient proof of what had been in it, and the property was distributed accordingly. In another case property was left by A to B, or failing B to C; B also made a will leaving it to D. A and B were killed together in an accident, and the slightest observation of which moved last, determined whether C or D had the property. Again, there are innumerable cases of setting a will aside because of the testator not being of a sound mind for disposing of property; and various assertions of irrelevant facts by various interested parties are held to reveal the true mental capacity of a person to a judge and jury. In a murder trial the question of whether one or both of the assailants were guilty was held proved by the deceased having been tied by two different forms of knots. In another trial the mere presumption due to concealing a body and dealing with the property of a murdered person was enough to hang a man. Such are some of the evidences which are held good in law to settle questions of life and property.
Happily archaeology is relieved from the terrible dilemma of being bound to come to a conclusion at once, as the law has to do. Questions can be left pending, and it is not peremptorily needful to act one way or another. An open mind can be kept on difficult and obscure points; and a matter can be discussed in fresh lights, without keeping a prisoner standing in the dock the whole time. Legal conclusions are often wrong; though, as the law can do no wrong, a free pardon is all the sufferer gets when his innocence is proved. But if legal proofs, arguments, and conclusions were kept freely open to revision for years; if they were printed in every textbook for beginners; if all students were encouraged to find fresh evidence, and to upset what was laid down, and if the high-road to position lay in reversing the decisions of past authorities, it seems only too likely that there would be a greater wreckage of bad cases and bad law than there now is of bad archaeology.
Egypt and Europe.