difficult to read. The art of deciphering them is called Palæography.

=The Monuments.=--Ancient peoples, like ourselves, built monuments of
different sorts: palaces for their kings, tombs for the dead,
fortresses, bridges, aqueducts, triumphal arches. Of these monuments
many have fallen into ruin, have been razed, shattered by the enemy or
by the people themselves. But some of them survive, either because
there was no desire to destroy them, or because men could not. They
still stand in ruins like the old castles, for repairs are no longer
made; but enough is preserved to enable us to comprehend their former
condition. Some of them are still above ground, like the pyramids, the
temples of Thebes and of the island of Philæ, the palace of Persepolis
in Persia, the Parthenon in Greece, the Colosseum in Rome, and the
Maison Carrée and Pont du Gard in France. Like any modern monument,
these are visible to the traveller. But the majority of these
monuments have been recovered from the earth, from sand, from river
deposits, and from débris. One must disengage them from this thick
covering, and excavate the soil, often to a great depth. Assyrian
palaces may be reached only by cutting into the hills. A trench of
forty feet is necessary to penetrate to the tombs of the kings of
Mycenæ. Time is not the only agency for covering these ruins; men have
aided it. When the ancients wished to build, they did not, as we do,
take the trouble to level off the space, nor to clear the site.
Instead of removing the débris, they heaped it together and built
above it. The new edifice in turn fell into ruins and its débris was
added to that of more remote time; thus there were formed several
strata of remains. When Schliemann excavated the site of Troy, he had
passed through five beds of débris; these were five ruined villages
one above another, the oldest at a depth of fifty feet.