Archaeology in Greece, 1888–89

Abstract

Yet another year has passed during which the Acropolis at Athens has been the centre of interest: and the past season has been successful enough to bear comparison with any of the previous years which have astonished by their results not only archaeologists and scholars, but all who have been fortunate enough to visit Athens during this epoch of discoveries. It must seem to many as if the Acropolis would go on indefinitely yielding its treasure of architecture sculpture and inscriptions, and ever increasing and changing our knowledge of early Athens and its arts and history. But even the Acropolis is not inexhaustible; it has now been searched to the native rock in almost every part; and unless some other site, perhaps the long-promised, long-delayed Delphi, come to succeed it, we must expect a lull in the astonishing rush of discoveries that has been almost of a nature to bewilder those that have sought to follow its course. Such a lull will almost be welcome in some respects to those who have to arrange or to study the new finds as they follow one another in rapid succession. It will enable the museums to settle into a final and orderly arrangement, and the students to arrange within their minds the new facts that have been thrust in one upon another, till the brain of the archaeologist has been as much a stranger to order or stability as the rooms of the Acropolis Museum. Meanwhile, for the present season a series of discoveries has to be reported which has dealt in the marvellous, if not in the beautiful, as extensively as that of any previous year.