is one interesting feature of the Capitolium, which is not well known among those who do not make a profession of archæology. It was used as a place for advertising State acts, deeds, and documents, in order that the public might take notice of them and be informed of what was going on in the administrative, military, and political departments. This fact is known from a clause appended to imperial letters-patent by which veterans were honorably discharged from the army or navy, and privileges bestowed on them in recognition of their services. These deeds, known as diplomata honestæ missionis, were engraved on bronze tablets shaped like the cover of a book, the original of which was hung somewhere in the Capitolium, and a copy taken by the veteran to his home. The originals are all gone, having fallen the prey of the plunderers of bronze in Rome, but copies are found in great numbers in every province of the Roman empire from which men were drafted.51 These copies end with the clause:—
"Transcribed (and compared or verified) from the original bronze tablet which is hung in Rome, in the Capitolium"—and here follows the designation of a special place of the Capitolium, such as,—
"On the right side of the shrine of the Fides populi romani" (December 11, a. d. 52).
"On the left side of the ædes Thensarum" (July 2, a. d. 60).
"On the pedestal of the statue of Quintus Marcius Rex, behind the temple of Jupiter" (June 15, 64).
"On the pedestal of the ara gentis Iuliæ, on the right side, the statue of Bacchus" (March 7, 71).
"On the vestibule, on the left wall, between the two archways" (May 21, 74).
"On the pedestal of the statue of Jupiter Africus" (December 2, 76).
"On the base of the column, on the inner side, near the statue of Jupiter Africus" (September 5, 85).
"On the tribunal by the trophies of Germanicus, which are near the shrine of the Fides" (May 15, 86).
Comparing these indications of localities with the dates of the diplomas,—there are sixty-three in all,—it appears that they were not hung at random, but in regular order from monument to monument, until every available space was covered. In the year 93 there was not an inch left, and the Capitol is mentioned no more as a place for exhibiting or advertising the acts of Government. From that year they were hung "in muro post templum divi ad Minervam," that is, behind the modern church of S. Maria Liberatrice.
The Temple of Isis and Serapis. In the spring of 1883, in surveying the tract of ground between the Collegio Romano and the Baths of Agrippa, formerly occupied by the Temple of Isis and Serapis, and in collecting archæological information concerning it, I was struck by the fact that, every time excavations were made on either side of the Via di S. Ignazio for building or restoring the houses which line it, remarkable specimens of Egyptian art had been brought to light. The annals of discoveries begin with 1374, when the obelisk now in the Piazza della Rotonda was found, under the apse of the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva, together with the one now in the Villa Mattei von Hoffman. In 1435, Eugenius IV. discovered the two lions of Nektaneb I. which are now in the Vatican, and the two of black basalt now in the Capitoline Museum. In 1440 the reclining figure of a river-god was found and buried again. The Tiber of the Louvre and the Nile of the Braccio Nuovo seem to have come to light during the pontificate of Leo X.; at all events it was he who caused them to be removed to the Vatican. In 1556 Giovanni Battista de Fabi found, and sold to cardinal Farnese, the reclining statue of Oceanus now in Naples. In 1719 the Isiac altar now in the Capitol was found under the Biblioteca Casanatense. In 1858 Pietro Tranquilli, in restoring his house,—the nearest to the apse of la Minerva,—came across the following-named objects: a sphinx of green granite, the head of which is a portrait of Queen Haths'epu, the oldest sister of Thothmes III., who was famous for her expedition to the Red Sea, recently described by Dümmichen;52 a sphinx of red granite, believed to be a Roman replica; a group of the cow Hathor, the living symbol of Isis, nursing the young Pharaoh Horemheb; the portrait statue of the grand dignitary Uahábra, a good specimen of Saïtic art; a column of the temple, covered with high reliefs, which represented a procession of bald-headed priests holding canopi in their hands; a capital, carved with papyrus leaves and lotus flowers; and a fragment of an Egyptian basrelief in red granite, with traces of polychromy.
In 1859 Augusto Silvestrelli, the owner of the next house, on the same side of the Via di S. Ignazio, found five capitals of the same style and size, which, I believe, are now in the Museo Etrusco Gregoriano. Inasmuch as no excavation had ever been made under the pavement of the street itself, which is public property, and as there was no reason why that strip of public property should not contain as many works of art as the houses about it, I asked the municipal authorities to try the experiment, and my proposal was accepted at once.
The Sphinx of Amasis.
The work began on Monday, June 11, 1883. It was difficult, because we had to dig to a depth of twenty feet between houses of very doubtful solidity. First to appear, at the end of the third day, was a magnificent sphinx of black basalt, the portrait of King Amasis. It is a masterpiece of the Saïtic school, perfected even in the smallest details, and still more impressive for its historical connection with the conquest of Egypt by Cambyses.
The cartouches bearing the king's name appear to have been purposely erased, though not so completely as to render the name illegible. The nose, likewise, and the uræus, the symbol of royalty, were hammered away at the same time. The explanation of these facts is given by Herodotos. When Cambyses conquered Saïs, Amasis had just been buried. The conqueror caused the body to be dragged out of the royal tomb, then flogged and otherwise insulted, and finally burnt, the maximum of profanation, from an Egyptian point of view. His name was erased from the monuments which bore it, as a natural consequence of the memoriæ damnatio. This sphinx is the surviving testimonial of the eventful catastrophe. When, six or seven centuries later, a Roman governor of Egypt, or a Roman merchant from the same province, singled out this work of art, to be shipped to Rome as a votive offering for the Temple of Isis, ignorant of the historical value of its mutilations, he had the nose and the uræus carefully restored. Now both are gone again, and there is no danger of a second restoration. I may remark, as a curious coincidence, that, as the name of Amasis is erased from the sphinx, so that of Hophries, his predecessor, is erased from the obelisk discovered in the same temple, and now in the Piazza della Minerva. In these two monuments of the Roman Iseum we possess a synopsis of Egyptian history between 595 and 526 b. c.
Obelisk of Rameses the Great.
The second work, discovered June 17, was an obelisk which was wonderfully well preserved to the very top of the pinnacle, and covered with hieroglyphics. It was quarried at Assuan, from a richly colored vein of red granite, and was brought to Rome, probably under Domitian, together with the obelisk now in the Piazza del Pantheon. The two monoliths are almost identical in size and workmanship, and are inscribed with the same cartouches of Rameses the Great. The one which I discovered was set up, in 1887, to the memory of our brave soldiers who fell at the battle of Dogali. The site selected for the monument, the square between the railway station and the Baths of Diocletian, is too large for such a comparatively small shaft.
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