[The society’s] scope is Archaeology, not Theology; but to Theology it will prove an important aid. To all those it must be attractive who are interested in the primitive and early history of mankind; that history which is not written in books nor on paper, but upon rocks and stones, deep in the soil, far away in the desert; that history which is not found in the library or the mart, but which must be dug up in the valley of the Nile or exhumed from the plains of Mesopotamia.