By the kindness of the Editor of the Annual I am allowed to append to Dr. Schäfer's paper a brief note on two monuments representing likna which came to my knowledge too late for publication in my last article in the Hellenic Journal on the Mystica Vannus lacchi.

Dr. Schäfer's paper is naturally to me of great interestand importance. Egypt has yielded what would have been vainly sought for in Greece, namely an actual ancient liknon of precisely the shape so far evidenced only by representations in ancient art and by modern specimens. Mr. Bosanquet wrote to me last year from Berlin to tell me of the existence of such a liknon; and its publication by Dr. Schäfer in Fig. 15 of his paper makes further comment unnecessary.

In an article on ‘The Greek Numeral Notation’ published in this Annual, xviii. 98 ff., I restricted myself to a discussion of those systems which compose the so-called ‘acrophonic’ group, promising for some future occasion an article dealing with the second, or ‘alphabetic,’ group of numeral systems. This promise has not been forgotten, though the greatness of the undertaking and the lack of adequate leisure have led to delay in its fulfilment; I have, however, collected considerable materials and hope before long to prepare them for publication. Meanwhile, the accession of fresh evidence relative to the acrophonic numerals, while it does not appear to me to invalidate my main conclusions, calls for the addition of a few notes to my previous article with a view of bringing it up to date and rendering it less incomplete.

The following account is practically identical with section (a) of my Report to the Cretan Committee of the British Association (cf. Reports, Section H, 1903, Southport meeting). On the 26th March, 1903, the day of my arrival at Palaikastro, I commenced work on the ossuary discovered and partially excavated in the preceding year (cf. Report by R. C. Bosanquet, in Man, 1902). The work consisted in exposing the crania in the several compartments of that enclosure, and I soon found that the only reliable method of obtaining satisfactory cranial measurements was to clear away the surrounding earth from each skull and to measure while the specimen was still in situ. Subsequently, each skull (to the number of about thirty) was carefully removed, and then, moistened paper having been spread over and around it, a covering of plaster of Paris was finally applied: in this way it was hoped to render the skulls less liable to destruction in the transit to Candia or to such other destination as might be determined upon.

The excavations of 1908 more than fulfilled expectations in the amount of light that was shed on the later history of the Spartan pottery, so that it is now possible to write an account of the development and decline of the Laconian fabric; which account, beginning in the ninth or tenth century, ends with the latter half of the fourth, when the pottery loses its local characteristics in the various styles that appear to have been common to the whole Greek world during the last three centuries before the Christian Era.

On the east slope of Lower Gypsades hill, about 100 metres west of the Temple Tomb, a chamber tomb came to light in August 1958, when a cutting for a new water pipe was driven through the area (A in Plate 9 a). In the course of this operation, part of a plain larnax (iii) was sliced off, and much earth removed from the west end of the collapsed chamber: at no point, however, had the municipal workmen penetrated to the tomb floor.

The chamber was approached by a sloping dromos (Plate 9 a: length 2·80 metres; max. width 1 metre), roughly cut into the natural kouskouras rock: its walls were approximately perpendicular. Although the gradient varied a good deal, there was no suggestion of a stairway.

The blocking wall was found in good condition. Of especial interest were the numerous fragments of larnakes that had been built into its fabric: some of them could be recognized as belonging to each of the three fragmentary larnakes (i, ii, v) whose scattered pieces were found below and around the two undisturbed burials in the chamber (iii, iv). We may thus distinguish two periods in the history of the tomb: larnakes i, ii, and v were evidently smashed up in order to make room for iv and iii, which must have been deposited in that order. The debris of v was found under iv, with a few adult bones in its wreckage. Part of i lay on the floor near the south-west corner, where two plain vases (2, 3) were found in situ, hence, also, came most of the fragments of the fine L.M. IIIA 2 stirrup vase (1), although its other pieces were scattered all over the floor of the tomb. This small group of offerings may belong to the disturbed adult skeleton, whose skull lay up against the lower edge of iii. Curiously, some fragments of i and ii were also found above the broken lid of iv (Plate 9 b): perhaps the lid of the later larnax was accidentally smashed at the time of the funeral, in which case the debris from earlier burials could have been piled up above it, as a rough and ready means of protection.

In 1950 the Anastelosis Section of the Greek Archaeological Service began the restoration of the ‘Tomb of Clytemnestra’, Fig., Plate 35. In view of our previous researches on the tomb, Dr. Papademetriou and the Anastelosis Section invited us to observe the work and to collaborate by a careful examination of the threshold and other points. Dr. Papademetriou has already published an account of the work himself, and the following notes with the plan and photographs are offered as a supplement to what he has written. We are much indebted to him for his friendly help.

The stratification of cults at famous sanctuaries of the ancient world, reflected for the most part in their local mythology, has long been interpreted as evidence of the invasion of older by newer gods and religious systems. A religion carried by a conquering race or by a missionary priesthood to alien lands superimposes itself, by force or persuasion, on an indigenous cult: the process is expressed in mythological terms under the figure of a personal combat between the rival gods or of the ‘reception’ of the new god by the old. Eventually either one god or the other succumbs and disappears or is relegated to an inferior position; or, again, the two may be more or less completely identified and fused.

Of the religions of antiquity it is seldom possible to do more than conjecture by what methods and processes these transitions were actually carried out. The paper which follows is an attempt to examine some phenomena of the superimposition of cult in the case of a modern Mahommedan sect—the Bektashi—acting on the sanctuaries of the mixed populations of Turkey and in particular on Christian saint-cults. So far as we can see, where Bektashism has gained ground at the expense of Christianity this has been accomplished without violence, either by processes analogous to that known to the ancient world as the ‘reception’ of the new god by the old, or simply by the identification of the two personalities.

The British excavations at Mycenae in 1952 were conducted with a research grant from the American Philosophical Society assisted by contributions from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trustees, and the British School at Athens under whose aegis the work was carried out.

The excavations began on June 30th, and all active digging ceased on August 18th, though several days were needed to clear up everything and transport the finds to the National Museum in Athens and the Nauplia Museum. Of the finds the bronzes, the ivories, the inscribed tablets, and some pottery wanted for special study were taken to Athens and everything else taken to Nauplia and placed in a separate room. Of the pottery the archaic and classical pottery and the terracotta figurines from the sanctuary by the Causeway, from the excavations of 1950 and 1952, and most of the classical and Hellenistic fragments from the Perseia Fountain House are now in Athens. All the prehistoric pottery except for a few select pieces is in the Nauplia Museum.

The Kamares cave on Mount Ida has been known now for more than twenty years as a prehistoric sanctuary, but its full excavation was only carried out in the summer of 1913 by a party from the British School, which thus resumed the work in Crete discontinued since Palaikastro gave way to Sparta in 1906. This early fame of the cave was due to the discovery in it in the early nineties of a number of vases and a few figurines, which Dr. Hazzidakis secured from the shepherd who had found them and placed in what was then the Museum of the Archaeological Syllogos at Candia. Some of the vases bear the marks of the rivets with which their peasant owner mended them.

The results of our excavation have so greatly supplemented this first instalment that the authorities of the Candia Museum have been able to do a great deal in the way of the reconstruction of vases, of which until now only small pieces were available, and these restorations have been put at our service for the photographs which accompany this report.

As soon as these vases were discovered they were at once recognised as belonging to a kind until then almost entirely unknown, and the name ‘Kamares,’ which was at once given to them, still remains current as a general description of that kind of Cretan pottery which has a black ground and white or polychrome ornament, although at the present stage of research rather as a convenient name for the technique than with any chronological meaning.

The passage in Herodotos which above all others is written as if to provide a test on their own ground of the historical application of archaeological discoveries is v, 88, 2: ᾿Αττικὸν δὲ μήτε τι ἄλλο προσφέρειν πρὸς τοἱπόν μήτε κέραμον, ἀλλ᾿ ἐκ χυτρίδων ἐπιχωριέων νόμον τὸ λοιπὸν αὐτόθι εῖναι πίνειν The archaeological results of the victory of Argives and Aiginetans over Athenians are given thus:—

(1) The change of dress in Athens from Doric to Ionic.

(2) the νόμος made by the Argives and Aiginetans, that their pins should be increased to half as large again;

(3) that these pins should be dedicated in the sanctuary of Damia and Auxesia;

(4) that no Attic pot should be brought into the sanctuary.

When I was at Candia in the autumn of 1913, Dr. Hatzidakis, the Ephor of Antiquities, told me that a report had reached him of a Minoan site near the village of Pláti in the plain of Lasithi, and suggested that the School should apply for a permit to excavate it. Before leaving Crete I made a preliminary inspection of the site, and the prospects seemed to justify the School in undertaking the work. The local account was that a woman had had a dream that by digging in a certain place a church bell would be found. The villagers accordingly dug a hole in the place indicated, and found not a bell but an early piece of wall and some fragments of obsidian. A report of the discovery was made to the authorities by the scholarch of Tsermiádo, the chief village of Lasithi, and it was this document to which Dr. Hatzidakis called my attention.

The usual kindness of the Cretan authorities produced the required permit, and by the 25th of April the site had been measured by the government engineer in accordance with the law now in force, and we were able to begin the work. This lasted for exactly a month, until the 25th of May, the number of men employed being for the most part about thirty, and resulted in the discovery of the Minoan settlement described in the second section of this report. The party consisted of Messrs. J. P. Droop, R. M. Heath, and M. L. W. Laistner with the Director in charge throughout.

The British excavations of Mycenae in 1954 were conducted with research grants from the American Philosophical Society and Bollingen Foundation and with contributions from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, the British Academy, and the British School at Athens, under whose auspices the work was carried out. The Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton has again provided an ideal base for preparing the material for publication.

The work began on June 21st and ceased on August 16th, but the next days up to August 21st were spent in studying and photographing the finds and transporting them to the Nauplia Museum. As before, the inscribed clay tablets and the carved ivories were taken to the National Museum at Athens, to the Director of which, Dr. Karouzos, we owe our best thanks for his friendly help, and the other finds to Nauplia.

The staff of the excavation, in addition to my wife, who again took charge of the records, and myself, consisted of Lord William Taylour of Trinity College, Cambridge, Mrs. R. Stillwell, Miss Elizabeth Wace of Newnham College, Cambridge, Mr. T. Leslie Shear, Jr., of Lawrenceville School, Miss Mary Pym of Girton College, Cambridge, Mr. Herschel Shepard of Princeton University, who was architect, Miss B. Kistruck of Edinburgh University, and Miss Helen Higson of Newnham College, Cambridge.

George Finlay died at the age of seventy-five on 24 January a hundred years ago and I am honoured to pay tribute to this distinguished Scottish scholar and philhellene on the occasion of his centenary. It is indeed fitting that this should take place in the School which possesses many of his books and papers.

It might well be asked why there has as yet—to the best of my knowledge—been no full biography of Finlay. A glance at the available material may suggest the answer. What are usually known as the Finlay Papers housed in the British School comprise a formidable collection. Perhaps the best-known items are the so-called Journals. They are in part genuine journals in the sense of a day to day record, particularly of Finlay's experiences when travelling round the Aegean, or in Turkey, or on a visit to Scotland, journeying via Malta and France or Switzerland.

During the Archaic period in Greece, many small centres were at work, producing bronze statuettes for local use. The existence of these centres has only been partially recognised and their history has still to be written. By the second quarter of the fifth century, most of them had been absorbed by the large industries, such as Argos, Corinth and Sikyon; just so, at a somewhat earlier date, the manufacture of vases in nearly all other Greek towns gave way before the vases of Athens.

The bronzes of Arcadia belong to one of the few local groups that has not been overlooked. Sections of it have come under the notice of more than one scholar, though it has never been surveyed completely.

It is one of the most vital, since it began to show its independent character as early as the seventh century, and it survived the competition of such overpowering neighbours as Argos and Corinth throughout the fifth. In the sixth century it was very productive and very individual in style. It is, therefore, easy to recognise. All these points claim our interest. But the bronzes themselves, peasants carrying their sheep and calves, dressed in high hats and embroidered cloaks, gods and goddesses in the likeness of Arcadian shepherds and Arcadian girls,—these not only interest but also delight us by their naïve charm and their fitness to the Arcadian uplands from which they come.

I. The Ayiofarango Valley

E1 (M, GR, BM)

A terrace at about the 200 m. contour, east of and above the road from Kaloi Limenes to A. Kyriaki, c. 100 m. from the point where the road crosses the watershed into the catchment area. The terrace is c. 150 m. (N.-S.) by 50 m. (E.-W.), bounded on the east by steep, bare upward gradients, and on the west by a steep downward slope covered only with low scrub. Two possible stretches of wall were found on the western slope, but the only certain structural remains were a modern sheep pen and a circular wall, c. 1–5 m. in diameter, which appeared to be a filled-in well. Abraded sherds were quite common on the western slope, but scarcer on the terrace.

At the Director's invitation I was at Sparta for the two months' campaign of 1927, and had the opportunity of studying the pottery found on the Acropolis hill in the four seasons of 1924–27, a deposit that doubtless consisted of offerings to the shrine of Athena Chalkioikos.

The fact that the deposit was not a natural growth but an imported filling (B.S.A. xxvi. p. 252) precluded any observable stratification. Thus there was no hope of obtaining a check on the views as to the development and dating of the Sparta pottery that were based twenty years ago on the stratification found at the shrine of Artemis Orthia. The most that could be hoped for was further light on the details of the style at the various periods.

The town of Amastra (anc. Amastris, med. Samastro), one of the most important of the ancient Greek colonies on the Euxine, and later a Genoese trading-post, lies on the neck and landward slopes of a steep peninsula forming a safe harbour on either side. The peninsula is connected by a bridge with an adjacent island, on which are a few houses still protected on the harbour side by the mediaeval town-wall. The bridge is defended on either side by a gate-tower, and the city proper and castle, which are on the peninsula, retain their lofty walls and towers, built of squared blocks evidently plundered from Roman ruins (Fig. 1). Despite this plundering and the recent construction of the new road (still unfinished in 1910) to Bartin, extensive ancient remains still survive above ground on the mainland opposite the town, notably the large Roman building of brick and opus reticulatum called the Bezestein, two columns of a temple or mausoleum, many built tombs, and considerable remains of masonry embankment and vaulting about the stream which debouches into the smaller (W.) harbour. Saving the change of ownership, the place has altered but little since Clavijo's description in 1404:—

‘The town of Samastro belongs to the Genoese, and is near the sea…. on a very high hill. Opposite this hill, but more inland, there is another on which the town is built; and from one hill to another there is a great arch, like a bridge, by which people pass, and it has two gates, one at each end.

In 1889 Petrie discovered and cleared a tomb at Kahun in the Fayum, Egypt. It contained a succession of burials in coffins and boxes which had not been disturbed after the final interment. Principally on the evidence of a large collection of beads, Petrie dated the use of the tomb to the Nineteenth-Twentieth Dynasties. This was queried by von Bissing, and after reconsidering the finds, Petrie decided that the tomb has been used during the reign of Tuthmosis III (1504– 1450 B.C.). Since then the tomb has usually been referred to as approximately or possibly of the reign of Tuthmosis III, and in his study of the sixteen Cypriote pots from the tomb Merrillees says there can be no doubt that all the interments were made during the reign ofthat pharaoh.

The aim of this paper is to establish as closely as possible the period of the use of the tomb, and to place in its context a small Mycenaean IIB squat jar, the only Aegean object found in the tomb.

Although Chios and its antiquities have been visited and described by many travellers from the earliest times, it is only recently that any serious archaeological investigations have been carried out in the island, and up to the present only two sites have been thoroughly excavated. Dr. Kourouniotis, who carried out the first excavation on Chios, gives a list, in ἈρΧ. Δελτ. I, p. 64, of the more important references to the island up to the time of that article, and for a complete list the reader is referred to the Bibliography of Chios by Dr. Philip Argenti (Oxford, Clarendon Press).

Since Dr. Kourouniotis wrote there have been several articles published in various periodicals, almost all on the epigraphy of Chios, and his list should now be supplemented by the following: Plassart and Picard, BCH XXXVII 193; A. Reinach, REG XXII pp. 193–4; Rehm, Gnomon II p. 124; Evangelides Ἀpχ· Δελτ. IX παράρτημα p. 51; Αρχ· Δελτ. XI παράρτημα 23 (and cf. Keil, Jahreshefte XIV p. 54); Arch. Anz. XLV p. 144; Peek, Ἀρχ. Ἐφ.

The building accounts of Epidauros are among the most interesting architectural and economic records of the Classical and Early Hellenistic period. It has rarely been recognized that they deserve to rank alongside the Athenian, Delphian, and Delian inscriptions, but although the Epidaurian material is slighter in bulk than the Delian, and covers a smaller area (politically and economically speaking) than the Athenian, it provides a far more comprehensive picture of that most important cultural activity, temple building. The Epidaurian inscriptions indicate the means by which one Greek city converted its sanctuary into a panhellenic cult-centre, that of the healing god Asklepios, during a period of a hundred years or so from about 370 B.C. onwards.