The fifth campaign on the Palace Site of Knossos had a twofold objective:—(I) The continued exploration of the Palace itself, with the special object of ascertaining its original elements, on which the Cists and Repositories found in 1903 had already thrown so much light; (2) the further investigation of dependencies lying beyond what may be called the inner enceinte. In addition to this, the discovery of an extensive Minoan Cemetery and of a Royal Tomb went greatly to swell the volume of the year's excavation.

A series of inscriptions, most of which are unfortunately in a very fragmentary condition, records the victories won by teams of Spartan ballplayers. As two of these have not yet been published while the others have never been grouped together, my present object is to collect the texts in question, restoring them as far as possible, and to add a short statement of the main facts which we can gather from them regarding the contest referred to.

On May 22nd 1904, one of the workmen engaged on the restoration of the Erechtheion noticed an inscribed fragment of white marble lying on the surface of the ground a little to the west of that temple. It was afterwards deposited in the Acropolis Museum, where I was able to take a copy and a squeeze by the kind permission of Mr. D. Philios, Ephor of the Acropolis, to whom my warm thanks are due for giving me permission to publish the inscription, as also to Mr. G. P, Stevens of the American School at Athens, who first drew my attention to the discovery of the stone. The fragment in question is 15 m. long, 14 m. broad and 10 m. thick, and contains portions of ten lines.

These notes are for the most part devoted to questions of phonetics, dealing more with Lautlehre than with Formenlehre, and do not pretend to give a complete account of the dialect. I have thought this side of the subject most worth developing, because it is that which native collectors, excellent from the sides of lexicography and literature, are apt to neglect.

The dialect of Karpathos belongs to the south-eastern or south-Sporadic group of modern Greek dialects, which extends over Cyprus, Rhodes, Kos, Kalymnos, and other islands as far north as Chios. Its connexion with Cretan has also been recognized.

In discussing the so-called Alexandrian Grotesques in a paper in this Annual last year I expressed the opinion that they should be assigned to Campanian art. I have, however, since then been enabled to study these grotesques more closely; and have in consequence been led to modify my former opinion very considerably. Though these grotesques were very popular in Italy during the late republican and the imperial periods, they were by no means peculiar to the west. They fall naturally into several classes, which, for convenience, are here given in tabular form.

§ 1. A Welcome addition to our knowledge of this language, the pre-Hellenic speech of Praesos and therefore the direct representative, according to all the traditions, of that spoken at the Court of Minos, was made in the continued explorations of the Altar-hill of Praesos by the British School in June 1904. As the nomos-fragment was found among débris which had fallen from the temple on the top of that hill, Mr. Bosanquet set himself to explore a line of ‘pockets,’ or vertical cavities in the rock along the side of the hill, some distance below the summit. One of these was choked with large pieces of rock which he removed by blasting; and he was rewarded by the discovery underneath of the new and most interesting inscription reproduced here.

Die Aegyptische Abteilung der königlichen museen zu Berlin besitzt seit dem Jahre 1897 einen altaegyptischen Pflug. Da dieser bisher noch nicht in brauchbarer Form veröffentlicht ist, benutze ich gern die freundliche Aufforderung, ihn hier abzubilden und dabei einiges zu bemerken, was mir bei der Durchsicht des in den Museen erhaltenen oder auf Denkmälern dargestellten ähnlichen Materials aufgefallen ist.

Der Pflug stammt aus der bekannten Nekropole von Drah abu-l-negga auf der Westseite von Theben. Genaueres über die Auffindung und das Grab, in dem er gefunden ist, liess sich indessen nicht ermitteln.

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.

On p. 240 sqq. of the B.S.A. Annual, vol. viii., Mr. R. C. Bosanquet has described a tomb opened by him at Praesos during the excavations of 1901. The tomb had originally been of the ‘beehive’ type though the upper portion had been broken before the excavators opened it. The layer of earth constituting the original floor of the tomb was covered to a depth of nearly two feet with a tightly packed deposit of broken pottery, whilst in a small vestibule leading into the tomb from the dromos a few better preserved vases were found. Owing to the confusion caused by the later use of the tomb and by the fall of the roofing stones it is difficult to make out any stratification in the deposit, but on the analogy of the Menidi tomb Mr. Bosanquet would explain the large quantity of pottery found here as the result of a long period of hero-worship. The bulk of the pottery is of the Geometric period and comprises a sequence of at least several generations. Nothing of indisputably Mycenaean date was found in the tomb, and the latest objects that came to light were two small fragments of red-figure ware.

The subjoined photograph, Fig. 1, very kindly taken for me by Mr. E. R. Ayrton, is, as far as I am aware, the first published of the important fresco of Keftiu (Minoan Cretans?) in the tomb of the architect Senmut at Egyptian Thebes. The three left-hand vases from this fresco were reproduced in colour (not altogether correctly) by Prisse D'Avennes in his monumental work on the History of Ancient Egyptian Art (Art Industriel: Vases des Tributaires de Kafa, 9, 2), and tracings of his drawings were published by Prof. Steindorff, Arch. Anz. 1892, by Mr. W. M. Müller in his Asien und Europa, p. 349, and by me in my Oldest Civilization of Greece, pp. 53, 54. Other tracings of Prisse d'Avennes' reproductions have also appeared. In my article on Keftiu and the Peoples of the Sea in the eighth volume of the Annual of the British School at Athens, pp. 172, 173, Figs. 4–8, I published drawings of four of the vases shewn in this photograph and a fragment of a fifth (which does not appear in it), from sketches made by me at Thebes three years ago.

I propose in this paper to give some account of the topography and existing remains of the district lying between the range of Taygetus and the eastern coast of the Messenian Gulf. The ground covered extends from Pyrgos on the south, some eight kilometres south of Areopolis, to Kalamata.

The sea border of the eastern shore of the Messenian Gulf consists of a narrow shelf of land lying along the foot of Taygetus, which here approaches everywhere nearer to the sea than on the side of the Laconian Gulf. It is everywhere mountainous, and in many places the outlying spurs of Taygetus run abruptly into the sea. Harbours are not infrequent, those of Limeni and Kardamyle being the safest and most commodious. The rivers are mere mountain torrents; water is scarce; the land is everywhere infertile, except here and there, where either a small stretch of plain borders the shore, as at Levctro, or a high plateau overlooks the sea, as at Koutiphari and Platsa; the rich valley of Kampos in the north is the only instance of an inland plain.

I. Pyrgos: ruined Church of ῾´Αγ.Θεράπων S.E. of village. Funeral stele of red marble, ·35 m. × ·27 m., with apex of pedimental form: letters ·02 m

Γοργιπὶς χαῖρε

For single π cp. Collitz-Bechtel, 4583, 4585a, and Wünsch, Defixionum Tabellae, 36 et saepeΚύδιπος Λεύκιπος etc.).

2. Do.: Church of ῾´Αγ. Γεώργιος N.W. of village. Funeral stele of red marble, ·38 m. x·27 m., letters ·017 m.: built in above door and with cross cut on it.

Κλεπάτρα χαῖρε

Κλεπάτρα for Κλεοπάτρα cp. Θέγειτος(=Θεόγειτος=Θεογείτων) Ath. Mitt. i. 234, No. 7: Θεδωρίς (=Θεοδωρίς) Paris, Elatée, 282, No. 2: Θέτιμος Θέδωρος I.G. vii. saepe: see Meister, Griech. Dialekte, i. 248.

In the last volume of the Annual Mr. Heaton Comyn published a description and drawings of this ruined monastery, which lies hidden away among the woods on one of the south-eastern spurs of Mount Pentelicus. It seems worth while to add what little is known of its history, and also some notes on its construction. For the latter I have to thank Mr. Pieter Rodeck, whose extensive knowledge of Byzantine churches enables him to speak with authority.

The rapid increase of our knowlege of prehistoric Aegean antiquities has inevitably brought with it the necessity for repeated amplification of nomenclature. In Schliemann's day, and for some time after, ‘Mycenaean’ seemed easily to cover the field. Presently ‘Proto- and Pre-Mycenaean’ had to be invented. Until lately in Crete all bronze-age fabrics were divided (and the division was taken as chronological as well as according to style), into Kamáres and Mycenaean, although considerable overlapping was observed. This division, though roughly not untrue of the bulk of the pottery, is now found to be too general.

Although the slopes of the καστρί had been rifled by native diggers there were indications on the southern side, at a site called Τὰ ῾Ελληνικά that something still remained. The trial pits struck at once two small burial-enclosures, lying close together. The northern of the two proved to be a structure some six by seven metres, with the western wall lacking, divided into two unequal compartments.

A little west of the town-site lies a hillock called τὸ Kεφαλάκι or τοῦ Kονᾶ τὸ Kεφάλι the Kονᾶδες being a family living at Karýdhi, to whom the land formerly belonged. The west side and top of the hillock are rocky, but on the better covered east and north slopes ancient walls crop up above the surface. The owner of the field on the south side was known to have improved his land by pulling out blocks of stone, but enough ground was left on the east and north with traces of walls to make it plain that a group of houses lay beneath the surface.

The region of the fifth house in this block (rooms 36–43 on the plan), only partly dug last year, has now been fully cleared. The remains were found to consist chiefly of a house destroyed by fire early in the Late Minoan II. period. This house was extremely rich in finds. It was built on the site of a Middle Minoan house, scanty remains of which were found beneath the floor, chiefly near the entrance on the main street. Lastly, a few walls at a higher level testify to the re-occupation of the site, possibly in Hellenic times.

This large block, covering about 650 sq. m., lies to the south of Block ε on the slope of the hillock that overlooks the town on the south. Bounded on three sides by streets, towards the south the remains become gradually thinner, disappearing with the rise of the ground and the shallower soil. The superposition of one wall upon another, and the objects found at different levels, enable us to distinguish at least three separate strata of habitation. To begin from the top, a few finds point to houses as late as Late Minoan III. b, that is, to the period of the latest floor-deposits in Block γ.

South-east of the part of this block now excavated, the ground falls away rapidly in a terraced slope, and all remains seem to have disappeared. In this direction a limit, or at all events a break, in the continuity of the town has been reached.

Of the first house all that is left is a row of rooms on the East side of Street ξ—π. These rooms go down to a considerable depth, and the remains in them are of the Late Minoan I period, although traces of floor levels some way up the walls show that they formed part of a house occupied at a later date. Above them at the north end of the row is a room at a higher level, probably belonging to the latest period of the town when the rise in level had led to the building of the steps that block the street just north of this point.

On the hillock to the south of the town a preliminary trial had brought to light a fine vase, and the commanding nature of this part of the site made it a likely position for a fine house. So, notwithstanding the shallowness of the soil as revealed by trial-pits, an area of some 600 sq. m. (Blocks ς and ύ on the plan) was cleared on the highest part of the knoll. The work was well repaid by the discovery of the two exquisitely carved ivory statuettes of boys, which are to be published later, but apart from these nothing of great importance was found.