In a recent number of the Journal I had occasion to indicate some of the difficulties surrounding the identification of the royal portraits that occur on silver coins accompanied by the simple inscription ΒΑΣΙΛΕΩΣ ΑΝΤΙοχοΥ The object of the article in question was to advocate a change of tactics in dealing with the problem,—to urge the desirability of concentrating attention on well-defined groups which should be subjected to a close and comprehensive scrutiny. As an illustration of the line of treatment proposed, there was selected for detailed examination the set of coins composed of tetradrachms on which the diadem worn by the king is furnished with wings. While certain of the inferences tentatively suggested on the strength of this examination have not been universally accepted, the more positive and important of the conclusions reached remain uncontroverted.

During the past year no sensational discoveries have been made by the spade in the Greek area except at Sardes. Excavations in progress have been continued, old excavations re-studied, and a number of smaller sites explored. Symptomatic of the prominence forced upon ceramics by the interest shewn latterly in prehistoric archaeology is the tendency to apply the same methods to the historic period and especially to recognise more fully the value of tomb-groups as chronological data. The disturbed state of the Aegean has been responsible for the postponement of the British School's excavation at Datcha, which is unfortunately in the area immediately affected.

To any student of early Greek bronze ornament the works of Dr. Furtwaengler on the Olympian bronzes must be well known, and as he has dealt at length with the development of patterns on bronzes, and as every day fresh evidence seems to be coming up which serves to confirm his views, there is no necessity for me here to do anything more than recount shortly the general characteristics and nature of this class of bronzes from the Acropolis. These, like those of Olympia, may be divided into two main classes according as they belong to the geometric or the oriental style; while a cross distinction may also be drawn between engraved or stamped ornament and relief. Originally however these two distinctions seem to have been one and the same, the geometric corresponding to the engraved or stamped technique, and the oriental generally to the relief; but later we find each of these forms of ornament translated into the other technique. The original distinction however is due to two main causes, the quality of the bronze used in the two factories and the nature of the objects principally produced in them. The bronze of geometric ornament is much harder and more brittle than that of oriental, which is soft but very tough: to work geometric bronze into repoussé relief would be almost impossible, while the finer quality of the oriental is peculiarly suitable to such a technique. Thus it is often possible simply from the feel of a bronze fragment to decide which factory it came from.

In the excavations made by Mr. Hogarth in 1902 at Zakro on the east coast of Crete a very large quantity of pottery was found. The article in B.S.A. vol. vii., describing the excavation in general, contains a first report on this pottery, and more recently three vases have been published by Mr. Hogarth in J.H.S. xxii. p. 333. The task of making a fuller report was undertaken by Mr. J. H. Marshall, but he was unable to complete it. The preliminary sorting which he had done I found was of the greatest use to me when I began work on the pottery. I have also had the advantage of Mr. Hogarth's advice and correction in preparing this paper, for which I wish to express my thanks.

A reference to Mr. Hogarth's original report in B.S.A. vii. p. 121, will shew that the pottery came from several distinct sources.

This article is intended not only to record additions and corrections to Island Gems (published by the Hellenic Society in 1963 as its tenth Supplementary Volume; here abbreviated IGems), but also to discuss a class of engraved stones which was not properly distinguished in that book. The main series of Island Gems belongs to the seventh and early sixth centuries B.C. Most of the stones and a few of their devices copy Bronze Age forms, and the material is generally a distinctive, often translucent, green serpentine (‘steatite’). This series ends in the first half of the sixth century, but it was possible to identify, by their material and technique, some later gems from Island workshops which correspond in style and shape with the contemporary Greek scarabs in harder materials. The comparatively soft material had meant that the intaglio devices on Island gems could be cut without recourse to the drill or cutting wheel, and this technique was retained for the later scarabs. It is evident, however, that for a while already in the sixth century Island artists had experimented with the harder materials then being employed for engraved seals in Greece; and with some shapes which seem to compromise between the old and the new. These stones seem to belong to the middle and second half of the sixth century. A list follows:

(i) Oxford 1925.129. plate I. Green steatite tapered scaraboid with convex face. L. 20 (mm.). A lion. IGems no. 349, fig. 6, pl. 13.

(ii) Athens, from Sunium. plate I. Green steatite. Shape as the last. L. 20. Contorted bull-headed man. IGems no. 350, pl. 13.

(iii) Paris, Bibl. Nat., ex Louvre C 8514. Rock crystal plump lentoid. W. 18. Summary representation of a winged horse.

(iv) Boston 27.678 (once Bruschi, Warren), plate I. Chalcedony lentoid with domed back and shallow convex face. W. 21. Facing head of a satyr with fillet ends behind the ears and an arrow marking at the centre of the forehead.

I propound a question which I cannot answer. The period at which the Greek minuscule hand came into the world withdraws itself from direct evidence, and can only be approached by induction from dates apparently considerably distant. I have, however, facts to detail which do not seem to have been combined elsewhere, and which admit of a conclusion which I believe has not been drawn. And though the conclusion may not be right, the subject is of enough importance to justify a guess. With all the discoveries of papyrus and the survivals of uncial, the minuscule hand of the ninth to the sixteenth centuries is that in which we read nearly all our Greek classics, and imitated by the first printers has given us our present-day Greek type and modern Greek writing.

No tradition remained in Greece of the place, manner, or date of the origin of this hand. Of late a mistranscription of a sentence in the fourteenth century MS. Canonici graec. 23 by Cramer (An. Ox. iv. 400. 5) has given rise to some singular speculations (Gardthausen, Gr. Pal., p. 205).

In the literature of the Elgin Collection there is not infrequent reference to the ‘Tomb of Aspasia’ and its contents, which are of interest. The name, however, as I show below, has not even such measure of authority as may be supposed to attach to a local tradition.

During Philip Hunt's stay at Athens, his attention was called to a large tumulus in the Attic plain, and he made arrangements for its excavation. ‘The Calmuck,’ he wrote to Lord Elgin, November 28, 1802, ‘is to begin his excavation of a Tumulus near the Piraeus tomorrow.’ When Lord Elgin visited Athens in January, 1803, on his homeward journey from Constantinople, he sent men from the Diana frigate to continue the excavation, the Diana being the man-of-war in which, as a returning Ambassador, he made his passage.

Nothing apparently was found at this attempt. Indeed the tumulus was much too large an undertaking for such cursory treatment. Fifteen months later the work was taken up again by Lusieri, who reported to Lord Elgin (May 18, 1804) that while he was for the time being excluded from the Acropolis, he was employing the workmen ‘in excavations in various places, not without success.’ This is followed by the account of the excavation ‘du grand tombeau dans les vignes pour aller au Pirée,’ which has been already printed in this Journal.