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workmanship, representing this powerful deity of the foreign sea people with whom the predynastic Nilotes no doubt often fought. This, by the way, points to the conclusion that Baby- lonian (Sumerian) culture and art were considerably older than the Egyptian; but we have no definite evidence yet on this point. 24

Later points of artistic connexion may be seen when we compare the well-known bronze statues of Pepi I. and his son found at Hierakonpolis by Quibell with the copper lions dis- covered at Tell el 'Obeid near Ur by Hall two years ago. 25 Dr. Reisner is of opinion that copper was first used in Egypt, and bronze certainly seems to have been used there first. The lions of 'Obeid date from about the Ur-Nina period of Baby- lonian history, i.e. about 3000 B.C. or a century or two earlier; the Pepi statues are two or three centuries later. We see how- ever the similarity of the metal-working of both countries at approximately the same time; both are in the same style of artistic development, the Egyptian perhaps the more advanced of the two, and (if the published analysis by Mosso is to be relied upon) with the additional technique of the alloy with tin, making the metal bronze, and so easier for the heads to be cast. The Sumerians cast the heads of their lions in copper, not always with successful results, and filled them with bitumen and clay (like the image in " Bel and the Dragon," which was " clay within and brass without ") to give them solidity. The bodies (or so much of them as ever existed, as only the fore parts remained) were hammered and wrought, like the bodies of the Egyptian figures. The eyes in both cases were inlaid, those of the lions with red jasper, white shell and blue schist: this imita- tion of the eyes in stone as well as metal figures was a feature common to both arts, which were at this time assuredly not with- out direct or indirect connexion. Whence the Egyptians and a little later on the Babylonians got their tin for the alloy we do not yet know.

The question as to whether copper really was first used in Egypt is not yet resolved, and many arguments can be brought against the theory of Egyptian origin and in favour of one in Syria or further north. 26

Egypt has also recently been credited with being the inceptor of the whole " megalithic (or heliolithic, as the fashionable word now is) culture " of mankind, from Britain to China and (literally) Peru or at any rate Mexico via the Pacific Isles. 27 The theory is that the achievements of the Egyptians in great stone architecture at the time of the pyramid-builders so im- pressed their contemporaries that they were imitated in the sur- rounding lands, by the Libyans and Syrians, that the fame of them was carried by the Phoenicians further afield, and that early Arab and Indian traders passed on the megalithic idea to Farther India, and thence to Polynesia and so on so that both the teocalli of Teotihuacan and Stonehenge are ultimately derived through cromlechs and dolmens innumerable from the stone pyramid of Saqqara, built by Imhotep, the architect of King Zoser, about 3100 B.C. (afterwards deified as the patron of science and architecture). This theory of Prof. Elliot Smith's is very plausible and " fascinating," but whether it will prove to be true remains to be seen. The Babylonians apparently refused to be impressed by the Egyptians in this matter, and went on building temples in brick, probably for the good reason that they could not get any stone. The only stone building in southern Babylonia is the town wall of Eridu (Abu Shahrein), which is built of rude lumps of a local coral rag. 28 The granites and dolerites from Magan were too fine and too expensive to build with.

Megalithic town walls were naturally common in that stony land, Palestine, and very typical specimens of them were found in the Palestine Exploration Fund's excavations at Bethshemesh ('Ain Shems) directed by Dr. Duncan Mackenzie, 29 whose work also threw new light on the phenomenon of the appearance in Palestine between the I2th and icth centuries B.C. of sub- Mycenaean (Greek) pottery, which can only be ascribed to the Philistines, whose historical position as a foreign invading force from the Aegean area (Lycia and Crete-Kaphtor) is now entirely vindicated. 30 Another important excavation in Pales-

tine in the period preceding the World War was that of Dr. Reisner at Samaria, which is not yet fully published. Very interesting examples of Israelite written inscriptions on potsherds, dating from the gth century B.C. and probably from the reign of Ahab, were found that are of great palaeographical impor- tance. 31 Continued work at Samaria should reveal some trace of the civilization of Israel, which we know was considerable, unless the devastation of the Assyrian sieges has destroyed it all. This is possibly the case with regard to the older culture of Canaan in the preceding millennium, of which Palestinian ex- cavations have yielded few traces, though we know it existed. 32 War destroyed it: Palestine was the cockpit of Asia. An in- teresting discovery seems to have been made in the identifica- tion by Drs. Gardiner and Cowley of the earliest Semitic script in the hieroglyphic signs found in Sinai. 33

Since the war a new British school of archaeology in Jerusalem has been founded under the direction of Prof. Garstang, who has begun for the Palestine Exploration Fund excavations at Ascalon, which have resulted in the discovery of interesting late buildings 34 and this year (1921) in that of a statue of Herod the Great. It is to be hoped that continued work will discover traces of the Philistine period at Ascalon, and relics of the same age will no doubt be discovered at Bethshan (Beisan), for a time the furthest eastward outpost of the Philistines, which is about to be explored by the American School at Jerusalem. The new conditions in Palestine should be very favourable to archaeo- logical work there, and it is to be hoped that in Syria the French will give every facility for international work.

The future of archaeological study in Mesopotamia depends upon the political conditions, which have not hitherto been considered favourable to the resumption of excavation in that country. The great' German excavations at Babylon 35 and Assur (Qal'at Sherqat), 36 under the direction of Koldewey and Andrae, will probably not be resumed for many years. They were admirable work, and at Sherqat especially have produced results of the greatest historical and archaeological importance. We now know something of the early history of Assyria and of the succession of Mer kings from monuments found at Sherqat. It is not, however, proposed to give here a list of the newly discovered names w of the Babylonian kings on tablets from Nippur, published by Poebel ** and others, as results of this kind belong to the realm of history rather than to that of archaeology. The new series of " Creation " and " Deluge " tablets from Nippur, published by Poebel & Langdon, 39 also belong to the realm of the historian and anthropologist rather than to that of the archaeologist, so are merely mentioned here; the excavation in which they were found being now ancient history. In Mesopo- tamia more than any other country literary results have been regarded as archaeology, owing to the enormous mass of the written material recovered, which has caused the study of the art and general civilization of different periods to be neglected in comparison with the same subjects in Egypt.

In Egypt the succession to the work of the Deutsch-Orient Gesellschaft, which excavated Babylon and Assur, has fallen to the Egypt Exploration Society, which has taken up the excava- tion at Tell el Amarna where it was laid down by the Germans at the outbreak of war, after they had recovered from the house- ruins several wonderfully fine examples of the art of the period of Akhenaton, now in Berlin. 40 The first season's labour, under the direction of Prof. T. E. Peet, resulted in interesting discoveries, some of which tend to show that the cult of the Aten or Solardisk was not so rigidly enforced by the heretic king Akhenaton as has been supposed, and that ordinary people were allowed to worship other gods than the sun-disk, at any rate in connexion with funerary ceremonies. The great excavation of the Osireion at Abydos, begun for the Society (then the Egypt Exploration Fund) by Prof. Edouard Naville, 41 but suspended owing to the war, it has not been possible to resume at present, owing to the commitments of the Amarna site and the heavy expense of such work as that at the Osireion, which cannot yet be contemplated. This building, the date of which is not yet finally settled, though its excavator believes it to be of the Old