We must bear in mind two fundamental facts, which are basic to the theme of this paper: first, that Egypt more than any other land has influenced the Minoan-Mycenaean civilisation, and second, that the free adaptation and fusion of Egyptian motives is a typical phenomenon of Aegean art and mentality.

Something has already been written about Egyptian influence in the art of the Shaft Graves of Mycenae. I hope to show, in a forthcoming paper, that this connection is even greater, extending its influence not only in art (in just that point the influence is not great), but also and especially in material matters and in deep religious and funerary ideas. Here we will discuss a very well known and ‘curious’ object of early Mycenaean art, the gold and silver pin from the Third Shaft Grave (Fig. 1).

The inscriptions discussed are: (i) that on the prytany monument Agora xv. 44, (ii) EM 13056, officials for the cult of Athene Pallenis, and (iii) some rock-cut horos inscriptions from the vicinity of Thiti and on Kaminia and Alepovouni. In (i) it is argued that the two additional lines calculated for the completion of column x (referring to Antiochis) were not for ‘missing’ demes but to mark off the trittyes from each other; (ii) presents a discussion of the parasitoi, identified as individuals of high status, and of the sets of archontes; (iii) are taken to refer to a new concern in Hellenistic times with the boundaries between areas of value for agriculture or grazing. The implication of these for the study of the Kleisthenic system of trittyes and demes is argued.

In a rescue excavation in the Demetrokali plot in the Chora of Naxos, part of a building complex, with a paved road, was discovered. Characteristic vases are presented (local imitations, and imports of Minoan types) which date the unit to the LC II period and show that Naxos at that time formed part of the network of communications with Crete and the eastern Aegean.

This shell applique in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford was acquired by Evans in Crete in 1894. He was told that it came from the Mesara, but there is no evidence to link it with the Ayios Onoufrios deposit. The material is Aegean Spondylus gaederopus L., not Tridacna from the Red Sea. The plaque is probably Cretan work of the period of the Early Palaces (Middle Minoan I–II), not Early Minoan or Archaic Greek as Evans at different times believed. It seems to represent, not a negro or ‘negroid’ as often claimed, but a physical type attested by other representations of Bronze Age date in Crete and elsewhere in the Aegean area.

Early in 1921 the Neuchâtel Asphalte Company, in beginning the construction of the new coast road from Old Phaleron to Vouliagmene(see map, Fig. 1), found not far inland from the small promontory of Hagios Kosmas some ancient foundations, and by them the inscription, which is here published. The discovery was communicated by Mr. Bottomley, Manager of the Company, to the British School, and to him I am indebted for permission to publish it, and also for the sketch plan of the ancient foundations here shown (Fig. 2). On the top of a low hill the line of a wall (about 1·50 m. thick) of the late fifth or fourth century B.C., built of rectangular blocks of poros, appeared, and on the top of this the inscription was found as indicated in the plan (Fig. 2). Slightly north of the inscription was a large block running out westwards at right angles to the main wall. If the main wall is the boundary of the Shrine of Dionysos mentioned in the inscription, it is possible that this big block formed part of the shrine itself. In any case it seems likely that we should recognise in these remains, scanty though they are, the ruins of the Dionysion in which the inscription was to be erected. On the south side of the road a double tomb came to light (Fig. 2). In the upper tomb, which was covered by a large tile so curved that it was in section half an ellipse, a small aryballos with a simple anthemion ornament in a very late red-figure style was found with a few much-decayed bones, perhaps those of a child; but in the lower tomb, which was made of two shallow rectangular troughs of terra-cotta, there were only a few bones. The tomb, which cannot be earlier than the late fifth century B.C., would not be likely to have any connection with the Dionysion, and was in any case outside it.

This article publishes the terracotta thymiateria (incense burners) from Olbia Pontica which represent busts of Aphrodite with Erotes on her shoulders. They were used probably in activities related to Aphrodite's cult for diffusing incense and as votives. They derive from excavations at houses, a stoa and the bothroi (sacrificial pits) at the central and western temene; they date to the period between the late third and the first half of the second centuries bc. The publication of such items coincides with ongoing research into the southern sacral precinct in Olbia dedicated to Aphrodite. This article explores the significance of the iconography of these objects and their use in cult activity related to the cult of Aphrodite at Olbia.

The study of ancient Greek and Latin in Australia and New Zealand, especially at Sydney Church of England Grammar School in New South Wales, produced this century a number of leading scholars who made a major contribution to the study of Old World archaeology in Europe and Australia this century. Among them were V. G. Childe, T. J. Dunbabin, J. R. Stewart and A. D. Trendall. In developing their respective fields of expertise, all spent some time in Greece, as students, excavators, research workers and soldiers, and had formative links with the British School at Athens. Australia's debt to the Classics is reflected not only in the life-long attachment to their legacy, and to Greece, by the former Prime Minister, the Hon. E. G. Whitlam, but in the perpetuation of their influence in such Colonial and modern structures as the monument of Lysicrates in Sydney's Botanic Gardens and the National Library and new Parliament House in Canberra, and in an official poster illustrating multiculturalism in Australia. Despite their role in shaping Australia's European history, the teaching of Classics is under threat as never before, and the late Enoch Powell, at one time Professor of Ancient Greek at the University of Sydney, has stigmatised the obscurantism which threatens to impoverish if not undermine Western civilisation by closing access to knowledge of our Classical past.

The 29 pieces are described and illustrated. Apart from the Ionic capital fragment excavated by the School at Kynosarges, they probably come from a collection made in the nineteenth century by George Finlay, as older Turkish buildings in Athens were demolished. Most are of minor importance, but parallels are adduced from Corinthian capitals in Athens and Corinth. Later capitals belonged to a Turkish house recorded by Danish architects in 1835 and 1851.

In the spring of 1962 workmen digging the foundation shafts for the construction of a house at Atsalenio hit upon two Geometric tombs. Atsalenio is a quarter outside Heraklion, midway between the city centre and Knossos. The site of the tombs, which is the property of the contractors, D. Ritsopoulos and D. Serdherakis, lies about 100 metres to the west of the road to Knossos and about 200 metres to the north of the modern graveyard of Atsalenio. As the tombs were just outside the Knossos area of the British School, although belonging to the Geometric cemeteries of Knossos, I undertook their excavation as Epimelete of the Archaeological Service.

The site of the tombs, like most of the adjacent area, was a vineyard before building began, and the soil was cultivated to a depth of c. 0·7 m. This had destroyed the roofs of the tombs. The digging of the foundation shafts for the building had also destroyed all but the beginning of the dromos of Tomb A and had just reached the upper level of its burials before work was halted. Nearly all Tomb B, too, had been destroyed; the sherds from it were recovered for the most part from the earth thrown out by the builders.

The study of mediaeval, Turkish and modern Greek history now attracts considerable attention in Athens. Important works upon these periods have been recently published by Greek scholars; lectures upon Byzantine history in particular are crowded not merely by students, but also by the general public, and several newspapers make a special feature of articles by specialists on social life in the reign of Otho. In these circumstances it is fortunate that the British School has possessed since 1899 the Finlay library, to which the adjacent library of M. Gennadios, opened in April, now provides a worthy counterpart.

The Finlay library, of which I speak from some two years' work among its shelves, consists, apart from general literature and travels, mainly of four divisions: (1) books used by Finlay for the Byzantine, Trapezuntine, Frankish and Turkish periods of his history; (2) books about the War of Independence and the reign of Otho; (3) a collection of Greek newspapers; and (4) Finlay's review articles, Times' correspondence, diaries and other documents. Of these the first section is nowadays the least important. Since Finlay's death much has been published about the Byzantine, Frankish and Turkish times, and the Empire of Trebizond, which renders some of his sources inadequate or obsolete.

The cuneiform tablet from the Hittite capital Hattusa/Boğazköy, KUB XXIII. 13, reports Hittite warfare in western/north-western Asia Minor around 1240 BC, when the so-called Seha River Land fought against the Hittites and their king Tuthaliyas IV As the date of the war is contemporary with the sack of ‘Mycenaean’ Troy VI, there is a possibility that the conflict described in the tablet could have provided the historical background for the Iliad. Moreover, the etymology of the River Seha seems to be the same as that of the Scamander at Hisarlik, but the Dardanelles could also originally have had that name.

This article argues for a revision of the theories and assumed production methods used in Hellenistic and Roman mosaic glass. Knowing how glass behaved in different circumstances under differing heat processes allowed for the possibility of experimenting and demonstrating the inconsistencies in many of the accepted explanations of mosaic production. Experiments were run to test new production ideas, contrasting the findings with previously suggested production methods. The findings bring into question many of the accepted hypotheses for mosaic production. The evidence and hypotheses formed from the experiments challenge many of the traditionally held ideas for the production of this glass and reinforce the need for experimental and practice-based approaches to this type of work.

Among the more elaborate pieces of purely military history written by Thucydides is the section (of fourteen chapters in the Fifth Book) devoted to that Arkadian campaign of King Agis by which, in the late summer of 418 B.C., he ruined the far-reaching schemes of Alkibiades and restored the tarnished prestige of Sparta. According, to Thucydides, this fortunate achievement was due more to good luck than to good management; not in any wise is it exhibited as the reasonably forecast outcome of cunningly contrived, if somewhat delicately articulated, machinery. Something less than justice is thereby done to one of the most remarkable personages of that time. Both by Thucydides himself, and, after his example, by most modern historians, the Spartan king, in his connexion with these operations at any rate, is pilloried without further question as a bungler, and, indeed, as little better than a fool. It would seem that the time has come to ask whether that verdict is justified.

In the course of the excavations carried on by the School from 1906 to 1910 at Sparta, a considerable quantity was found of the mediæval glazed pottery that is usually called Byzantine. As specimens of this fabric are not common in museums, and its date and general relations are still matters of some doubt, it seems desirable to publish all the pieces of any interest as material for further study, although the writers of this paper have no claim to speak as experts on the subject. The fragments were found in the numerous trial pits that were made on and around the Acropolis, and were especially abundant outside the east end of the Late Roman fortifications. The exactly similar ware from Pergamon and Constantinople now in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum at Berlin is there officially ascribed to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and other pieces from old Cairo in the same museum of very similar make, to the eleventh and twelfth. Two almost complete bowls from Pergamon, on the other hand, plainly of our classes I and III, are assigned by W. Altmann to ‘the first centuries of Byzantine art’ The position in which the sherds were found at Sparta gives some slight indication as to date in the form of a probable terminus ante quem, for the building of the fortress of Misithra, or Mistrá, by Guillaume de Villehardouin, in the middle of the thirteenth century, was quickly followed by the decay of the Byzantine city situated round the Acropolis of Sparta.

This paper examines a set of the most characteristic decorated vases from the Temple Repositories at Knossos. The aim is to re-assess the date of the destruction of the shrine to which the Temple Repositories material belonged.

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.

A visit to the monasteries of Meteora is easier now than in 1834, when Curzon, escorted by a party of “klephts,” reached them from the North. One feels, in reading the account of his rapid passage from Corfu to the valley of the upper Peneus and back again, that it was touch and go in those days. Now the traveller can approach Meteora by the railway, the chief outward and visible sign of improvement in the region assigned to Hellas by the Treaty of Berlin. To any one who has the time to spare I can strongly recommend a week in Thessaly, as it contains several objects of first-rate interest, and is in many respects unlike the rest of Greece. The population is largely Wallachian, and their bronzed shaggy faces suggest the uncomfortable thought, that the veneer of civilisation is even thinner than elsewhere in these parts. It is easy to believe that such a population would like nothing better than frisking into Macedonia in surreptitious bands.

The temptation to probe the origins of a people who brought war and destruction with them, but whose absorption was followed by the great renaissance of Greece is infectious. Philologists have not regarded the warning of Beloch who twenty years ago wrote ‘Gewiss werden Wanderungen auf der griechischen Halbinsel in vorhistorishcher Zeit stattgefunden haben; aber wir wissen dariiber nichts, absolut gar nichts, und wer es anders sagt, der tauscht sich selbst und sein Publikum’ and now the anthropologist is emboldened to try. Much water has flowed under the bridge since 1890, and I make the plunge. I take leave to change the question from the usual formula, ‘Who were the Dorians?’ to ‘Who are the Dorians?’ The attempt is made from the point of view of physical anthropology, in the hope that it may prove a contribution; for the aid of archaeology and philology is obviously needed in the solution of such an involved question.

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.