Ephoros remarked in his history that Boeotia was unique among Greek lands in having a coast well provided with harbours and fronting three seas, open to the West, the North, and the East, to Italy, Sicily, and Carthage, to Macedonia and the Euxine, and to Egypt, Cyprus, and the islands; and that it thus had ample opportunities for education, and was marked out by nature for rule over others. Strabo quotes this with approval, adding a remark of his own about the permanence of the success of the Romans due to the education they had received from contact with civilized countries: if only Boeotia had known how to educate her sons! The author of the Periplus which passes under the name of Skymnos of Chios (about 90 B.C.) says the same in almost the same words; and Stephanos of Byzantium repeats it.

Not only were more good vases produced by the further excavation of the sanctuary of Orthia in 1909, but much has also been done since the last report was written, in the matter of fitting together, restoring, and photographing those already found, so that it is now possible to proceed with a fuller publication of the Laconian style than could be made a year ago.

The pottery found during the course of excavations this spring on the site of Knossos falls naturally into two groups, of which the larger and earlier, extending from Neolithic to Mycenaean times, came from Kephála and the houses south and south-west of the Kephála mound; while the smaller and less important group was found in tombs of Geometric date, discovered about a mile north of Kephála. Most of the finds belong to a few well-defined groups, and specimens of transitional periods are conspicuous by their absence.

The campaign of 1909 at Sparta was marked by the conclusion of the excavation of the sanctuary of Artemis Orthia, and the site may now be regarded as definitely exhausted. This report gives an account of the results of this last season with a General Plan of the excavation (Pl. I). A full resumptive account of the whole work from its beginning in 1906, with final plans and a summary of results is in preparation; the present account will, in the main, be confined to the new results gained this year, and will thus be parallel to the three yearly reports already published in the previous volumes of this Annual.

§ 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.

On a low spur of the hills that shut in the Sitia valley on the east, immediately overlooking the sea and separated from the port of Sitia by nearly a mile of sand-bar, stands the unimportant hamlet of Petras, originally Venetian, afterwards ‘Turkish’ or Moslem-Cretan, and for the most part ruined and deserted since 1896. Mr. Marshall came here in January, 1901, and collected sherds which left no doubt about the early date of the remains, treated by previous travellers as Hellenic. Lying on a deep bay and commanding as it does the easiest route into the Eteocretan highlands, it seemed likely that Petras might furnish useful clues, if not to the indigenous culture of the district, at any rate to the foreign influences that were at work here during the Bronze Age. Later, when two months of work at Praesos had produced very little Kamáres pottery of the familiar mid-Cretan types and no Mycenaean, it seemed doubly desirable to examine this, the nearest definitely Mycenaean site, and to ascertain what had been the local varieties of early pottery.

On the road from new Sparta to Magoula the most noticeable remains of the ancient city are the extensive brick ruins called ‘Arapissa,’ from the localization here of a legend common in all parts of Greece of a negress or a negro guarding buried treasure. Since so large a building, if it existed in the time of Pausanias, is not likely to have been omitted by him in his description of the city, it was decided to test this site to determine its nature and date. Accordingly from April 20th to the 30th twenty-five men were employed digging round the walls visible above the surface, and sinking trial-pits in other parts to obtain some idea of the plan. Owing to the apparent want of symmetry and to the loose nature of the soil, which was full of rubble, the work proved more difficult and dangerous than had been anticipated.

I published three years ago in a Greek periodical a hitherto unpublished journal of the year 1813, from a manuscript of the British Museum, entitled Recollections of Smyrna. It was written by an Englishman, John Oliver Hanson. I found no trace of him in the bibliographies of travellers; and indeed, all my attempts to collect information about him led nowhere. I therefore expressed the hope that its publication might perhaps result in the discovery of information concerning his life and person. Up to the moment of writing, however, I have been no more fortunate in my researches than I was previously.

In the prologue of my publication I pointed out with pleasure that Hanson's manuscript contained the texts of two other journeys made by him, and that we thus had a more complete picture of the travel records of a hitherto unknown traveller from the West in the Greek East.

Pendlebury's account (Aegyptiaca 56, nos. 92–94) of the three so-called Egyptian amphorae from chamber tombs at Mycenae in the National Museum at Athens contains a misprint. His number 4695 should read 4569. We may add that according to the inventory this vase is from Chamber Tomb 93. The other two, nos. 2924, 2925, one of which is inscribed, are from Chamber Tomb 58.

The two unusual fragments illustrated in Plate 14 and Fig. I were found at Mycenae in 1950, but were not identified until 1957, when the pottery from the Cyclopean Terrace Building Area was being restudied for the publication which appears in this volume. They come from the East Trench which ran east-west immediately east of the east wall of the Cyclopean Terrace Building proper and which disclosed the drain marked in the plan. They were found at a depth of more than 2·40 m., i.e. below the level of the drain. It seems likely that the fill of this area dates mainly from the period of the building of the Cyclopean Terrace Building (when the drain also must have been built) in the early part of L.H. IIIB, but the pottery in all layers of this trench was contaminated by stray sherds of later Mycenaean, Geometric, and Hellenistic wares. Therefore, though a date in the period preceding early L.H. IIIB is very likely, it cannot be assured.

The pieces, which are 0·02 m. thick, are made of a heavy buff clay with considerable grit and chaff covered with a light wash through which the grit shows, giving the appearance known as ‘oatmeal’. The paint is a semi-lustrous red-brown. This fabric is similar to, though heavier than, that of the stirrup jars from the nearby House of the Wine Merchant. It is clear from the scene on the outside that the two fragments are not adjoining, but come from the opposite sides of the same vessel. The shape, fabric, and schemes of decoration seem to indicate that these are fragments of a bath larnax (FS 1).

It is argued that the Egyptian statuette-fragment of User, discovered by Evans early in the 1900 excavations at the Palace of Knossos, was not found in association with datable pottery, and that it should no longer be regarded as one of the key finds for Aegean chronology.

The column drums of the temple at Phanai and the blocks and mouldings of Emporio have attracted a number of occasional scribblings; some of these are cut, many are scratched or punched in rows of single or multiple dots, for others the surface of the stone has only been ‘slightly stunned’. Most are memorial and need no general comment after Rehm's treatment of the Μνήσθη formula. Those that are complete are all of Rehm's ‘motherland’ type and the rest should no doubt be restored on the same pattern.

In general they are of little interest and less importance; indeed the main thing we should like to know about them is their date since in several cases the text has run on from block to block (nos 25, 28 (a), (b), and (c), and 29 (a)) and was therefore inscribed while the blocks were still in their original position. At the moment we have a terminus ante quem in the sixth century A.D. for the destruction of most of the pagan buildings on the site when the basilica church, in which most of the surviving fragments have been found, was built.

The three bases illustrated in the photographs (Plates 1 and 2) and in the drawings (Figs. 1–3) were all seen and studied by me on a visit to Bodrum undertaken in the summer of 1969. They have been known for some time as individual items, but have never been studied as a group. The base identified here as no. 1 is now located in the courtyard of the castle at Bodrum; nos. 2 and 3 are built into the walls of a house standing on the site of the former Byzantine church of Aghia Marina, in the district called Türkkuyusu outside the main town. Other fragments, relating perhaps to similar monuments, have been reported from the same area at various times, and it seems clear to me from my own investigations that there is a strong chance of the existence of further such bases, in whole or in part.

In Volume XII of the Annual of the British School were published two fragments of stamped pithoi (Nos. I. and II.) from Kameiros, part of a series of such fragments in the collection of the School. The remaining examples, mainly from Melos, are described below, the drawings having been made at the same time as those published in 1906.

No. III. (Pl. XI. A) ·105 × ·12 × ·02 — ·03 m. From Melos.

Coarse reddish clay.

Decoration : border of arches; border of double plait with three strands in each twist and bosses between; frieze projecting ·004 m. with lion and Centaur. The lion's mouth is open, shewing the tongue, his left forepaw is raised. The motive of the paw is a common one: cf. the lion on the Ionic B.F. bowl, Pfuhl, Malerei und Zeichnung der Griechen, iii. Pl. XXVIII. No. 128, and the kylix, Louvre, A. 478. The Centaur, likewise, is a common type. He is the vanquished Centaur begging for mercy, made popular through illustrations like those of Herakles and Nessos, and used here because he was a familiar figure which fitted the space. An excellent parallel is on a steatite lentoid intaglio from Melos. The Centaur has equine, not human fore-legs, as on other pithos fragments from Melos: contrast the type with human fore-legs from Kameiros and Asia Minor, where it seems never to have been superseded.

A Minoan potter's wheel is published, with the peculiar element of appliqué relief sea-shells. The object was found by chance a few years before World War II near the village of Skhinias, in the Upper Mirabello region of NE Crete, and remained unknown until now. It is the first instance of real decoration on a potter's wheel. It can be dated between MM II and LM I and could have come from Malia.

Among the Chian inscriptions collected by G. Zolotas and published by his daughter Mme Sarou in ᾿Αθηνᾶ xx (1908) 113–281 there are a few for which Zolotas relied on readings supplied by correspondents who were less careful epigraphists than himself. One of these has now appeared in Chios Museum and deserves republication.

Chios Museum (from Aplotaria in Chios town). No inv. no. Block of blue-grey Chian marble, broken off on right and bottom left. Inscribed on front face. On the top (left) a circular cavity, with raised rim, tapering downwards to a small drainage hole, and (right) a similar but larger cavity of which only a small section is preserved. The inner surface of both is carefully dressed.

The writer assisted at the excavation of the upper strata of the Toumba in 1925, and in 1926 excavated upon the High Table. The results obtained in 1925 by Miss W. Lamb are here incorporated with those of 1926, from notes furnished by her. The remarks on the pottery are based in detail upon the 1926 finds, supplemented by a general study of the material obtained, both from Table and Toumba, in 1925.

The veneration of stones seems to have been world-wide at an early stage in religious development, and has left traces everywhere in the magical and ‘folklore’ practices of civilized peoples. Over the Semitic area stone worship, as such, survived later and more generally than among peoples more prone to anthropomorphism; and Islam, so far from being able to displace it, tacitly sanctioned it by allowing the reverence paid already by pagan Arabs to the Black Stone of the Kaaba to be perpetuated on the rather far-fetched hypothesis that the angel Gabriel had brought it to, Mecca.

Christianity, somewhat in the same way, has permitted or encouraged the paying of reverence to stones associated by tradition with saintly personages, the Stone of Unction at Jerusalem being a typical example. In both the great religions of the Near East the arbitrary association of certain stones with sacred persons and events has been allowed to replace or mask the more primitive idea of worshipping stones as fetishes with independent power.

In the Gallery of Busts in the Vatican there is a head (Cat. No. 293p, Heibig, Führer durch Rom, i. p. 144, No. 242) described as the head of a Satyr. It is of rosso antico, and was found in a street in Genzano near a spot where a Roman villa had stood. This head (No. 1 on Plate IV.) has a replica, also of rosso antico, in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek at Copenhagen (No. 2 on the same Plate), for a description of which I am indebted to Herr Jacobsen. The height of the Roman head is 0·45 m., distance between the ears 0·21 m., between the eyes 0·05 m., breadth of eyes 0·05 m., breadth of mouth 0·07 m. It is worked only in front, the back being chiselled roughly away, so that it has the appearance of a mask. Nothing is left of the neck. The ends of the hair are broken off, especially in the case of the side-locks, and the edges of the beard are smoothed by weathering. Restored:—nose and portions of lower lip. The eyes are hollow, and were filled with inserted material.

The following is an attempt to present in one view the Italian and other western antiquities of the island of Chios. Some of these, as will be seen, have already been published, though for the most part in works not generally accessible: the others are the results of my own investigations in the island (1907–9). Like most other travellers in Chios I owe much to the kindness of residents and especially of M. Const. Kanellakes, who placed his unrivalled knowledge of his native island unreservedly at my disposal, and directed my attention to many points of interest which must else have escaped me. I am also indebted for much practical assistance and support to Messrs. L. and N. Zitelli. Since I began my collection of material the contents of the museum at Chios and some other monuments of the Latin period have been published by the daughter of the late gymnasiarch Prof. G. Zolotas: references to this publication are inserted in brackets with the initial Z. before the inscriptions concerned, but I have thought it unnecessary to republish fragmentary texts to which I have nothing to add. An asterisk denotes stones I have not myself seen.