ARCHEOLOGY. (BOSNIA PALESTINE AND SYRIA.) 



but in the center is a great stone pier which 

 apparently served no structural purpose. The 

 other apartment! -how a fundamental similarity 

 of plan with that of Knossos. The central court 

 or quadrangle is peculiarly imposing. Both 

 Knossos and Phaestos seem to have been inhab- 

 it.. 1 from the remotest prehistoric times; but 

 MILT b<.th were burned in the Mycenaean age, 

 1'ha-stos was in time re-cttled. 



\nothei Mvreiia-aii palace has been discovered 

 by Prof. Halbherr at llagia Trfada, a few miles 

 w->t of Pha-stos. It stands on a hilltop over- 

 looking the plain through which the river Le- 

 tha-us llo\\s t.. tin- sea. The excavations, only 

 begun, have yielded results full of promise. 

 Among them are more tablets with pre-Hellenic 

 inscription-, two frescoes, one of a wood scene 

 and the other of a sumptuously arrayed Myce- 

 na-an lady, and a vase decorated with 26 figures 

 in relief of a procession of a band of warriors 

 headed by their chief. 



At PalieOcastro, at the extreme east of the is- 

 land, Air. R. C. Bosanquet has discovered two 

 cemeteries of the Kamares epoch, in which a 

 mode of sepulture now commonly prevailing in 

 the Levant (packing the bones, cleansed by pre- 

 \iniis interment, in chambers) is shown to have 

 been in vogue before the Mycenaean age, some 

 M\cenoan tombs, and Mycenaean mansions, one 

 of which is of a type intermediate between the 

 ordinary dwelling and the great palaces. 



The belief is maintained by Mr. Evans that in 

 Crete the double ax was, in part, at least, asso- 

 ciated with a divinity known to the Greeks as the 

 Cretan Zeus, which in its original character was 

 essentially a sun or light god. It was in itself 

 an object of worship as the dactyliform of the 

 divinity with which it was associated. On a 

 Mycenaean gem from east Crete, found by Mr. 

 Hogarth, votaries are actually seen in the act of 

 adoration before it. The fresh discoveries, more- 

 over, confirmed the view that though a male 

 divinity was also represented, at times in war- 

 rior guise on the signets and seal impressions of 

 the palace, the most prominent place was taken 

 by a goddess who from her lion-guardians might 

 be regarded as a prototype of the Latin Rhea, 

 Cybele, though in other aspects of her personal- 

 ity she seems to approach the Cretan Aphrodite 

 or Ariadne. Evidences of the cult of the double 

 ax were also remarked in the palace shrine de- 

 -eril>ed by Mr. Evans. The whole result of the 

 excavations at Knossos, Mr. Evans said, had 

 been to bring out in a remarkable way the un- 

 derlying element of truth in ancient tradition. 

 In his account given at the meeting of the Brit- 

 ish Association Mr. Evans spoke of clay cups 

 having been found with ink inscriptions, " a new 

 departure in the prehistoric script." He also de- 

 scribed some modern features in the mosaic rep- 

 resentation of a Minoan street; and ivory figures 

 of youths, as displaying naturalistic details not 

 found again in such work till the age of the 

 Italian Renaissance. Below the Mycenaean palace 

 had been found remains appertaining to "what 

 seemed to have been an earlier royal dwelling 

 going back into the third millennium B. c., in 

 which were beautifully painted vases, some of 

 hell-like fabric, and some embossed in imi- 

 tation of metal-work. The Neolithic stratum un- 

 derlying the whole site was productive of more 

 stone implements, pottery, and primitive images 

 of clay, marble, and shell, perhaps the tridacna, 

 and pointing to a prehistoric intercourse with 

 the Indian Ocean. 



In an account of his excavations in the Dic- 

 to?an cave, given before the Anthropological In- 



stitute, May 27, Mr. D. G. Hogarth expressed 

 the belief that the cave was undoubtedly the 

 one that was the seat of the legendary birth of 

 Zeus. It stood near a lake bed which hail a sub- 

 terranean outlet. The cave was exceedingly rich, 

 in remains, but little evidence existed in it of 

 Mycena?an or pre-Mycenaean times, nearly all the 

 remains being subsequent to the Mycenaean, 

 period. The skulls found were clearly of sacri- 

 ficed animals. The honors of Dicte had been 

 largely usurped by the cave of Ida, but Dicte 

 showed a variety of ancient objects of the stone 

 age symbolical axes of fractional size, and 

 others a massive Mycenaean wall, and a few 

 specimens of Hellenic and Roman work. Mr. Ho- 

 garth said he had excavated another settlement 

 at the end of the Uictsean cave, the little wasted 

 settlement of Zachro. In two caves he had found 

 human bones, and what seemed to be cists like 

 those of the ./Egean islands of the prehistoric^ 

 period. In one cave he had lighted on five bur- 

 sals. One cist bursal was untouched, and in- 

 cluded a new kind of pottery more regular than 

 the Neolithic pottery. The vases tended to show 

 the existence of a native pottery lineally follow- 

 ing the Neolithic period. In connection with an, 

 address by Mr. Evans, a lecture was given by 

 Prof. Boyd Dawkins on the Animal Remains of 

 the Cave, dealing with the geological aspects- 

 which led to inferences of its high antiquity^ 

 Among the skulls discovered was one of an ox 

 to which the author found no exact parallel. 

 He had therefore felt disposed to classify it as- 

 a member of a distinct species, to which he gave 

 the name of Bos Creticus. Another skull, in 

 some respects varying from all existing speci- 

 mens, he inferred to be that of a domestic boar. 

 The preservation of these skulls, apparently for 

 ornamental purposes, was a singular note of mo- 

 dernity in prehistoric times. Prof. Dawkins. 

 could not state the precise or approximate date 

 of any of the specimens sent him by Mr. Ho- 

 garth. Describing the human skulls, he said 

 that the teeth were wonderfully small, and some 

 of them decayed, and these and other circum- 

 stances led to the inference that they belonged 

 to a highly developed civilization. Decayed teeth 

 were, unhappily, a mark of an advanced culture. 

 The skulls found in Crete seemed to correspond 

 with the oldest skulls of Attica and Asia Minor. 

 The people interred in this case were, the author 

 thought, cognate with the Iberian race, long- 

 headed, probably of small stature, dark-haired, 

 non- Aryan, and stretching back to the Neolithic- 

 age. Prof. Petrie noted correspondences from 

 Egypt, as in the hanging of skulls as ornaments,, 

 with what had been said of Crete. 



Bosnia. Very fruitful excavations have been 

 made among the remains of prehistoric lake- 

 dwellings on the River Save, near Dolina, north- 

 em Bosnia. Four dwelling-houses built on piles- 

 have been laid bare and the burial-place belong- 

 ing to the settlement has been examined. In it 

 were found a number of bronzes and urns. 

 Among the articles recovered are objects of pot- 

 tery, utensils of staghorn, weapons of bronze and 

 iron, ornaments of bronze, silver, gold, and amber. 

 -teds and bones. It has been possible, by the 

 aid of these houses, to determine the architec- 

 tural construction of the pile-dwellings with a 

 hitherto unusual accuracy. A boat 5 meters 

 long was found lying 9 meters below the platform 

 of a pile-dwelling. The pile-dwellings of Dolina 

 are assigned to two different periods, of dates in- 

 cluded in the first millennium before Christ. 



Palestine and Syria. The first report of 

 the new American school in Palestine, Novem- 



