April 28, 19 10] 



NATURE 



253 



ion of buildings of absolutely non-Eg^-ptian and 



or less negro type, showing all the negro's in- 

 y to think out or carry out a coherent plan, or 

 jjroduce any sensible building bigger than a simple 

 lut. There is little doubt that the Nubian population 

 s, and has always been, fundamentally negroid, and 

 lio doubt in ancient Eg}ptian days it was nearer 

 he negro than it is now. The cemetery might, from 

 he nature of the antiquities found in it, be dated to 

 I period contemporarj- with the Egyptian predynastic 

 jeriod. But Prof. Maciver well points out that the 

 "-'Trie culture of the Nilotes, which was raised and 



-ised into a civilisation in Eg\"pt before the be- 

 ,..,..ing of the First Dynast}', continued in its primi- 

 ive form in Nubia throughout history, and even now 

 !)Otterv not distantly akin to the prehistoric Egyptian 

 s still made there. So that we cannot say that 

 i>rimitive remains in Nubia are necessarily primeval 

 in date. This explains the phenomenon of the " Pan- 

 Ijrrave People " of the Xllth Dynast}- in Upper 

 igypt. The isolated Egyptian settlements of this 

 |>eople, whose pottery is so closely analogous to that 

 j)f the primitive Egyptians, but whose " Middle King- 

 !lom " date is certain, were originally dscovered by 

 |?rof. Flinders Petrie. They remained an enigma 

 until Mr. Weigall discovered that the earlier Nubian 

 cemeteries were largely of "' Pan-Grave " t}pe, and 

 hat "Pan-Grave" pottery was common there. It 

 vas then supposed that the Egxptian '" Pan-Grave " 

 emains were the relics of Nubian conquerors 

 it the time of the Xllth Dynast}'. Prof. Maciver, 

 "oUowing up the clue, supposes in the present volume 

 ;hat the Egyptian " Pan-Grave " people were Nubian 

 aotters imported into Eg}pt to make their special 

 30tter\- (which was, in its way, finer than that of the 

 Eg}ptians). To me it seems more probable that they 

 aere not merely potters, and I would see in them 

 simply colonies of deported Nubians, brought back 

 5y the conquering Pharaohs of the Xllth Dynast}'^ as 

 :he "living prisoners," trophies of their Nubian 

 razzias which are often mentioned in the inscriptions, 

 and settled in vacant lands of Upper Egypt. 



The discoveries at Shablul are of importance as 

 iefinitely identifying the products of a peculiar art, long 

 inown and correctly identified as of Roman date (it is 

 especially well represented in the collections of the 

 British >Iuseum), as Nubian. The later specimens of 

 the painted potter}' of this st}'le clearly connect on to 

 the crude productions of the Coptic potters, and this 

 was always seen, but Prof. Maciver and Mr. Woolley 

 have shown that the same st}"le, which is Nubian 

 only, goes back well into the Ptolemaic period. Its 

 i?arlier products are quite Egyptian or Greek in the 

 !:hoice of motives, but throughout the whole series 

 • runs a note of peculiar originalit}' of treatment 

 -ii can only be due to the Nubian potter himself. 

 1 nis painted potter}^ is splendidly illustrated by 

 coloured plates which accurately reproduce the 

 "• "nals. Its decoration is extremely interesting, and 



•mments of the authors themselves on it are most 



...i.iinating. But to quote the opinions on it of pro- 



( essors of artistic style who are evidently not gifted 



A-irh much historical sense was unnecessar}' : Prof. 



rer's opinion that a certain design of a crescent 



a cross (a modification of the dnkh, the symbol 

 jf life) on this Roman-Nubian potter}' is a descendant 

 :if the Minoan Cretan motive of the Double Axe above 

 ,:he Horns of Consecration (so well known from Dr. 

 jEvans's discoveries at Knossos) is, frankly, absurd, 

 md we wonder that our authors did not pass over it 

 n respectful silence. As it is, their reviewers have to 

 chronicle it with disrespectful mirth. 



Prof. Meurer has supposed that the two designs are 

 connected because they are alike, ignoring the absence 

 )f all known connecting links between them during 



XO. 21 13, VOL. 83] 



the space of a millennium and a half. The only possi- 

 bility of the Nubian design being descended from the 

 Cretan would lie in an Eg}ptian adoption and 

 naturalisation of the Cretan design in the time of 

 the XVHIth and XlXth Dynasties; and though the 

 Eg}'ptians did for a time take over some Cretan 

 artistic ideas, they never took over the idea of the 

 Double Axe above the Horns of Consecration ; and 

 naturally they did not, because they did not take over 

 the worship of the Cretan gods, whose symbols these 

 were (though cults akin to those of Crete may have 

 been known in the Delta at an early period). 

 We prefer our authors' own ideas without those 

 of Prof. Meurer. Throughout their work they 

 themselves had made only one remark which calls 

 for criticism — the description of the dnkh, the symbol 

 of life, as the " Nile-key." The dnkh was not a key, 

 and had nothing to do with the Nile. It was a con- 

 ventional representation of a man's girdle, with the 

 tied ends hanging down in front. 



The book concludes with a paper on the inscriptions 

 in " Meroitic " form of the Demotic script, of which 

 many specimens were found by the explorers, and its 

 relation to the Meroitic hieroglyphic inscriptions, by 

 Mr. F. LI. Griffith. Mr. Griffith here makes the first 

 step to a decipherment of both scripts, and has estab- 

 lished several curious and unexpected facts with regard 

 to them. This discussion of the relation of their lan- 

 guage to the Nubian of Christian times, lately 

 studied by Profs. Schafer and Schmidt, is very sug- 

 gestive. 



In conclusion, Messrs. Maciver, Woolley, and 

 Griffith must be congratulated on the production of a 

 most interesting contribution to a little-known branch 

 of Nilotic (if we may not, strictly, say Egn.'ptian) 

 archasolog}'. ' H. R. H.\ll. 



FROM THE CAPE TO CAIRO WITH I 

 MAGXETOMETER. 



T^L RING the last twenty years a great many 

 *~^ observers have carried on magnetic work in 

 different parts of Africa. A summary of the results 

 up to 1900 at the Cape of Good Hope has been col- 

 lected and published by Prof. Morrison and the writer,^ 

 and one for Northern Africa by Mr. B. F. E. Keeling ;- 

 since 1898 a magnetic sur\ey'of South Africa has been 

 in progress ; between that date and iqo6 obser\'ations 

 were taken at more than four hundred stations bv 

 Prof. Morrison and the writer, with assistance at one 

 time and another from Mr. S. S. Hough, Prof. A. 

 Brown, Prof. L. Crawford and Mr. V. A. Lowinger. A 

 report by the present writer on the work during this 

 period, including a summary- of the earlier woVk in 

 Africa, south of the Zambezi, was published for the 

 Royal Society at the Cambridge University Press.' 



Notwithstanding the considerable amount of work 

 done, there was, and still is, a lack of magnetic data 

 for great tracts of what is now no longer "geographi- 

 cally the unknown continent. With the purpose of 

 obtaining some information in parts magnetically un- 

 known, the writer submitted, in 1907, a scheme of 

 work through Dr. L. A. Bauer, director of the Depart- 

 ment of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie 

 Institution of Washington, to the trustees of that 

 body. In this scheme he proposed to continue the line 

 of magnetic stations already occupied between Cape 

 Town and the Victoria Falls to Gondokoro, on the 

 Nile. North of that it was not deemed necessar}' to 

 observe, as the Survey Department of the Eg}ptian 

 Government had already put forward proposals for a 



1 "Magnetic Elements at the Cape of Good Hope." By Beattie and 

 Morrison. (Trans. S A. PS., vo'. xiv.. 190:5.) 



2 " Magnetic Observations in Egjpt." By B. F. E. Keeling. (tgoS.) 



3 " Report of a Magnetic Suivcy of South Afric?." By J. C. Beattie 

 ('9^9-) 



