DISCOVERY 



A MONTHLY POPULAR 

 JOURNAL OP KNOW^LLDGB 



No. 11. NOVEMBER 1920. 



PRICE 6d. NET. 



DISCOVERY. A Monthly Popular Journal of 

 Knowledge. 



Edited by A. S. Russell, M.C, D.Sc, 4 Moreton 

 Road, Oxford, to whom all Editorial Communications 

 should be addressed. 



Published by John Murray, 50.^ Albemarle Street, 

 London, W.i, to whom all Business Communications 

 should be addressed. 



Advertisement Office : 16 Regent Street, London, 

 S.W.I. 



Annual Subscription, post free, 7s. 6d. Single numbers 

 6d. net ; postage i Jrf. 



Editorial Notes 



It is a curious thing that the conventional idea of an 

 archjeologist or an antiquary should be exclusively 

 that of a dear old boy with broad-rimmed spectacles 

 and a snuffy waistcoat. Why this should be so is a 

 difficult matter to decide. Some day, doubtless, 

 calculations will be made, at the instance of novel- 

 readers, to estimate the actual percentage of Scots 

 who, in real hfe, have red hair and projecting teeth, 

 and who refer to Sunday as " the Sawbath," or of 

 Welshmen who habitually say " Look you," or of 

 clergymen who behave like the curate in The Private 

 Secretary (or is it Charley's Aunt}), and so on, so that 

 suitable action may be taken against the novelists who 

 persist in generating these types. Doubtless a calcu- 

 lation of the percentage of " tame archaeologists " 

 among real ones will be included in this investigation, 

 and it wiU be interesting to see, when the results 

 appear, what this percentage will turn out to be. 

 Very small, we feel sure. 



» • • * * 



Some adventures of real archjeologists ' in their 

 work of excavation are described in this simple, 



' Dead Towns and Living Men: being pages from an An- 

 tiquary's Notebook. With 24 Ulustrations. By C. Leonard 

 Woolley. (Oxford University Press, 12s. bd.) 



cheerful, and absorbingly interesting book of Mr. 

 Woolley's. It deals with dead towns and with'men 

 excavating in them who were very much alive. 

 Hamoudi, the native head-foreman of Mr. Woolley's 

 expedition at Carchemish, on the Euphrates, was one 

 of these. His temperament might be conservatively 

 set down as reckless, and there was a measure of high 

 spirits about him which among dull and conventional 

 people might even be classed as originality. One of 

 Hamoudi 's prerogatives was to celebrate any discovery 

 made in the digging by firing a revolver, the greater 

 the discovery, the more the number of shots (up to a 

 limit of eight) fired. The discovery of a fragment of 

 sculpture evoked the emission of one round from the 

 barrel ; something bigger, perhaps three or four ; 

 while something really important like a slab with 

 figures and inscriptions led him to blaze away the 

 maximum number of rounds. The Arab workmen, of 

 course, being sportsmen, entered fully into the spirit 

 of this excellent game, doing all they could to ensure 

 the maximum expenditure of fire by the finds they 

 made, and this system of celebration by results, 

 although depressing to a conscientious excavator who 

 happened to find nothing, worked harmoniously on the 

 whole, and much to the satisfaction of Mr. Woolley 

 and his colleague, who, being Englishmen and sports- 

 men, not only provided the cartridges for the occasion, 

 but gave also money-prizes to those who found the 

 chief relics. 



An archaeologist who goes out to excavate a site, as 

 Mr. Woolley tells us, " gets to know countries and the 

 ways of men from a point of view other than that of 

 the tourist or of the resident official. ... He is thrown 

 into close touch with just that class — the labourer 

 and the country villager — which is least obvious to 

 most ; he penetrates into the less known parts, becom- 

 ing more familiar \vith some obscure tosvn or lonely 

 hamlet than with the social centres that attract 

 the casual visitor : he speaks the language of the 

 people, and, because of duties toward them freely 

 shouldered, becomes in a measure a sharer of their 



323 



