"?i8 



NATURE 



[October ig, ign 



"Meroitic" demotic script, of which Mr. Griffith is 

 the first to begin the decipherment. 



( >ne cannot describe in detail all the various ex- 

 cavations, some regular, others ephemeral, that are 

 set on foot every year in Egypt. The season has not 

 been remarkable for discoveries. The Egypt Explora- 

 tion Fund, premier and pioneer of modern scientific 

 excavation-societies in Egypt, has dug with success 

 at At lib in Middle Egypt (this work was carried out 

 bv Mr. de M. Johnson), and has steadily gone on 

 with the thorough exploration of Abydos which it 

 resumed two years ago. The Fund's expedition at 

 Abydos was directed by Prof. Naville, assisted by 

 Mr. T. E. Peet and Mr. James Dixon. The work of 

 supplementing Prof. Petrie's former excavations of 

 the royal tombs of the first dynasty at Umm el-Qa'ab 

 by further investigations has been brought, at any 

 rate temporarily, to a conclusion, the previously un- 

 explored portion of the Mound having been thoroughly 

 excavated. Last year interesting discoveries had been 

 made, including a fragment of a crystal bowl with the 

 name of an early king (well known 

 from the former discoveries of 

 Anu'lineau on the same site), which 

 has been the subject of scientific 

 discussion and is now in the British 

 Museum. 



The results of this year's work 

 from the tombs explored in the 

 necropolis of Abydos (not Umm el- 

 Oa'ab) have been exhibited, not in 

 England, but at Boston. The 

 Egypt Exploration Fund is an 

 Anglo-American society, and it is 

 fitting that the yearly exhibition 

 should occasionally, at least, be 

 held in the United States. 



Next year Prof. Naville proposes 

 to proceed to the complete explora- 

 tion of the " Osireion," an extra- 

 ordinary subterranean (or appar- 

 ently subterranean) sanctuary of 

 Osiris, close to the great temple of 

 Seti I. This Osireion has already 

 been attacked by the Egyptian Re- 

 search Account, several years ago, 

 and the results of this work were 

 published by Miss M. A. Murray. 

 But various reasons did not allow 

 of the heavy work of emptying this 

 tunnel being concluded, and it now 

 remains for the excavators of the 

 Exploration Fund, directed by 

 a veteran whose speciality has always been pre- 

 cisely this kind of work, to discover the hidden 

 secrets of the Osireion. But for a big work 

 of this kind money is necessary. Subscriptions 

 for the Fund are urgently required, and the office of 

 the secretary is 37 Great Russell Street, W.C. Among 

 recent subscribers to this work may be mentioned, as 

 an instance of Japanese interest in all branches of 

 science, the University of Kyoto, which has already 

 received from the Fund many interesting relics of 

 ancient Egypt to be studied by the youth of new 

 Japan. 



The other British society at work in Egypt, the 

 !>tian Research Account, has, under the direction 

 of Prof. Flinders Petrie, continued its work at 

 Memphis and elsewhere. An interesting series of 

 Graeco-Roman portraits from Ha wara, similar to those 

 discovered by Prof. Petrie at the same place many 

 years ago, has been exhibited at University College, 

 Gower Street, this summer, together with sculptures 

 from the Egyptian Labyrinth and from Memphis, and 

 NO. 2190, VOL. 87I 



prehistoric vases and flints from a site explored during 

 the season's work. 



Turning to Crete, we find a sterility of results this 

 year comparable to that in Egypt. Sir Arthur Evans 

 (whom we congratulate most heartily on his richly 

 deserved knighthood) has not put spade to earth at 

 Knossos this year, or continued the works of conserva- 

 tion which he carried out in the "Queen's Megaron " 

 lost year. Nor has Mr. Seager dug in the country 

 round the Isthmus of Hierapetra, which he has ear- 

 marked as his own special hunting-ground. But he 

 has located, and reserved for future excavation, 

 possibly next year, an extraordinary village-site of the 

 Geometric period, on a ledge, almost inaccessible to 

 all but Cretans and Mr. Seager, high up on the 

 vertical side of the great cleft in the mountains above 

 the village of Monasteraki, near Kavousi (Fig. 2). This 

 ledge, at first barely three feet wide, turns the corner 

 of the cleft, and there, well within the gorge, broadens 

 into a platform some ten feet across, on which people of 

 the Geometrical period had found a hidden and secure 



Fig. 2.— The great Cleft of Ka 



refuge from the attacks of the /Egean pirates of 

 their degenerate and barbarous times. The cliff rises 

 sheer above, and falls sheer below for hundreds of 

 feet to the untrodden floor of the gorge. Another 

 work reserved by Mr. Seager until next year is the 

 continued exploration of the hill-village of Vrokastro, 

 begun last year bv Miss Edith Hall, which yielded 

 interesting antiquities of the transition period from 

 Geometric to classical times. 



The Italian work of recent years has resulted in 

 the addition of a pillared "agora" to the palace of 

 Agia Triada (Fig. 3) : the results of this year's explora- 

 tions, which were not yet begun when the writer 

 visited Phaistos and Agia Triada in May, have not 

 yet come to hand. 



An interesting feature of Cretan work is now thi 

 participation in it of the Cretans themselves, who 

 are keenly interested in the antiquities and past 

 history of their splendid but sorely tried and oppressed 

 island. In Drs. Hatzidakis and Xanthoudidis, Crete 

 possesses archaeologists of whom England. France, 



