914 REPORT—1896, 
indications of faces—eyes and nose of bird-like character—curiously recalling the 
early Aigean and Trojan types of Dr. Schliemann. These, as M. Reinach has 
pointed out, also find an almost exact parallel in the rude indications of the human 
face seen on the sculptured menhirs of the Marne and the Gard valleys. To this 
may be added the interesting comparisons supplied by certain clay vessels, of 
younded form, somewhat resembling the chalk ‘caskets’ discovered by MM. 
Siret in Spanish interments of the early metal age, in which eyes and eyebrows of 
a primitive style are inserted, as on the British relics, in the inter-spaces of linear 
ornamentation. The third chalk disc exhibits, in place of the human face, a 
butterfly with volute antenne, reminding us of the appearance of butterflies as a 
decorative motive on the gold roundels from the shaft-graves of Mycene, as also 
on early Mycenzean gems of steatite from Crete ; in the latter case with the feelers 
curving outwards in the same way. The stellate design with central circles on the 
lid of one of the chalk caskets is itself not impossibly a distant degeneration of the 
star-flowers on the same Mycenzan plates. Putting all these separate elements of 
resemblance together—the returning spiral and star, the rude face and butterfly— 
the suggestion of A2gean reminiscence becomes strong, but the other parallels lead 
us for the line of its transmission towards the Iberian rather than the Scandi- 
navian route.! : 
So much, at least, results from these various comparisons that, whether we find 
the spiral motive in the extreme West or North of Europe, everything points to 
the ‘Hgean world as its first European centre. But have we any right to regard 
it, even there, as of indigenous evolution ? 
It had been long my own conviction that the A‘gean spiral system must itself 
be regarded as an offshoot of that of ancient Egypt, which as a decorative motive 
on scarabs goes back, as Professor Petrie has shown, to the Fourth Dynasty. 
During the time of the Twelfth Dynasty, which, on general grounds, may be sup- 
posed roughly to correspond with the ‘Amorgan Period’ of A%gean culture, it 
attained its apogee. The spiral conyolutions now often cover the whole field of the 
scarab, and the motive begins to spread to a class of black bucchero vases the challx 
inlaying of whose ornaments suggests widespread European analogies. But the 
important feature to observe is that here, as in the case of the early Agean 
examples, the original material on which the spiral ornament appears is stone, and 
that, so far from being derived from an advanced type of metal work, it goes back 
in Egypt to a time when metal was hardly known. 
The prevalence of the spiral ornamentation on stone work in the A%gean islands 
and contemporary Egypt, was it merely to be regarded as a coincidence? To turn 
one’s eyes to the Nile Valley, was it simply another instance of the ‘ Wrage 
Orientale’? For wy own part, I ventured to believe that, as in the case of 
Northern Europe, the spread of this system was connected with many collateral 
symptoms of commercial inter-connexion, so here, too, the appearance of this early 
/®gean ornament would be found to lead to the demonstration of a direct inter- 
course between the Greek islands and Egypt at least a thousand years earlier than 
any that had hitherto been allowed. . 
One’s thoughts naturally turned to Crete, the central island, with one face on 
the Libyan Sea—the natural source and seminary of Ai’gean culture—where fresh 
light was already being thrown on the Mycenzan civilisation by the researches of 
Professor Halbherr, but the earlier prehistoric remains of which were still unex- 
plored. Nor were these expectations unfounded. As the result of three expe- 
ditions—undertaken in three successive years, from the last of which I returned 
three months since—it has been my fortune to collect a series of evidences of a 
very early and intimate contact with Egypt, going back at least to the Twelfth 
1 A further piece of evidence pointing in this direction is supplied by one of the 
chalk ‘caskets.’ On the upper disc of this, in the place corresponding with the 
double-spirals on the other example, appears a degeneration of the same motive in a 
more compressed form, resembling two sets of concentric horseshoes united at their 
bases. This recurs at New Grange, and single sets of concentric horseshoes, or semi- 
circles, are found both there and at Gavrinnis. The degeneration of the returning 
spiral motive extends therefore to Brittany, 
