The Government of Afghanistan recently sent two missions to India, where they were warmly welcomed and made many friends. In September 1946, the Government of India sent in return a small mission to Afghanistan to establish contact between the respective archaeological and historical activities of the two countries, with a view if possible to securing closer cultural collaboration. The Indian mission consisted of the Director General of Archaeology in India and his wife ; the Honourable Mr Justice N. G. A. Edgely, President of the Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal—the oldest learned society in Asia; and Mr M. A. Shakur, Curator of the Pesh#x0101;war Museum, sent by the Government of the North-West Frontier Province as the immediate neighbour of Afghanistan. The mission travelled in two ex-U.S.A. Army vehicles, a six-wheeled personnel-carrier and a jeep, with two Indian drivers and two Indian attendants.

The Year 1946 is the Two Thousandth Anniversary of the first historical event in our Island Story, the first Invasion of Julius Caesar ; 1947 that of the first appearance of the first British personality, the first man in England whose name we know, Cassivellaunus. It is fitting, therefore, that ANTIQUITY should choose the turn of the years for its own discussion of England's first ‘ bimillenary ’.

IT is a pity that Hume, who carried the Cartesian system of philosophy to its logical conclusion, lived too early to contemplate the discoveries of the past century in Egypt and Babylonia, for he would readily have understood and assimilated the ancient processes of thought which arose at the dawn of history in Western Asia--‘ And no truth appears to me more evident ’, he said, ‘ than that beasts are endowed with thought and reason as well as man ’. The arguments are developed in section XVI of ‘ The Understanding ’, where there are many delightful passages of special relevance to the ancient concepts about life. Again, he said that a bird, that ‘chooses with such care and nicety the place and materials of the nest, and sits upon her eggs for a due time, and in a suitable season, with all the precaution that a chymist is capable of in the most delicate projection, furnishes us with a lively instance of animal sagacity’. Locke, on the other hand, in his discussion of animal rationale, had refused to be drawn so far. ‘ And if Balaam’s ass had, all his life, discussed as rationally as he did once with his master, I doubt yet whether any one would have thought him worthy the name ‘man’, or allowed him to be of the same species with himself ’. Of these two statements Hume’s approximates more closely to the earliest Asiatic view of life, and it is on these lines that Messrs. Frankfort, Wilson, and Jacobsen have approached their problem, which, briefly put is-how did the early thinkers of the Near East come to say what they did about creation, the state, and man ? Professor and Mrs Frankfort define the earliest mode of thought as an ‘ I-thou ’ relation-ship, by which they mean that the primitive Asiatic conceived of all creation in a reciprocal nexus wherein the material world was percipient as well as perceived, and Professor Wilson elaborates the same theme by saying that for the Egyptians the world was consubstantial, and that their view of life might be defined as monophysite. Pro-fessor Jacobsen’s contribution illustrates to what extent the Mesopotamian view of life conformed with this outlook, for example how salt and grain were conceived of as animate beings in a close relationship with man, responsible and responsive to him. Other ideas peculiar to the Mesopotamian mind are no less clearly stressed, and herein lies the fascination of the book, that we have a comparative examination of the Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Israelite approach to life, for Hebrew theology was cast out of a similar matrix. In a concluding chapter by the Frankforts, we see the dawn of a new intellectual era. The Greek physical philosophers, regardless of the data of experience, carried the old basic concepts of the Egyptians and Mesopotamians from a concrete to an abstract frame and worked them to a reductio ad absurdurn, much as Hume did for the concepts of Cartesian philosophy. Their prescience gave birth to science. Nor should we forget that Thales of Miletus prophesied an eclipse, thereby following in the wake of the Babylonian astronomers, who had made similar observations and recorded them centuries earlier.

Ever since the beginning of recorded history, Ancient Egypt was dependent upon the goodwill of the Phoenician overlords of the mountain land of the Lebanon for supplies of timber in the long running lengths required for the construction of large ships, especially those intended for use on long voyages by sea ; fine timber was also in considerable demand for the making of the elaborate wooden sarcophagi of nobles and of members of the royal family as well as for furniture of superior quality. This lack of suitable native timber made the Egyptians late comers in sea-trading ; indeed, it restricted progress so seriously that their water-borne commerce was limited to traffic with Nubia and the South by way of the Nile waterway, to occasional expeditions down the Red Sea to Southern Arabia and to Somaliland (Punt) and to short coasting trips to Phoenicia to buy timber logs and to the coasts of the Sinai Peninsula in search of copper.

A Century has just elapsed since the now famous Regolini-Galassi tomb at Caere (Cerveteri) was opened by the Archpriest and General whose names A it bears. The beautiful proportions of the silver vessels, the delicate goldwork, and the impressive design of the bronzes, which together formed the sepulchral furniture befitting an Etruscan nobleman of the middle 7th century B.C. came as a coup d’éclut to the academic world, and can still be considered the most splendid ornament of the Museo Etrusco Gregoriano at the Vatican. But the most obvious significance, today, of this centenary is to recall the early history of field-archaeology in Etruria and the problems that have been inherited from it, of which one of the most essential still remains to be dispatched; namely, the preparation of accurate plans of the cemeteries. The difficulties inherent in this are very clearly illustrated by the circumstances (1) of the Kegolini-Galassi discovery and by its consequences. It immediately stimulated extensive excavations for collectors’ trophies at Caere, where the necropolis until then had largely escaped the attentions of early antiquarians and treasure-hunters; activities that at Tarquinia have been characterized as ‘tumultuosi’ by Prof. Nogara, and whose story has been summed up by Prof. Pallottino as ‘singolare e dolorosa insieme’.

Since the classic work of Rütimeyer (1) and others on the fauna of the Swiss lake villages was first undertaken nearly a century ago, a vast amount of information has been assembled about the livestock of the prehistoric farmers of north-western and central Europe. Interest at first centred on distinguishing breeds of the various species in the hope of defining the routes by which farming spread from its early homelands into the European continent. In recent years more attention has been paid to the light which can be thrown on the economy of prehistoric communities through a study of their livestock : among the chief points which it has been sought to establish are the age at which various species were normally slaughtered, the relative proportions of wild and domestic forms and the proportions in which the different species of livestock were maintained by the people under investigation.

An Aetites may be defined as any hollow stone containing loose matter, a smaller stone or sand, which rattles when shaken. Such objects are of little interest to the modern geologist, who usually breaks them open in order to examine the interior for crystals or impressions of fossils. Their importance to the archaeologist and student of folk-lore may be gauged by the fact that they are mentioned by Dioscorides about A.D. 69 and in the fourteenth edition of Quincey's Pharmacopoeia, published in 1769. A series of at least a hundred references between these dates could be compiled ; only those necessary to elucidate the history of the Eagle-stone need be given.

When unpacked at the British Museum Laboratory, the remains of the Sutton WHoo helmet covered a good-sized table. They appeared to consist of a gilded bronze nose and mouth piece, two gilded bronze dragon heads, parts of what once had been a silver crest, and three or four hundred fragments of sand-encrusted rusty iron.

No photographs had been taken of them during excavation as their importance had not been realized at the time.

Archaeologists have long been aware that whales were extensively utilized by dwellers on the Atlantic sea-board of prehistoric Europe (1). The frequent discovery of cetacean bones in ancient middens and, in regions such as the extreme north of Scotland and the Orkneys, of implements and other objects fabricated from them prompts one to inquire into the source of the whales. Were some of them hunted, or did prehistoric man confine himself to stranded specimens? Again, it is interesting to speculate on the various ways in which whales, whether hunted or stranded, contributed to the economy of early man.

The measures taken for the protection of the monuments and works of art of Europe during the recent war, besides saving an incalculable number from damage or destruction, have also made available for detailed study many that are normally difficult or impossible of access. One such has been the bronze lion of St. Mark, familiar indeed to every visitor to Venice but only at a respectable distance, from the loggia of the Doge's Palace or from the foot of its lofty column by the waterfront of the Piazzetta di San Marco. In 1941, together with its companion figure of St. Theodore, the four bronze horses from the facade of St. Mark's, the great equestrian bronze of Colleoni, and numerous lesser works, it was lowered to safety and stored throughout the war in the vaults of the Doge's Palace. Shortly after the liberation of Venice in 1945 it re-emerged to form part of a unique temporary exhibition in the courtyard of the Palace, after which it was replaced once more upon its column. The writer is indebted to Commendatore Forlati, Superintendent of Monuments for the Veneto, for permitting publication and for much courteous help in eliciting facts and photographs ; and to many colleagues in Rome for criticism and comment—helpful not least by its variety. While venturing some comment on what is evidently a provocative and controversial animal, it must be stressed that the primary purpose of this article is the presentation of a detailed description of the statue, accompanied by the known historical facts and by adequate illustration. These will at least enable others, better qualified, to pass long-overdue judgment on one of the select company of ancient works of art that have never been below ground since the day they were made.

HERODOTUS’S history which includes his description of the country and people of Egypt has lost nothing of its charm and interest though nearly two and a half millennia have elapsed since it was first published. As the report of an eyewitness who saw the great pagan temples still open, and met a priesthood still educated in the remnants of a great tradition serving their gods in the ancient ways, Herodotus’s account has held its place among the sources of Egyptian history. Though modern scholarship has shown some of his statements to be erroneous because based on untrustworthy sources such as popular legends and stories made up by interpreters and guides, Herodotus’s veracity as an author has become more and more recognised and he can be relied upon to repeat faithfully what was told to him.