In May 1956, while visiting the megalithic temples of Tarxien, which stand on high ground less than a mile from the inner creeks of Grand Harbour, massed graffiti of ships were observed on two adjacent uprights in the ‘Third Temple’.

For about a century it has been assumed that during the Neolithic and part of the Bronze Age the inhabitants of what is now Switzerland built pile-dwellings on the lakes. This interpretation of the finds was put forward, as is well known, by Dr F. Keller, who did so much for Swiss prehistory. His theory was based upon a comparison of the very scanty remains of prehistoric buildings in Switzerland with pile-dwellings that are to be seen today in many parts of the world, erected both on dry land and also on the shores of lakes and of the sea, standing in water. In spite of some opposition, Keller's interpretation appeared so convincing that it aroused great interest and was generally accepted by archaeologists. It was not accidental that Keller had one of his important books on piledwellings published in England. Every museum in the world endeavoured to obtain some specimens of the Swiss finds, and today it is practically impossible to make even an approximately complete list of the older finds from the pile-dwellings.

The recent general accounts of Miss Kathleen Kenyon's brilliant series of campaigns at Tell es-Sultan, the mound in Jordan generally conceded to be that of ancient Jericho, will be well known to readers of Antiquity (cf. especially Wheeler, no. 119, 132–6; Kenyon, no. 120, 184—95). Sir Mortimer Wheeler and Miss Kenyon interpret the prehistoric archaeological assemblages of the two basal phases of Tell es-Sultan as evidence of civization (Miss Kenyon's italics), and the surprisingly early radiocarbon dates for the upper portion of the second basal phase of the site are accepted at face value. Miss Kenyon, in fact, believes (Ill. London News, no. 6,123 [13 October, 19561, 612) that Tell es-Sultan was already a ‘town’ at a date ‘which must approach the 8th millennium’ B.C.

You will not find the name of the Philhellene George Fanshawe Chubb in the Dictionary of National Biography, although that does include a purely mythical Philhellene Kirkman Finlay. Though he lost his life in the cause of Greece, Chubb is never mentioned by Finlay, Trikoupes, Gordon, or by any other historian of the Greek Revolution. He appears, like Melchizedek, to have had no ancestors and no posterity, and whether he was really a native of Birmingham or not we cannot tell. We know nothing about his family or his education or his profession, or indeed anything at all about him till he became a Philhellene.

In 1872 the name ‘Campigny’ appeared in archaeological literature for the first time, and the industry to which this site gave its name has been a subject of controversy ever since. At Campigny (Seine-Inférieure) were discovered pits containing worked flint and the remains of crude pottery. In a short time similar flintwork was discovered on other sites in north France. The typical implements were axes with the cutting edge formed by a transverse blow and heavy picks. Mortillet was the first to illustrate the analogy between French tranchet axes and those from Danish kitchen middens. In time typologically similar material was found from Britain to the Soviet Union.

The following narrative is translated from the Greek book of Philon of Byblos (the Biblical Gebal, modern Jebail), who wrote in the reign of Nero. The book is a history of early Phoenicia, down to the time of Solomon, which Philon claims to have edited from an old Phoenician chronicle by a scribe named Sanchuniathon and (as in this part) from other sources. Nineteenth-century scholars were inclined to disbelieve in the existence of Sanchuniathon, and to think that Philon's work was thus a forgery; but now that archaeology has produced actual fragments of early Phoenician literature, including references to a war with the Kerethites of Philistia, which Sanchuniathon also mentions, scholars, especially in Germany, are more disposed to take him seriously.