The earliest names of Britain known are Celtic. We know that the islands were inhabited before the coming of the Celts, but nothing about the language of the earlier inhabitants or the names by which they designated the islands.

In the last four years, excavation has been going on in an untouched region, the desert border of Palestine, within a walk of the Egyptian frontier. All the district beyond Gaza was formerly raided so often from the south that it was unsafe; now we can live eighteen miles out in the wilderness, surrounded by Arabs, without any defences, and never have a single dispute or trouble. Such is the result of the Occupation. Lawrence and Woolley, with surveyors, made a map of the region down to Kadesh Barnea and, on that map, half of the names survive which are listed in Joshua as the ‘uttermost cities of Judah’.

Every age, even those that seem at the first approach to be stationary, turns out to be transitional when we get to know more about it. Primitive societies are transformed by contacts and war. The China once conceived as immemorial and unchanging reveals itself as a long series of revolutions and wars. The apparent immobility of the medieval church becomes a succession of dissolving views; and perhaps the only generalization that may be true about this continual movement is that it becomes more swift and more hazardous as it proceeds, like the rapids of a great river hurrying to its fall. For there is something about the crisis in which we are at present involved which makes it at once more dangerous and more promising than those which have preceded. On the one hand, ideas are more powerful and more solvent; on the other-and this is a new fact in history the power put at our disposal by science opens possibilities, both of re-construction and ruin, such as have never before been at our command. The War has made the position clear to all who care about society, and even men of science are beginning at last, though slowly and sporadically, to peep out of their specialisms and consider, with apprehension and alarm, whither we are being carried by these new forces which we have not yet learned to control.

Hidden beneath the Mediterranean is a matchless collection of antiquities; but for centuries the sea has jealously watched over its treasures, allowing us no more than an occasional peep. Sometimes when a harbour is being deepened the dredger brings up an important specimen, such for instance as the massive silver patera with designs in gold, a splendid example of Alexandrian art, now in the Bardo Museum at Tunis; or the bronze statuettes from the harbour of Bona (found in July 1912), one of which, representing a girl—unfortunately headless—seated on the ground, is a rare combination of grace and artistic skill. At other times again it is the lucky haul of a fisherman which gives back to us a fine piece of sculpture. Thus it was that in 1832 near Piombino there was fished up out of the sea the Apollo of the early 5th century B.C. which is the pride of the Salle des Bronzes in the Louvre. Other objects found in the same way are the fine bronze headless statue of a boy found near Eleusis in 1879, and acquired by the Berlin Museum from the Sabouroff collection; Poseidon holding a dolphin, of the early 5th century, found near Creusis on the Boeotian shore of the Gulf of Corinth and now restored and exhibited at Athens; and the marble Aphrodite found in 1929 not far from Rhodes. One might easily prolong the list.

Eight years ago, in an article entitled ‘A prehistoric invasion of England’, Mr O. G. S. Crawford put forward the hypothesis that ‘towards the close of the Bronze Age the British Isles were invaded by the first wave of Celtic-speaking peoples bringing with them leaf-shaped bronze swords, many other entirely new types of bronze objects, and at least two types of pottery new to these islands’. It may perhaps be said that this view, with certain qualifications, notably as regards chronology, has met with general acceptance. A comparative study of types of bronze implements over a wide geographical field, while yielding corroborative evidence in support of the invasion theory, has also raised important problems in other directions; and it is my present object to give the results of an enquiry into the origins and distributions of certain type-specimens of the late Bronze Age cultures of western Europe.

The study of the archaeology of eastern Christendom is as yet still in its infancy and the students of east Christian and Byzantine art have been few and far between in England. But of recent years there has arisen a new and more general interest in the civilization which was so violently condemned by Gibbon, and work both of a theoretical and of a practical character has been undertaken on a wider scale. With the theoretical or purely scholastic aspect we are not here concerned; but it seems of interest to present a brief survey of the actual work which has been undertaken by British investigators at Constantinople, the very centre of the Byzantine civilization. During the last four years excavation on a larger or smalIer scale has been in progress, and six separate sites have been examined more or less elaborately as funds have permitted. In 1927 and 1928 a large Expedition, supported by the British Academy, was in the field. In 1929 and 1930 funds were raised in England for work of a more modest nature, but the results were none the less interesting and in one instance discoveries were made which can well be classed within the realms of the sensational.

To write about the Gospels, explaining their origin and transmission, within the compass of an article in ANTIQUITisY o nly possible by expounding the writer's own views on this much discussed and in many parts highly controversial subject in a somewhat peremptory and dogmatic fashion. I therefore make my apologies beforehand to such of my readers as may hold other views, which the inevitable limits of space make it for me impossible to discuss. The main problems I have to consider are : (I) how did the Gospels come to be written, (2) in what ways were they preserved, and (3) what are the chief texts actually extant ?

The early nineteenth century witnessed a remarkable reversal of judgment on the American pre-Columbian cultures. Prescott's romantic histories and Lord Kingsborough's monumental Mexican Antiquities are inspirations of earlier and less sceptical eras. Such pleasing imaginings as that the Spaniards ‘overthrew in Mexico a greater civilization than their own’ received scant support from the archaeologist who had displaced the antiquary, or from the critical historian who interpreted him. Dr Robertson1 summed up the verdict of the new investigators;:—‘The inhabitants of the New World were in a state of society so extremely rude as to be unacquainted with those arts which are the first essays of human ingenuity in its advance towards improvement’. He characterized Cortes's ‘emperors’ as ‘headmen’, the gorgeous palaces of the Conquest as ‘huts or mounds of rubble’, the Aztec Empire as a ‘league of primitive tribes’. Research, both among the ruins of the Mexican Valley and in the histories of the more prosaic conquistadores, established a singular lack of anything on the pre-Columbian continents which could be described as other than a tawdry barbarism.

Our only guide to the thoughts and motives of mankind is a correct interpretation of their acts; and when we are dealing with the Past our only guide to their acts lies in a correct interpretation of the results of those acts. These results are visible in their writings, buildings, paintings, and in all the other works of their hands.

Time, with all its attendant destructive agents-war, wear, and wilful destruction-has obscured the evidence onsiderably; but much still remains, though it may require labour, patience, and careful deduction to secure it.

It is extremely difficult to eradicate erroneous popular beliefs. Among such should be numbered the tendency hastily to attribute prehistoric hill-forts either to the Stone Age or to the Romans, most of such forts having in all probability been reared by the people of the Early Iron Age. The rapid progress of British prehistoric archaeology during the last two decades has shown this clearly, but it has also shown that the popular belief in the existence of neolithic camps is justified, though not in the specific instances that were expected.

We publish in the form of an article a summary of Professor Herzfeld’s important researches in Persia. He is describing them in a new journal which he has founded for the purpose, and of which four parts have already appeared. This journal is of course indispensable to all students who wish to keep abreast of the work which he is doing. Archaeologically Persia has long been a closed area and it is still by no means fully opened up to scientific research. Professor Herzfeld is working there practically single-handed but H.I.M. the Shah has taken a personal interest in the progress of his work and has accompanied him on some of his expeditions. Such evidence of official interest will be most gratifying to orientalists, and we look forward to the further results which must follow from such influential recognition.—EDITOR.

There are many Grim’s ditches in the South of England; and there are other ditches of similar appearance and dimensions which, though not called by this name, may have had the same origin. Amongst them probably is Wansdyke, more correctly called Wansditch, and originally Woden’s ditch. Locally these earthworks are now generally known as the Devil’s ditch. I shall describe here the course of one such Grim’s ditch, based upon field-work carried out during the spring and summer of this year, in the course of which I both walked and flew along the whole course of the various ditches mentioned and was able to add many miles to the portions previously known.

So little has been published about the prehistoric remains of Malta and Gozo that archaeologically the islands are hardly known. Visitors are numerous, but attention is usually concentrated upon Hajar Kim or some other megalithic building to the exclusion of other interesting remains. Thus a meagre impression is usually obtained of the profusion of neolithic relics which still exist. Even standard works on archaeology, treating of the early periods of the Mediterranean civilization, give only a small space, if any, to Maltese monuments.

In the ‘Era of Martyrs’ at the end of the third century the persecuted Copts, the Christians of Egypt, suffered death or fled into the desert; but they found life possible only where there was water. The most favourable of these few oases was Nitria, today called ‘Wadi Natrun’ or Valley of Soda, a shallow depression of twenty-two miles by five in the Libyan desert surface. It is situated a camel journey of a day and a half along the ancient track which leaves the Delta near Terenthus, the modern El Tarrana. In it there are eight small lakes, some of whose waters contain soda, others salt. They lie about seventyfive feet below sea-level and are fed not by the Nile, but, as Dr Ball has recently shown, by desert subsoil water flowing from the southwest. Wells dug in their vicinity yield water, brackish but drinkable, and on the shore of one was the town of Nitriotis, the habitation of the sodaworkers and glass-blowers, existing since ancient Egyptian times, Now the desert is crossed by a light railway, run by a company that exploits the salt and sodium carbonate.

An interesting discovery, made during the season's excavations three years since on the historic site of Ur, has moved the writer to carry to a conclusion some researches originally started several years ago. Many able pens have been exercised in dealing with the wider archaeological and historic significance of the discoveries as a whole, but the individual objects have as yet scarcely attracted the notice that they, for the most part, deserve.

So much interest was aroused by my recent paper on ‘Prehistoric Agriculture’ in vol. I of ANTIQUITYth, at it may be worth while to expand and add to what was there said on the subject of flint sickles. The most comprehensive study of the subject comes from the pen of M. André Vayson de Pradenne whose paper must first be reviewed.

The author sets out by describing an almost perfect example of a flint sickle, consisting of five carefully worked flakes set in an L-shaped wooden mount, discovered some years ago in a peat-bog at the foot of the hill of Solferino, near the Lago di Garda in North Italy (fig. I). After describing its characteristics and discussing its purpose, he reviews all the other known specimens from Europe and Africa, and finally discusses their types and distribution.