The Annual of the British School at Athens, 1899-1900. (Mac-
millan and Co. 10s. 6d.)—This number is mainly devoted to the recent discoveries at Cnossus in Crete, Messrs. A. J. Evans and D. G. Hogarth describing the Mycentean Pslace and the early town and cemeteries at that place, while the latter explorer has a paper on the Dicttean Cave. The palace is a structure of the Mycentean Age, covering a neohthic site. On the centre of it was found a temenos of the prehistoric time, aptly compared by Mr. Evans to the Casa Somali. Among the interesting object4 discovered were two pieces of fresco which formed together the plates of a life-sized figure, a youth of the Mycentean Age "In his habit as he lived," and artistically equal to the best work of fifth-century Athenian art,—and yet not less than eight centuries older ! Another important find was a small Egyptian figure of diorite belonging to the Twelfth or Thirteenth Dynasty, and so carrying us back some nine centuries more. Some clay tablets were also found covered with linear script. Some of the characters have been identified. An ingenious speculation about the famous labyrinth (always identified with Cnossus) has been suggested by the discovery of the "Pillar of the Double Axes." The double axe was the symbol of the Cretan Zeus, as it was also of his analogue, the Carian Zeus Labrandeus. May not Laburinthos be a dialectic variety of the name ? It is commonly said that the labyrinth was an invention of late Greek romancers. But such inventions are not really spun out of air. This is necessarily a very fragmentary notice of an important contribu- tion to archwology. Interested readers must go to the volume itself, where they will find Mr. F. R. Welch's note on Cnossiar Pottery, the same writer's paper on the "Influence of Roan Civilisation on South Palestine," and a note by Mr. J. C. Lawson on "A Beast-Dance in Scyros." We must not forget to mention the reproduction of a wonderful bull's head, which Rosa Bonheur might have regarded with envy.
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