Nature of proof.

The nature of proof is more complex than it seems to be at first sight. True enough, all proof is merely a matter of common sense; it does not appeal to any different faculty. And though a proof may follow as simply as possible from the facts, yet it cannot be understood by one who is not familiar with the facts to begin with. Trigonometry is the most obvious common sense to any one familiar with the formulae; and the formulae themselves are only common sense to any one who takes the trouble to argue them through. Yet, for all that, trigonometry is not obvious to the ignorant. In the same way the evidences about the past of man are simple and clear when the facts and methods from which they are deduced are already known. Yet it requires a good familiarity with the material before the conclusions can be felt to be self-evident results.

To follow clearly what evidence and proof means, it is best to refer to a class of evidence which is most familiar to the reader. What is commonly called legal evidence is the best-known example, as it is met every day in law cases and police reports. Evidence is based on the same principles, in whatever subject it may be; there is not one logic for the present, and a different logic for the past. But the kind of evidence, the exactitude, the certainty, which is considered enough to determine a property or a life, is rightly looked on as conclusive for all reasonable purposes. The laws of such evidence have been threshed over for generations past; and it is well known what kind of proofs may be relied upon, and what are dubious. If we then compare this class of evidence with that which we accept in studying the past history of man, we shall see more clearly what kinds of proof are admissible, and how far it is reasonable to depend upon our results.

In examining legal evidence we see that it all falls under one of four heads—(1) witnesses, (2) material objects, (3) exhaustion, and (4) probabilities. These four kinds of evidence are of very different values; any one of them may be stronger than the others in a given case, and each kind has its own special weakness.

1. Witnesses provide the most clear and connected proof, and the least liable to misunderstanding; but yet a proof which is entirely dependent on veracity, on intelligence, on absence of prejudice, and on clear memory, and is hence the least dependable kind of evidence in some cases.

2. Material facts, which may be very conclusive; such as A’s footprint in B’s garden, or A’s chisel left in B’s house, at a burglary. If the fact is certain, the conclusion is proved; but the danger lies in misunderstanding the fact.

3. Exhaustion, which may prove A guilty because no one else could have done the deed; as when A and B are seen in a railway carriage at one station, and at the next stoppage B is found murdered and A leaves the carriage. There may be not a trace of other evidence, but this is enough.

4. Probability, as when A is last seen with B, and B proceeds to deal with the property of murdered A. This kind of evidence is enough to hang a man, solely from presumption.

Now let us look at these kinds of evidence about the past of man.

1. Witnesses, the documents, which give a clear and connected statement. They may be either primary, as a stone inscription or an autograph letter; or secondary, as compiled histories or subsequent copies. No other kind of evidence is so easy to follow; yet this is a proof in which we are entirely at the mercy of the prejudices, the ill-will, the frauds, and the blunders of others, and it is hence the least dependable kind of evidence in some cases. The speeches of Thucydides, the bias of Suetonius, the wonders of Livy, the romances of William of Malmesbury, and the forgery called Richard of Cirencester, each plunge us deeper and deeper into the doubtfulness of written documents; to say nothing of the casket letters or Ossian.

2. Material facts, when rightly understood, are the most conclusive evidence. They may be in a single object, as a palaeolithic flint rechipped over and over in later ages; or a foreign ornament used on an object of dated style, as a Maori tatued head in a daguerreotype would prove the tatuing to be known between 1840 and 1860; or a restruck coin with one type over another, as Barchocheb over Hadrian; or an added inscription, so familiar on Egyptian statues. Or the evidence may consist in a collocation of objects, such as a group of things found together in a tomb; or the superposition of strata of ruins in a town. In the case of a single object there are few possibilities of misunderstanding the evidence; but in strata or tomb-groups there is a chance of older things being reused. Such chances of error are, however, extinguished by the recurrence of instances; and the finding of certain things together in several cases under different circumstances is one of the strongest kinds of evidence, such, for instance, as the name of Amenhotep III often found with the Mykenaean pottery, both in Greece and in Egypt.

3. Exhaustion may prove a point; as, for instance, the Iconoclasts in Greece or Reformers and Puritans in England were the only destroyers of images and pictures, or Akhenaten was the only man who erased the name of Amen. Such destructions therefore are evidence of the age and the man.

4. Probabilities, as, for instance, the fact that the Saxons erased the Romano-Britons, makes it probable that Silchester, Uriconium, and other late Roman towns which were burnt, were destroyed by the Saxons.

We see thus that each kind of proof which is accepted legally is also used archaeologically, and is subject to much the same failings. Legal evidence may fail by mistaking the nature of the facts, such as that some rabbit’s blood on a knife is human blood; so may archaeology mistake by ignorance, as when the Mykenaean treasure was called Byzantine.

Or legal evidence may fail by wrong inferences from facts, such as that some human blood on a knife is due to a murder, while it has come from the owner’s finger. So archaeology erred from a wrong inference in calling the treasure of Troy “the treasure of Priam.”

Or legal evidence may fail owing to mere prejudice, thus ignoring the truth. So archaeology has suffered from the prejudice that nothing in Greece can be older than the VIIIth century B.C.

It is supposed sometimes, by those unfamiliar with the subject, that archaeological evidence is so doubtful or so slight that it cannot be relied upon, and is not to be compared with the certainties of legal proof. Let us see then what legal proof is in important cases. In one case a will was lost, and the mere memory of its contents, stated by a survivor who had assisted in writing it, was accepted as sufficient proof of what had been in it, and the property was distributed accordingly. In another case property was left by A to B, or failing B to C; B also made a will leaving it to D. A and B were killed together in an accident, and the slightest observation of which moved last, determined whether C or D had the property. Again, there are innumerable cases of setting a will aside because of the testator not being of a sound mind for disposing of property; and various assertions of irrelevant facts by various interested parties are held to reveal the true mental capacity of a person to a judge and jury. In a murder trial the question of whether one or both of the assailants were guilty was held proved by the deceased having been tied by two different forms of knots. In another trial the mere presumption due to concealing a body and dealing with the property of a murdered person was enough to hang a man. Such are some of the evidences which are held good in law to settle questions of life and property.

Happily archaeology is relieved from the terrible dilemma of being bound to come to a conclusion at once, as the law has to do. Questions can be left pending, and it is not peremptorily needful to act one way or another. An open mind can be kept on difficult and obscure points; and a matter can be discussed in fresh lights, without keeping a prisoner standing in the dock the whole time. Legal conclusions are often wrong; though, as the law can do no wrong, a free pardon is all the sufferer gets when his innocence is proved. But if legal proofs, arguments, and conclusions were kept freely open to revision for years; if they were printed in every textbook for beginners; if all students were encouraged to find fresh evidence, and to upset what was laid down, and if the high-road to position lay in reversing the decisions of past authorities, it seems only too likely that there would be a greater wreckage of bad cases and bad law than there now is of bad archaeology.

For an example of the nature of archaeological evidence it will be best to study the connections of Egypt with early Europe. This subject is not only a fascinating one historically, but it includes a great variety of different kinds of evidence,—from paintings, from groups found in tombs, from remains of palaces, from objects exactly dated by royal names, from objects dated by their nature and style; and evidence which is of various degrees of certainty. Moreover this evidence has been more actively and continually attacked than any other class of discoveries of late years, and hence the most that can be argued against it is well known.

Until 1883 nothing was known of the Greeks in Egypt before the Ptolemaic age; the accounts of Herodotus about the Greek mercenaries, and their connection with the XXVIth Dynasty, stood solely as a literary statement, without a scrap of tangible evidence. At the close of that year I bought an archaic Greek statuette in Cairo (Fig.56); and on enquiring about the source of it, I heard of Nebireh, and hunted out the site in the Western Delta. There I found the ground covered with archaic Greek pottery dating throughout the XXVIth Dynasty, and it was evident that a great Greek city had existed there. Next year, at the close of 1884, I began exploring it, and found on the first day there, a decree of the people of Naukratis. Here then the evidence of Greek occupation depended upon the presence of thousands of pieces of Greek pottery and sculpture; and to imagine that these had all been imported by Egyptians was beyond any possible supposition. A town containing almost entirely Greek remains, and with only clumsy imitations of Egyptian subjects, was certainly occupied by Greeks. And as there is no instance or probability of Greeks having imported great quantities of vases made in earlier times, this place contained good evidence for Greeks having lived there from the VIIth century B.C. As such it was generally accepted; but the dedication by the Naukratites was withheld from the public for six months by over-cautious authorities, for fear that something else might contradict it. This is a case where what was undoubtedly good evidence should rather have been stated at once, with a reservation that it was very improbable that the stone had been brought from another site, or dedicated anywhere except in Naukratis. The evidence of the pottery shewed that Naukratis dated from the middle of the VIIth century; and this agrees with the statement by Athenaeus that a statue was dedicated there in the 23rd Olympiad, 688 B.C.

In the next season, the spring of 1886, I went down to Defeneh, and there found a great mass of Greek pottery of the same period as that of Naukratis. Here again, then, the Greeks had inhabited the site; and the evidence was clear that this was a great camp of Greek mercenaries. The modern name Defeneh so closely agrees to the ancient Daphnae that no one hesitated to accept their equivalence. Here the identification rests, then, not on a contemporary inscription, but on a modern Arabic name.

Important evidence about the manufactures of these places is given by the pottery. Although the two sites were occupied at the same period by Ionian Greeks, yet the bulk of the pottery on one site differs from that on the other. The conclusion is that probably it was made locally by Greek potters, and not brought by traders from Greek towns, as trade would probably have imported from the same sources to both sites. The evidence here is from the difference of classes.

Another conclusion is drawn from the few varieties of painted pottery which are found in common at both sites. From the levels at which they were found at Naukratis these varieties were dated at various years between 610 and 550 B.C.; and such varieties were found together in a chamber at Defeneh with jar sealings bearing royal names of Psamtek II and Aahmes, and therefore dated between 595 and 565 B.C., as the Greeks were removed from the camp in the latter year. The evidence here is from the collocation of objects; those dated by the levels at which other things were found at Naukratis agreeing with those dated by mixture with Egyptian sealings at Defeneh.

We now turn to the great group of dating of the XVIIIth–XXth Dynasties; and as the nature of the evidence is our present consideration we shall classify it according to the kind of source of the evidence. The most certain dating is that of offerings painted on the walls of tombs, as it is always agreed that such represent objects which were in current use when the tomb was decorated; they therefore are not older than the tomb, nor can the paintings have been added later. Of this class are the paintings of vases in the tomb of Rekhmara, under Tahutmes III in the XVIIIth Dynasty; these vases are shewn as being brought in by the Kefti foreigners, and strongly resemble the vases found in Cyprus, Mykenae, and other Greek sites. Here the connection of Egypt in the XVIIIth Dynasty with people who made such vases is certain; but the vases might be older than the scene, or such vases might continue to be made to a later time, hence the connection with any given epoch on Greek soil is only a strong probability but not absolute. Another dated painting is that of stirrup vases (to use a more convenient word than “pseud-amphorae,” “false-necked vases,” or “bÜgel kanne”) among the offerings in the paintings on the tomb of Ramessu III of the XXth Dynasty. That such forms were familiar at that date is absolute; but they might be older vases preserved in the Royal Treasury, or might be imitations by Egyptians of older foreign forms, like English repetition of Chinese patterns.

The next class of evidence is that of objects which have been placed in such conditions that they cannot have been disturbed after a given date. This evidence is given by several deposits of groups of vases, clothing, etc., which were burnt in pits sunk in the floors of houses, and then earthed over. Such groups cannot possibly have been disturbed later on to insert objects, as the charcoal and ashes are undisturbed, and the foreign objects are likewise burnt. Hence the evidence of the Egyptian objects if clearly dated must carry the foreign objects to the same date. Several such groups have been found at Gurob. In one were many Egyptian objects all agreeing well to the date of Amenhotep III, as fixed by a glazed pottery kohl tube; in another a group agreeing with the date of Tutankhamen, which was shewn by some fragile pendants which could not have long survived in use; another group agrees to the age of Ramessu II, who is named on a pendant of glazed ware; and a fourth group agrees to the rougher style of Sety II, which is dated by a dish with his name. The character of the Egyptian objects thus points to each of these dated objects being contemporary with the rest of their group, and therefore truly dating the group. Now in these groups were first, five well-made globular stirrup vases (see Fig.59); second, pieces of several stirrup vases of a later form; third, the neck of a later and coarser stirrup vase; and fourth, two much later coarse and unpainted stirrup vases. Here the changes in the character of the vases agree with the relative dates given by the Egyptian objects. The stirrup vases might be all older than the Egyptian dates, but that is very improbable by the regular degradation of them according with the dates; and the groups cannot be later than the dated objects as they agree well with the date of such Egyptian things fixed in other cases. It is then extremely improbable that the stirrup vases should not belong to the periods of the Egyptian kings whose names are found with them. Variation in either direction is prohibited by these limitations.

We may add that there are two other burnt groups without kings’ names, and the connection of stirrup vases with Egyptian objects in these agrees well with the connection shewn by the other groups. Another such grouping was in a burial in open ground at Abydos; there several examples of Graeco-Egyptian ware (Fig.57), two figures and a ring vase with pomegranates and lotus flowers, were found with Egyptian pottery and beads of the XVIIIth Dynasty.

A somewhat similar grouping is afforded by the rubbish mounds of the palace of Akhenaten at Tell el Amarna. There the palace was entirely deserted after the reign of his successor, about 1360 B.C., and the town ruined finally by Horemheb, 1330 B.C. It seems then impossible to suppose anything later being mixed up with the rubbish heaps, which contained nearly a hundred dated objects, none later than 1360 B.C. The supposition has even been suggested that some unknown people, who left no other traces, have at some later time come laden with hundreds of potsherds, and dug over the rubbish mounds to mix them together. Such are the wild fancies which must be resorted to if the evidence is to be upset. The rubbish mounds consist of some thousands of tons of potsherds and dust; and among these, entirely mixed with them, were found nearly a hundred rings and objects of Akhenaten and his successor, and over 1300 pieces of Aegean pottery, representing probably 800 vases. The palace, which was deserted after 1360 B.C., also contained several pieces of the same pottery. Here the great quantity of the material of all kinds precludes all the suppositions that might be made about isolated specimens. The mounds are too large for later material to be mixed with them; the dated objects are too many to be accidental, or to have been older than the mounds; and the Aegean vases are too many to have been preserved from earlier times. The whole conditions prove that all the objects were in common use contemporaneously.

A somewhat less certain dating is given by remains found in houses. At the palace of Akhenaten the definite date of its ruin fairly shews the Aegean pottery in it to be contemporary with his generation. In a house at Gurob, Aegean pottery was found with wood-carving of the XIXth Dynasty and a ring of the late XVIIIth Dynasty, and also under the walls of a house which was built at the close of the XVIIIth Dynasty. These are not precise datings, and are open to claims that the houses were later than the evidence shews; but such connections give a strong presumption.

Similar, but converse, evidence is given from the Greek side. At Mykenae was found a figure of a monkey in violet glaze (No. 4573 Athens); this is of Egyptian work and bears the name of Amenhotep II. A piece of glaze found in a building by the lion gate has the name of Amenhotep III. A scarab of Thyi, his queen, was found in the palace of Mykenae. And three large jars of drab-coloured Egyptian pottery (4569 Athens), such as is quite unknown from Greek sources, were also found at Mykenae. Now these examples prove the import of Egyptian things of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties before the fall of Mykenae; they do not give an exact dating as their time-connection on the Greek side is unstated, and they might belong to any part of the history of the town. But their agreement in age gives a strong presumption that the latter half of the XVIIIth Dynasty was contemporary with some part of the flourishing period of foreign trade at Mykenae.

At this point we should notice an assertion often made, that Egyptian objects, especially scarabs, often bore the names of kings who were earlier than the date of the manufacture. This is sometimes the case, and on this ground it has been attempted to discredit all evidence about scarabs. Now an exactly similar case occurs in Roman coinage, where at eight different periods restorations of coins of earlier emperors took place, no less than twenty emperors being thus commemorated. Yet no one has impugned the evidence of Roman coins in dating an excavation, on the ground that as some were restored therefore none are of certain value. Similarly seven kings restored the scarabs of earlier times, twelve different kings being thus commemorated; but that is no reason for discrediting the age of the remaining ninety-nine scarabs out of every hundred. The restorations, say of the XIIth Dynasty kings by Tahutmes III, are as obvious as the restorations of earlier emperors by Gallienus. No doubt to a person ignorant of coins the subject would seem uncertain and confused; but then scientific evidence is not expected to appeal to those who are ignorant of the subject, whether it be coins or scarabs. We must then credit the evidence of scarabs for dating, although there are some restored in a different style, and although some case might be found where a scarab had been reused at a much later date than that of its manufacture. Such exceptions are certainly not one per cent of the whole, and cannot therefore be invoked to explain away the whole of the instances.

The largest class of evidence is that from collocation in tombs. The weak points of this are (1) reuse of tombs so that primary and secondary interments may be mixed; this should be obvious in any properly conducted excavation, and cannot be brought in as an hypothesis unless some mixture of date can be otherwise proved: (2) the tomb contents being older than the dated object, and so brought to too low a date, which is very unlikely, as a whole group of things would not be preserved for long together: (3) the dated object being older than the tomb, which is practically the only danger. A few rare examples have been seen of older objects being reburied, but so rarely that only a very small proportion of cases could be thus explained. The great majority of things in hand at any one time belong to within a generation or two. In our own time, although we treasure older things more than did the people of any past age, yet not one per cent of what we have is over a hundred years old. In late Roman coinage the waste was such that in a hundred years only an eighth survived in use, and in half a century more only a twenty-fifth remained. It is very rarely that beads or pendants of very different ages are mixed in ancient necklaces, or that scarabs of reigns far apart are buried together. I do not remember a mixture of more than two contiguous reigns in any group of scarabs that I have found. Hence this possibility of an older object being reused may occur rarely, but cannot be called upon in the whole of the cases, or even for any perceptible proportion of them. In certainly nine cases out of ten we must expect that a dated object was buried within less than two or three generations from its original period.

The tomb groups containing Aegean pottery are, it so happens, not so well dated as the burnt groups; and are therefore inferior to the burnt groups, both on this account, as well as by the greater possibility of mixture. The Maket tomb at Kahun is the principal example. The dated objects in that are of Tahutmes II and III; and though at first I supposed it to be of later age on the strength of some beads not then known before the XIXth or XXth Dynasty, yet as such beads were afterwards found in a deposit of Tahutmes III at Koptos, there is no reason for questioning that the whole is of his age. Also the experience of the past dozen years has shewn that such a date agrees well to all the other objects in the tomb. The absence of blue painted pottery does not imply a date after the disuse of it in the XXth Dynasty, but before that style came into use in the middle of the XVIIIth Dynasty. In this tomb was a fine Aegean vase (Fig.58) with ivy-spray pattern, which is thus dated to about 1500 B.C. The burials were quite undisturbed and therefore the vase cannot belong to a later date, but might possibly be earlier.

Other examples have not this precise dating. At Kahun a burial in the open ground, and undisturbed, had scarabs and objects of the style of the middle or end of the XVIIIth Dynasty, with a stirrup vase from the Aegean (Kahun, p. 32). The undisturbed tomb at Gurob containing the beautiful wooden statuette of Res, certainly of the XVIIIth Dynasty, had in an opposite chamber a stirrup vase, which must have been buried at the same period. Another burial at Gurob had a piece of a stirrup vase with beads exactly like those of Ramessu II. And at Naqada a tomb which by the style of the painting, must have belonged to the beginning or middle of the XVIIIth Dynasty, had been so entirely plundered that the only object left was a fine globular stirrup vase. In these cases there is no exact dating, but a consensus of style in each case of the XVIIIth or early XIXth Dynasty; and the connection of the Aegean pottery with it is in some cases absolute and in others only presumptive. The argument for date of the pottery rests then in these cases on the uniformity of the period connected with it, and the absence of any discrepant dating.

Now this argument is greatly reinforced if we can shew that the same connection of period exists on the other side. At Ialysos in Rhodes a tomb with Aegean pottery contained a scarab of Amenhotep III. At Mykenae, grave No. 49 contained also glazed ware of Amenhotep III. At Enkomi in Cyprus in grave 93 a scarab of Queen Thyi was found with Aegean pottery. And from the same cemetery comes a metal ring of her son Amenhotep IV. These cases therefore connect one period of the Aegean remains with the Egyptian reigns from 1414 to 1365 B.C. If on one hand it might be supposed that the single Greek objects in Egyptian tombs were older than the time of their burial, here on the other hand the possibility is reversed, and the single Egyptian objects in Greece could only be older and not later than the group with which they were buried. As on both sides the dating is the same—the latter part of the XVIIIth Dynasty—it shows that in both countries the groups contained objects of contemporary date. If we were to further refine on the question, and enquire whether the differences of date of the reigns in Egypt correspond to equal differences in Greece, we are met by the lack of all relative dating yet assignable to the Greek tombs; on that side we have only a vague statement of “Mykenaean period,” or some such generality; and it is therefore only that period in general that we can assign to the XVIIIth–XIXth Dynasty in Egypt.

We may, however, see a little further into detail on the Egyptian side by observing how the stirrup vases vary in form and work. At Naqada, probably under Tahutmes III, was a globular form, with simple broad bands, and dull face. At Gurob under Amenhotep III the vases have more broad bands and a polished face (Fig.59). Under Tutankhamen there were fine lines appearing between the bands. Under Ramessu II the form is coarser. And under Sety II is only a coarse unpainted imitation. Lastly, under Ramessu VI at Tell el Yehudiyeh were some rude debased copies. Here the relative style of the vases agrees with the varying date of the objects found with each; and hence we are justified in not only placing one general period in Greece as contemporary with another period in Egypt, but also in connecting the varied forms with the reigns which are named with them. The evidence which we gain from the mere general admixture, without any proof of the objects originating in the generation by which they were buried, is here further carried on into evidence for the exact age of each type by the sequence of style agreeing to the sequence of the dated objects.

We now turn to a question of style alone. In grave 93 at Enkomi was found a gold collar of Egyptian work with nine different patterns in it; of these, eight are well known as designs of the time of Amenhotep IV, and the ninth is a variant of such. As these designs are not known in such forms at a century later or earlier, this collar cannot have been made far from 1400 B.C.; and as it is of slight and tender fabric it cannot have long been in use. Hence the date of its burial and of the tomb must be in the fourteenth century B.C. Of other examples of style, which may be quoted as important, is a great group of blue glazed ware of the same form, colour, and designs, as the vases of Ramessu II, but found in grave 66 at Enkomi; a gold pin, with a hole in the middle, of the XVIIIth–XIXth Dynasty found at Gurob, like one from grave 66 at Enkomi; a group of bronze vases with lotus handles found in the Idaean cave in Crete, exactly of the fabric of those of the XVIIIth–XIXth Dynasty; a figure of a swimming girl holding a dish, carved in bone, from the Idaean cave, a favourite design in the XVIIIth Dynasty; and some other instances of similar style, ornament, and processes, which need hardly reinforce the general argument.

To recapitulate the evidences of the XVIIIth–XXth Dynasty:—

The possible deviations from the probable results are thus seen to balance one another, some leaving the limit only open to earlier times and some only to later times, so that change cannot be accepted in either direction.

We now go back to an earlier stage in the history, that of the XIIth Dynasty. Some ten years ago the stage which we have already discussed was the “fighting frontier” of the subject; five years ago the XIIth Dynasty was the fighting frontier; now this is almost pacified, and the struggle against prepossessions is carried back to the still earlier periods.

The view back to the XIIth Dynasty was first opened out in excavating the rubbish mounds of the town of Kahun. This town was entirely built at one time for the workmen employed on the pyramid of Usertesen II, this then is the starting date. While the houses were fully occupied a large rubbish mound was accumulated outside of the walls. When the official work of building ceased at the finishing of the pyramid, we may conclude that the town began to dwindle, as I found many of the houses and streets had been used as rubbish holes for waste of the XIIth Dynasty. Therefore the less convenient and accessible rubbish heap outside of the walls is probably entirely of the reign of Usertesen II. As it does not contain any Egyptian material that could be dated later than that, the evidence of the shrinkage of the town should be accepted as giving a probable limit to the age of the outer heaps.

In these heaps the great bulk was of regular Egyptian pottery of the XIIth Dynasty, filling up a depth of 6 or 8 feet in parts, and therefore very unlikely to become mixed with later objects dropped by accident. Now with this pottery thus certified as to its age, were found pieces of several kinds hitherto entirely unknown. Black ware decorated with white spiral lines, and with yellow and red lines and circles of dots, red pottery with white returning spirals, and with painting in red, white, and green. The style was obviously of the Aegean family, so much so that even the best authorities asserted that these were pieces of Naukratite pottery of the XXVIth Dynasty and shut their eyes to the great difference of fabric and material. For some years I protested that the evidence of finding was absolute for the XIIth Dynasty date, and that no such pottery was known at a later date to which this could be compared. But some general resemblance to the style of the XXVIth Dynasty was allowed to calm the archaeological conscience of my friends into ignoring all the positive evidence. No such pottery was known on Greek soil at an early date; therefore none existed; therefore this could not be of that date. This argument is still in full favour for other and earlier periods. But a shock of surprise came when delicate black pottery with white painting and red was found at Kamares in Crete, and published by Mr. Myres in 1895; and later the same style of pottery was so largely found that Messrs. Hogarth and Welch write in 1901 that “so far from that ware being a rarity, it is to be looked for in Crete wherever any strata of remains underlie the Mykenaean. It occurred in our digging at Knossos at all points at which the early town was probed to the rock” (J.H.S. xxi. 78). The pre-Mykenaean period is now before us and is found to agree entirely with the dating already reached on unimpeachable grounds at Kahun. That we may recognise connections between Greece and Egypt in the XIIth Dynasty is now orthodox, and we may proceed to see what further evidence appears for this dating.

At Knossos was found a portion of an Egyptian seated figure in diorite bearing an inscription of Ab-nub-mes-uazet-user, which from the style is probably of the XIIth Dynasty.

At Praesos were found several globular beads of carnelian and of amethyst such as are well known in the XIIth Dynasty, and the latter material is not found dated to a later period in Egypt.

At Knossos was found a globular alabaster vase of the regular type of the XIIth Dynasty; and also the alabaster vase lid of King Khyan, whose date is unfortunately not fixed on the Egyptian side, but who is probably of the XVIth Dynasty, though perhaps of the XIth.

The long period now known in Greece before the civilization which is dated to the XVIIIth Dynasty compels such a presumption of connection with far earlier periods, and the connection is so well shewn by the Kamares ware, that the evidence for the XIIth Dynasty relationship scarcely needs further support. It depends on identity of style of highly decorated pottery, and of beads; and the transport of two pieces of Egyptian work.

Another connection of this age is shewn by the “pan-grave” pottery found in Egypt. This class of shallow circular graves is dated to the close of the XIIth Dynasty by several discoveries of worn and damaged objects of the XIIth Dynasty in the graves, without anything that could be fixed to a later date. In these graves is a large class of non-Egyptian pottery; some of it black and red, highly polished; others, rude thick pottery with incised patterns. The similarity of the black and red to the style of the prehistoric pottery of Egypt is obvious; it is a later branch of the same fabric. And when we consider from what other land that may have come into Egypt, we naturally look to the similar forms found in the Celtic pottery of Southern Spain by Bonsor (Fig.60), as indicating that it belongs to the western Libyan culture. Again, the rough incised pottery is of the same Celtic family found in Spain, showing a western source. The suggestion lately put forward that these may have come into Egypt from the East is wholly baseless. It is in Spain and the allied Celtic pottery of Europe that we find the types which were brought into Egypt by the rude invaders at the close of the XIIth Dynasty. So that a connection of the western barbaric culture of the bronze age with the close of the XIIth Dynasty must be concluded, from the evidence of similar pottery intruded into Egypt, and associated in graves with the objects of that age.

It is probably then to the same invaders that we should look for the source of the black incised ware (Fig.61) with patterns filled with white, and of characteristically western—Italic or Greek—forms, which is found in Kahun in the XIIth Dynasty, and in burials at Khataaneh of the XIIIth Dynasty. It is the latest stage of a class of imported pottery which recurs at intervals from the early prehistoric age onwards. A piece of this pottery was found in one of the “pan graves,” thus linking it with the other foreign pottery brought in at that period. It has been found at Hissarlik in the lowest levels, in Bosnia at Butmir, and of prehistoric to XIIIth Dynasty age in Egypt.

On going back another stage to the Old Kingdom, of the IVth to VIth Dynasties, we still find links between Egypt and the West. In the VIth dynasty is found a class of non-Egyptian buttons (Fig.62) with devices, which in some cases may have been used as seals; more than a hundred of these are now known, and in no case are they of Egyptian fabric, as when an Egyptian subject was copied it was always in a mistaken manner. Now a close parallel to many of the designs is found on Cretan engraved stones, and it is therefore to that civilisation that we must look for the source of a considerable foreign importation, which probably accompanied a movement of population at the overthrow of the civilisation of the Old Kingdom. The actual incomers may have passed by sea from the islands, or by land along Africa.

On turning to Crete we see in the noble lamp with lotus capital found at Knossos, a type which cannot have been derived from anything that we know of the XIIth Dynasty in Egypt. The free buds around the band had long since become lost at that time; and even in the Vth Dynasty on the Abusir capital they are less distinct. A form belonging to the Vth Dynasty is the only one that is at all likely to have been the origin of this fine Cretan capital. Again a vase with two handles from Knossos is certainly an exact copy in local stone, of the regular Egyptian type of the Old Kingdom, which was quite unknown later. And two pieces of the brims of bowls, one of Egyptian diorite, the other of liparite, are of exactly the type made in the close of the IIIrd Dynasty at Medum, and in the early IVth Dynasty at Gizeh; this might perhaps last until the Vth Dynasty, but we could not suppose it to come later, as it would have been quite out of the run of later forms. The copying of motives and forms which passed entirely out of use, is a strong form of evidence; a single object might survive to later times, but for a form to be copied it must be the familiar and usual form at the time when the copy is made. Hence we cannot place the familiarity with these Egyptian types in Crete later than the Vth or perhaps IVth Dynasty.

Still earlier, the Western influence on Egypt is seen by the black incised bowls, of which one piece was found inside a mastaba of the time of Sneferu (end of IIIrd Dynasty), and another piece between two mastabas of about the same age at Dendereh, where it must have been buried in sand at the period of the building. Another piece of such black incised pottery was found in the tomb of King Zer of the Ist Dynasty; see Fig.61.

This brings us back to a surprising series of pieces of painted pottery from the Royal Tombs of the Ist Dynasty (Fig.63). The forms are Aegean; the material, the facing, the colouring, the varieties of pattern, all belong distinctively to the Aegean. The opinion of Professors FurtwÄngler and Wolters is that these belong to the earliest type of Island pottery. Certainly there is nothing like them found in Egypt, except the confessedly Aegean pottery of later times. One prehistoric Egyptian vase has been compared with them, but it has no resemblance in form, material, facing, or colouring, and only an approximation to one of the patterns. They stand unquestionably in line with other Aegean ware. These pieces are found scattered in several of the Royal Tombs; and those from the earlier tombs are of an earlier style. Thus there is no absolute proof, but only a strong presumption, that these belong to the age of the tombs of the Ist Dynasty.

Further evidence is, however, given by a portion of the original tomb offerings of King Zer, which were left untouched by all the plunderers and destroyers. In one corner-chamber of his tomb were an alabaster vase of regular Ist Dynasty type, four pottery jars of the same age, and nine jars of foreign ware, different in forms, in material, and in facing, from any Egyptian pottery of that age, but agreeing in all these characteristics with Aegean pottery, and including a vase of the same nature as the painted pottery, but without decoration. The whole group was cemented together by the burning of the unguents which had been buried in the jars.

Here is then a case like that of the Kamares pottery at Kahun. The evidence is clear, there is no visible loophole for avoiding the archaeological conclusion. And the only argument against it is that no such pottery has been found in Greece, but only more advanced styles of such fabric under later conditions. Now that the Knossos finds have led all those who see their value to grant a connection in the IIIrd or IVth Dynasty, we may soon see the fighting frontier pushed over to include this great and distinctive group of the early Ist Dynasty.

Nor does this stand alone. This year another class of foreign pottery has been found in the ruins of the temple of Abydos, of the Ist Dynasty, and perhaps somewhat before it (Fig.64). The material is unlike any in Egypt, a dense black pottery; the facing of it is usually highly burnished, unlike Egyptian of that age; the forms are wholly un-Egyptian, the long pointed amphora with curved neck, and the hollow feet to vases, being unmistakably of the Greek family. Exactly similar pottery in material and finish, is found in fragments of the later Neolithic period at Knossos; a piece from Egypt and one from Knossos when seen side by side seem as if they had been broken from the same jar. The forms of the Cretan examples are not yet re-established, but some at least are the same as the Egyptian examples. As most of the cups of this type at Abydos had contained a brilliant red haematite paint, it is very likely that the pottery came over as vehicles for trade products.

Yet again in the Ist Dynasty deposit of ivory and glazed objects in the temple of Abydos, was a cast copper figure of foreign style which is of the same family as the copper figures found in the Diktaean cave.

And all this leads us back to the Egyptian prehistoric age. There we see commonly painted on the pottery, and on walls of a tomb, the large ships then in use. Some had as many as 60 oars, yet we see the greatest of the Venetian fighting galleys had only 24 on a side. A rowing ship is useless on the Nile, except for sometimes getting down stream, as no rowing would suffice to take a large vessel continuously up against the current. But the rowing galley has been the vessel of the Mediterranean, from the French navy back to the Phoenician, and no one knows how long before. These great vessels, which bore various ensigns showing the ports from which they started, must have been concerned in important business; probably trading the oil and skins and wood one way, and the dates and corn of Egypt in return. Among their imports were probably the foreign bowls of black incised ware, filled in with white, which are found even as far back as near the beginning of the prehistoric civilisation. They clearly belong to that foreign class which is found as far apart as Spain, Bosnia, and Troy; and the original home of this pottery has yet to be found, in that Mediterranean region about which we are just beginning to discover our own ignorance.

If at present our evidence of connection between Egypt and the West, before the XIIth Dynasty, rests upon the identity of styles and fabrics, we must remember how that same class of evidence in later periods has been amply reinforced by dated objects with inscriptions, found in most unequivocal positions. And we may then at last reach the conception that after all, civilisation started at much the same time all round the Mediterranean, but advanced rather sooner in Egypt than on the northern shores.

In this study of the facts which link together the early history of Europe with that of Egypt, we have now seen the varied sources and values of the different kinds of archaeological evidence; and the modes by which the accumulation of different evidences may reinforce the conclusions, and render them more exact.

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