Abydos. By W. M. Flinders Petrie. Part I. (Egypt Explora-
tion Fund. 25s.)—Professor Flinders Petrie describes in this volume further results of the work of excavation. The general outcome of recent discoveries, in Egypt as in Babylonia, is the throwing back of the historical period, or perhaps we should rather say the period of civilisation, to a more and more remote past. Not long ago the First Dynasty was regarded as legendary; now we know of authentic Kings that were before the First. And even then we have the suggestion of a long period of time anterior to these new discoveries. "At that age," we read, "writing was so familiar that a rapid form of it was freely used to write on dozens of common pottery jars." How obsolete in the light of these discoveries is the controversy that convulsed the world of scholarship in the eighteenth century whether writing was known in the Homeric age ! It had been used for whole millenniums in Egypt, and nothing is more certain than the influence of Egypt on the Hellenic race. We need not do more than commend this volume to students of Egyptology.
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