with their stalks over the heads of the sacred Uræi at Luxor, in Egypt. This route is no creation of my own. It is the route which, apart from the evidences I have adduced, is the route of the golden apple of discord thrown amongst the goddesses by Discordia for the fairest, which caused the rape of Helen, the Trojan war, and the triumph of the horse of Apollo's chariot of the Sun at the destruction of Troy. The examples I have given concentrate around the Troad; they take us to Thrace, the Peloponnesus, to Italy, where in a southern island Persephone eats the golden apple of night or winter.

Time limits the subject; a single glance or two at Britain and Scandinavia must suffice. But we have no time for the death of Baldur, the golden-berried mistletoe shaft of Loki.

sun, by the

Gawain, one

of the Knights of King Arthur, carried as a badge, a golden apple, i. e. a star, as Arthur represented the sun. Arthur sought the Isle of Apples to die, that he might be healed of his grievous wound, (death) and rise immortal. To get there he was conveyed in a barge of draped women (night) from Cornwall, or the land of Lyoness, of the West, invisibly, i. e. underground, to the East, Avalon, the Isle of Apples, the region of stars, where he sleeps, and whence he is to rise again.

Rama and Sita, support this; hence its sacred import and attributes. Rama was the offspring of the Sun (i. e. God). Sita, his spouse, was immortal in her beauty and purity; aided by Agni (spirit, fire), she was seen amidst the flames unharmed. These attributes were clearly those of the two occupants of Eden before the Fall. Sita was captured (beguiled) by the evil power Ravana, "Lord of malignant beings," and was only saved from destruction (immediate death) by the difficulty being bridged over.

But there is another side to the question. Time would not permit reference to the abundant features Central Italy affords, where the serpent, the apple, the egg, and a thousand other points would delay us too long. But the egg is clearly one of the forms of the golden apple. It is concealed; when revealed, it is a sphere of gold, floating, as it were, in translucent ether. The bursting of its prison heralds a new life, like Osiris in the chest of Typhon. But here is the region of Persephone, whose story turns upon the golden apple, the pomegranate, which figured so prominently in Hiram's work on the Jachin and Boaz columns in the great temple; elevated on the chapiters to imply a celestial import ; the seed fruit of the earth to imply a terrestrial one, it was an unwritten symbol of the sentence "thy seed shall be as the stars of heaven for multitude." These were not Tyrian idols, but symbols of the promise to Abraham. But it was in the dark recesses of the earth that Persephone eat the forbidden fruit, the chest of Typhon, the crust of the egg again. Still she rose and the earth brought forth abundance. All this is symbolism, but there must have been an exact meaning covered too; less powerful, no doubt, than the rising sun, or the resuscitation of nature; still one of real importance, and which apart from the golden glory of the heavens, fixed, though it probably did not originate, the term golden. For the precious mineral would have been discovered long after the golden. sun was known, and probably, though in language we know not, was named from the golden appearance of the sun, and so has retained its relationship of

name through countless languages to our day, as the golden race of men were also, no doubt, from their luminosity.

In a purely white and tenacious crystalline rock were to be found rounded lumps,-apples of gold, in short; but they could only be obtained by great labour from its adamantine grasp. Hidden in the recesses of its pure white covering, it was a solidified repetition of the golden apple, the star, sun, moon, of the egg floating in its translucent envelope.

But is this figured in story? Yes, together with the precious finds, so precious that the early races and the early kings of the earth amassed together the gold, not for exchange, and currency was unknown, but for the pure decoration of the person in the age of gold.

The apples of discord were clearly not fruit, but golden apples of personal decoration; the discord arose from their dedication as to the fairest, or in the case of Hippomenes to the successful. They were apples of death to Atalante's suitors, and to the Trojans and others. It is emblemed in the story of Olwen, the representative of wisdom.

"Wisdom cannot be gotten for gold nor silver;
The gold and the crystal cannot equal it."

for

Odin gave to Mimer the golden apple of his eye a draught of wisdom. And Olwen was like Iduna, who gave the gods the golden apples of immortality, and essential to the sustentation of virtue and honour to King Arthur's Court. King Arthur and all his knights sought her for a year and failed to find her; then a select body of men of wisdom and

VOL. XIX.

E

science were entreated to undertake the quest, in which they succeeded, and the beautiful maiden was, like the cow-moon maiden, found in her retired grotto of crystal arrayed like the "king's" daughter, "all glorious within" in " garments of wrought gold "the garments of wisdom.

The valuable report by Sir George Birdwood, supplemented by reports from British Consuls and men of science, given in the Indian Government Blue-book, "Report of the Cultivation of the Spanish Chestnut," follows, though with an tirely different line of research-the progress of the introduction and propagation of the sweet chestnut, a wholesome food-bearing tree of great beauty, in so close a course of transit westward with that shown in the foregoing description that it is manifest that this tree, afterwards so abundant in Spain, whence its modern name (Spanish), was also one of the trees imported by the Dendrophoroi.

Some interesting remarks were made by the chairman, Mr. James Curtis, at the close of the paper, tending to show that up to the present time places have acquired names from the introduction of foodbearing trees, as the walnut, which fact exemplifies a singular retention of this custom.

THE RELATIONS OF EGYPT AND EARLY

EUROPE.

may

BY PROFESSOR FLINDERS PETRIE, D.C.L.

[Read May 26th, 1897.]

TILL within recent years Egypt was supposed to stand apart from the history of the rest of the world; Egyptian matters were looked on as being as much isolated by themselves as Chinese, and nothing was recognised from foreign sources in that land earlier than Alexander's conquest. Now all is changed; and it is seen that in most places that be examined there are some remains of other races, and connections with other lands. Nothing is stranger in the history of research than the way in which certain crude axioms arise and blind the view, so that nothing is noticed that may be inconsistent with them; and yet, when once broken down, fresh proofs of their absurdity are seen at every turn. Such was the axiom of the unchangeable character of Egyptian art. Now, on the contrary, every age, every century, almost every reign. is known to have its distinctive characteristics, and it would be as reasonable to remark on its sameness as it would be for a man to say that all games of chess were alike because he does not understand the moves. Another favourite axiom, till within the last year or two, was that Egyptian work begins

VOL. XIX.

F