THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES
INTEREST in the Near East is maintained, and a useful lead was given in 1913 by the Cyprus Government, who entrusted Professor Myres, assisted by the Keeper of the Cyprus Museum and Mr. L. H. D. Buxton, with a good round sum to conduct excavations in the island. The results were described at length and illustrated on the screen, the most notable discovery being a ruined sanctuary containing a collection of stone statues with many of the painted surfaces in brilliant preservation, ranging in date from the seventh century B.C. to Greco-Roman times. Elsewhere many antiquities of the Bronze Age were brought to light, but at present there are few, if any, traces of a Stone Age in the island. The first stratified series of Cypriote pottery was provided by a complete section of the Bamboula Hill at Larnaca, and the situation is full of promise.
A marble statuette, now in the Ashmolean Museum, was the text of Professor Langdon's discourse, and gave scope for surmise as well as scholarship. It was found by the 14th Sikh Regiment when entrenching before the battle of Istabalat, eight miles below Samara on the Tigris. The object originally carried on the head has disappeared, but the standing figure still holds a "boomerang" or sceptre, and the dress was made in imitation of the fleece, a fashion to which Aristophanes is supposed to refer in the Wasps, perhaps three thousand years later. Various prehistoric specimens from England exhibited to the Society have an interest of their own, but cannot compete with relics from the cradle of civilisation, and at present the watch-word is Ex oriente lux.