LECTURE I PAGE THE EUROPEAN DIFFUSION OF PRIMITIVE PICTOGRAPHY AND ITS BEARINGS ON THE ORIGIN OF SCRIPT. BY A. J. EVANS 9 LECTURE II HOMER AND ANTHROPOLOGY. BY A. LANG 44 LECTURE III THE EARLY GREEK EPIC. BY G. G. A. MURRAY 66 LECTURE IV GRAECO-ITALIAN MAGIC. BY F. B. JEVONS 93 LECTURE V HERODOTUS AND ANTHROPOLOGY. BY J. L. MYRES 121 LECTURE VI LUSTRATIO. BY W. W. FOWLER 169 LECTURE I THE EUROPEAN DIFFUSION OF PICTOGRAPHY AND ITS BEARINGS ON THE ORIGIN OF SCRIPT The idea, formerly prevalent among classical scholars, that, before the introduction of the Phoenician alphabet, there was no developed system of written communication in Ancient Greece, has now fairly broken down. In itself such an assumption shows not only a curious lack of imagination, but a deliberate shutting of the eyes on the evidence supplied by primitive races all over the world. Was it possible, in view of these analogies, to believe that a form of early culture which reached the stage revealed to us by Schliemann’s discoveries at Mycenae was, from the point of view of written communication, below that of the Red Indians? To myself, at least, it was clear that the apparent lacuna in our knowledge must eventually be supplied. It was with this instinctive assurance that I approached the field of Cretan investigation, and the results of the discoveries in the source and seminary of the Mycenaean culture of Greece have now placed the matter beyond the range of controversy. The clay archives found in the Palace of Knossos and elsewhere have proved that the prehistoric Cretan had already, a thousand years before the appearance of the first written record of Classical Greece, passed through every stage in the evolution of a highly developed system of script. There is evidence of a simple pictographic stage, and a conventionalized hieroglyphic system growing out of it. And there is evidence in them of the evolution out of these earlier elements of a singularly advanced type of linear script of which two inter-related forms are known. A detailed account of these fully equipped forms of writing that thus arose in the Minoan world will be given elsewhere.[1] For the moment I would rather have you regard these first-fruits of literary produce in European soil in their relation to the tree of very ancient growth and of spreading roots and branches that thus, in the fullness of time, put them forth. I refer to the primitive picture- and sign-writing that was diffused throughout the European area and the bordering Mediterranean region from immemorial antiquity.