the ring-money which was probably derived from these sources, evidence in confirmation of this idea is not wanting. So recently as the year 1833 a bi-frontal bust of the Egyptian Isis was dug up in South Street, Exeter.[229] According to Mr. W. T. P. Shortt's reading of the hieroglyphics upon it, it is inscribed with the prefix _Isis, Lady, Mistress of the World_. Beneath this has been a cartouche, the greater portion of which is unfortunately cut away. Mr. Shortt conceives it to have been the cartouche of Cleopatra Tryphæna, of the race of the thirteenth Ptolemy, B.C. 51; but as there is only the fragment of one of the phonetics, this reading is necessarily conjectural. In 1835 some Carthaginian medals were found at Abbeville, in Picardie; and at Noyelles sur Mer, another figure of Isis was discovered in bronze, along with a statuette of the Hawk-headed deity, or elder Horus.[230] Egyptian relics of the era of the later Ptolemies are not unknown as accompaniments of Roman sepulchral deposits, both in Britain and on the Continent; but they must be assumed to belong to an older era when found along with Greek and Carthaginian coins. But more conclusive evidence exists in proof of early intercourse with the Mediterranean, if not, indeed, of the opinion advocated by a zealous local antiquary, that Exeter had been the seat of a Phœnician colony many centuries prior to the arrival of the Romans.[231] It was long maintained by the great majority of English numismatists, that the Britons had no native coinage prior to the Roman invasion and the mintage of Cunobeline,--the work, as is presumed, of a Roman artist. The evidence against the existence of an early native coinage was, at best, purely negative, and is now giving way before the investigations of our ablest numismatists. The coins peculiar to the Channel Islands are generally acknowledged to be of an earlier character, and it is maintained not only that a native mintage existed prior to the Roman invasion, but that the convex and concave form, which characterizes the earliest British types, affords evidence that they were formed in imitation of Greek coins.[232] The Rev. Beale Post has most ingeniously traced the Gaulish coinage to its primitive Greek type. The conclusions he arrives at are, that about B.C. 600, the Phœnicians colonized Marseilles, subsequent to which coins of that city make their appearance, their type being that of human heads, birds, beasts, &c. About B.C. 335 the Gauls adopted as their model the gold coinage struck by Philip II. of Macedon, and from that early Greek type, with its reverse of Diana driving her biga, we may trace the original of all the singular and rude representations of the horse on the primitive Gaulish and British native coinage, which have been supposed to involve so many mythological fancies. There is something greatly more characteristic of the imperfect ideas of a native currency likely to be formed by a