For the main fact, however, viz., the age of greatest florescence all over the area, a singular coincidence of testimony points to the period of the XVIIIth Pharaonic Dynasty in Egypt. To this dynasty refer all the scarabs or other objects inscribed with royal cartouches (except an alabaster lid from Knossos, bearing the name of the earlier “Shepherd King,” Khyan), as yet actually found with true Mycenæan objects, even in Cyprus. In a tomb of this period at Thebes was found a bronze patera of fine Mycenæan style. At Tel-el-Amarna, the site of a capital city which existed only in the reign of Amenhotep IV, have been unearthed by far the most numerous fragments of true “Ægean” pottery found in Egypt; and of that singular style which characterises Tel-el-Amarna art, the art of the Knossian frescoes is irresistibly suggestive. To the XVIIIth and two succeeding dynasties belong the tomb-paintings which represent vases of Ægean form; and to these same dynasties Mr. Petrie’s latest comparisons between the fabrics, forms, and decorative motives of Egypt and Mycenæ have led him. The lapse of time between the eighteenth and the tenth centuries is by no means too long, in the opinion of most competent authorities, to account for the changes which take place in Mycenæan art. The question of race, which derives a special interest from the possibility of a family relation between the Mycenæan and the subsequent Hellenic stocks, is a controversial matter as yet. The light recently thrown on Mycenæan cult does not go far to settle the racial problem. The aniconic ritual, involving tree and pillar symbols of divinity, which prevailed at one period, also prevailed widely elsewhere than in the Ægean, and we are not sure of the divinity symbolised. Even if sure that it was the Father God, whose symbol alike in Crete and Caria is the _labrys_ or double axe, we could not say if Caria or Crete were prior, and whether the Father be Aryan or Semitic or neither.