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I82   THE ARCHEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS IN ANAU.

Among the implements, the sickle from culture III (fig. 274) is worthy of remark. It differs in its form from all European types of sickles (cf. I i. Schmidt, Die Bronzesichelfund von Oberthau Kr. Merseburg, in Zeitschrift f. Ethnologie, 1904, pp. 416 ff.). The characteristics of the sickle of Anau are the smooth surface of the blade and the form of the tang or haft, the end of which is bent backward. The same peculiarities I find, in contrast to the European types of the bronze period, only on the sickles from Troja which belong to a hoard (P) (Depotfunde) of the VI city (Cat. Nos. 6137-6139 of the Schliemann collection).

Striking, too, is the knife-blade with a square hole in the handle-end without any particular forming of the tang, found in culture III (fig. 271). I find similar formless knives occurring only in the Altai-Ural bronze age, of which the stock of types has been brought together by Aspelin (Antiquités du Nord Finno-Ougrien, figs. 184-187, 214-217) and by Radlof (in the Materiali po arxeologie Roccii, Nos. 3, 5, 15, 27; cf. No. 3, plate I, 6).

Therefore, while we are able to show several instances of the relation of Turkestan with the western and southern discovery districts, the connections with the north seem to have been very slight and rare.

Of course, the established equations do not suffice for chronological determination, because we have here to do for the most part with types which were in use

for a long time. Among the remaining finds from the four successively flourishing

cultures of Anau there are only two objects which might be used for an absolute chronology, and these only with grave reservation. The engraved stone with

representations of a man, a lion, and a griffin (fig. 400) is undoubtedly imported, and has been brought only from Western Asia to Central Asia. Possibly the route was the same as that of the connections with the Trojan sphere.

In forming an opinion concerning the stone, two points are to be considered—the form and the representations. As regards form, three-sided stones, drilled

longitudinally, have, as is well known, been found in Crete; they have picture

writing on all three sides and belong in the beginning of the early Mycenean development.* With these stones ours has in common only form. The repre-

sentations on ours differ wholly, not only from these stones inscribed with picto-

graphs, but also generally from all Cretan seals and so-called island stones (Inselsteinen) ; and they point to another center of origin. The so-called Hittite stones

are also of another kind, both as to technique and sphere of representations, and

belong surely to a younger epoch of the Oriental art of engraving on stone. No other analogies are known to me. I can only surmise that the stone of Anau points

to Asia Minor. With Assyro-Babylonian representations it has nothing to do. The griffin seems to me to point more to Syrian origin. As regards its age, of course nothing definite can be said ; but the form and the very awkwardly formed representations indicate for it a place in the II millennium a c. The analogy with the Cretan stone would bring into consideration the time of the XII Egyptian dynasty,

*A. J. Evans, Cretan pictographs and pre-Phoenician Script, p. 19, fig. 20, a, b, pp. 21 ff., 55 ff.; Journal of Hell. Stud., xiv, 1894, pp. 27o ff.; Further Discoveries, in Journal Hell. Stud., xvir, z897, pp. 327 ff. Cf. Furtwaengler, Geschnittene Steine im Antiquarium, Nos. 57, 58, and Antike Gemmen, ni, pp. 27 ff.