to Egypt. Flinders Petrie gives in " Illahun, Kahun, and Gurol " (plate vII, fig. 27) a representation of such a sickle found at Kahun in which the cutting edge is formed by flakes of flint set in wood. And De Morgan fcund such flakes in abundance both in Egypt and in Susiana. Similar flakes abound in the earliest cultures at Anau ; obviously the sickle would be one of the first implements to he made of copper after the introduction of that metal. It would not be surprising if future researches should show that the Anau and Trojan form with the bent-back tang was a survival from a much more ancient time.
The persistence of forms in objects of daily use through thousands of years is one of the most remarkable evidences of that conservatism that has till recently hindered the development of the inventive faculty of man in all directions. For nineteen centuries the Italian peasant has used agricultural implements identical in form with those in the Pompeian collection at Naples. This identity, as shown in Pompeii, covers the widest range of survivals still in use throughout the modern world, to mention only certain surgical and drafting implements, the same forms in faucets and valves in plumbing, and in some kinds of bits for horses, and in the dice for gambling. Here, too, we find in the Pompeian astragali the same "knucklebones" which occur abundantly in the early culture-strata of Anau on the one hand, and were used in games by the Greeks, and are still in use by modern youth, marking perhaps a stage in a real sequence of tradition. The same method of yoking oxen has followed the ox from ancient Chaldea westward through the millenniums ; and the American cowboy uses the lasso as it has come down to him with the horse from ancient Irania. The same form of spindle-whorls occurs in great quantities through eight thousand years of pre-Christian culture at Anau, and still later in the medieval city, where they differ only in being glazed. They had the same forms, too, though decorated, in Troy after the first city. It would seem that all of our stocks of forms and of ornament have their roots in many prehistoric centers, and that until the recent advance in mechanics and chemistry modification in forms was due almost wholly to the requirements in working newly discovered materials; and that the addition of new concepts was due to the comminglings of traditions from primitive centers of independent evolution.
I come now to what is, for several reasons, perhaps the most remarkable of the finds from this culture. Between 4o and 43 feet above the base of culture, there came to light numerous terra-cotta figurines of both human and animal forms. Of these the human figures all represent women, and those of animals are clearly meant for bulls or cows. They are shown on plates 46 and 47. As a rule they are roughly formed, but in one instance (plate 46, figs. Ioa and lob) the modeling is surprisingly artistic in so far as it was the evident intention of the maker.
These female figures belong undoubtedly in the class of images of the life-creating and life-nourishing goddess.* As Beltis, Ishtar, Nana, Anat, Astarte,
IIIFカラー高解像度
