Recent Acquisitions by the British Museum

Abstract

IN the announcement of the additions to the archæological and ethnographical collections of the British Museum (Bloomsbury) during the past month it is stated that the antiquities from Skara Brae, Orkney, which were deposited in the collections on loan in 1933 have now been given to the Museum by the owner, Mr. Walter G. Grant. It will be remembered thatthis site was excavated by Prof. Gordon Childe, whose careful investigation of this remarkable prehistoric town, or village, revealed a picture of early culture so complete as to constitute on its primitive scale something in the nature of a 'Knossos' of the north. Among other antiquities accruing to the Museum are the remarkable and important collections of bronze knives, spear-heads and bracelets, gold ornaments and pottery acquired by Sir Leonard Woolley in his excavations at Atchana in Syria, including pottery imported from Cyprus and Mycense, as well as local ware of about 1650–1450 B.C. in imitation of Cretan pottery of Minoan type. The National Art Collections Fund has given a slab from the stone balustrade of a staircase of the palace at Persepolis, dating from the reign of Darius the Great or Xerxes, somewhere between 520 and 460 B.C. It is carved in relief with the figure of a human-headed lion, winged and wearing a horned headdress. The Christy Trustees have presented a fine and important group of Peruvian pottery from the southern coastal area of Peru in the neighbourhood of Nasca. This Nasca ware, now thought to date fromabout 200 B.C. to A.D. 200 is an early, though not the earliest, formof Peruvian prehistoric pottery, and is distinguished by the variety of colouring and the fineness of line of its painted decoration.