The best idea of the previous state of these countries can be formed from the account of Canaan in the Bible, the early books of Livy, and the history of the Roman invasion of Britain. We have, however, to extend our notions of the primitive condition of disintegration far beyond these descriptions.

If we begin our continuous survey with Canaan and the neighbouring countries, although the stock of medals is small, it is enough to show that as in name, so in substance, the towns belonged to the general class, and were not in their origin Semitic. It has too this interest, that we gain in the Bible special testimony, which is in some cases contemporary and in others derived from contemporary records. The Bible statements are confirmed that the country was settled and the towns built before the entrance of the Semites, and that the people were not considered by these latter to be of the same race as themselves. We are also able to trace the decay of the local tribes, kings, languages, and mythology, and their substitution by emitic institutions. There is also this circumstance distinctly recorded, that the Semites did not wholly extirpate the populations, but naturalized some and largely intermarried, so that a simple Semitic population was not established, but a mixed population.

In examining Asia Minor and its neighbourhood we have a rich mine of facts, and these are in accordance with our historical knowledge. We learn that the Greeks were immigrants, and gradually imposed their language and mythology on the inhabitants, as the Semites did theirs in Palestine and Assyria. We can correct or more clearly understand the loose statements of historians. While we can acknowledge that Lydians and Carians were allied, and indeed that the whole aboriginal populations were allied, there was no one language, like the Lydian, such as we should conceive it, which superseded the local dialects of the countries or of the towns. Where there is a similarity in the name of a town with Greece, it is not owing to Greek influences or colonization, as supposed, but to the relations anteriorly established. The

emblems on the medals have no relation to Greek words, but to the antecedent languages.

In consequence of later historical connection we readily. associate Asia and Greece by Hellenic ties, and suppose the intercourse between them to have originated under the Herakleids or in the Hellenic epoch. This intercourse had its precedent in old times, long before the Hellenes were known in those regions. Before the Semitized Phoenicians, the Greeks, or the Carthaginians traversed the Mediterranean and visited the cities, these must have been long known to each other.

The many islands of the eastern Mediterranean are rich in their contributions to the numismatist. Even very small spots of rock struck coins, while in larger islands each of several towns had its own separate money. Thus while the collector finds choice specimens, the ethnologist obtains valuable data for colonizations, migrations, alliances, and also for correction of fabulous statements in the Greek historians. Crete is a world in itself, and so is Sicily.

When in the Greek time we find Thrace, Macedonia, and Epirus marked as barbarous, we arrive by the older testimonies at the fact that originally conformable, that is barbarous, populations spread over Hellas, and thence to the Danube and along the shores of the Euxine. The population was continuous on each side of the Bosphorus.

The Hellenic immigrants made their chief seat in Hellas and but small importance is to be attached ethnologically to their distant colonies, or more properly conquests of older Iberian colonies. In Hellas they must have been largely intermingled with the natives, but they did not greatly influence the northern regions. The Macedonian, we know, was a barbarian, and even the Roman writers record barbarous words from the Balkan peninsula. The northern populations have influenced the south, continuously sending down. emigrants to Athens and to the southern peninsula and islands, streams which flow to this day. Even in remote islands the Albanian language is still to be found.

On the coins and in the names of barbarous kings we trace the influence of the ancient languages.

In Italy the Greek element was also restricted in its effect, but the earlier occupants were all non-Aryan. Many a town in Italy is identical in name and emblems with one in Asia or the islands, and the system of nomenclature is the same in the south as in Etruria. In Hellas, in Sicily, and in southern Italy, the Greeks changed the language of the people, but they left the town names as records of the past.

Beyond the Italian border to the north, the coins help us but little for illustrating the extent of the occupation, and we must have recourse to other methods.*

In Spain the coins are the tests, which show that Carthaginian and Roman domination was but in succession to that of the Iberians, who gave to their towns the same names as in the East.

In the coin cabinet and on the map there is no breach of continuity made by the Pyrenees. Aquitania, as might be expected, is a land of Iberian affinity, but in the rest of Gaul the town names, however modified by Celtic appendages, are of the same character and endowed with the same emblems. In Gaul, in Spain, and in Helvetia, and it may be so said of Britain, the Celtic invasion did not displace the names of the main seats of population or trade, no more than did the Roman or the Germanic.

In the Belgic domain the original condition is readily traced, and this shows that the shores of the North Sea were held by the Iberians. Of the importance of these new facts in relation to the questions of the Belgians and of Britain, it is not necessary here to speak more.†

For Britain itself we have but small evidence from coins, and that less decided than with regard to the other regions, but still sufficient to inform us that the world of Britain was

* See my paper hereafter referred to on the Ligurians, Aquitanians, and Belgians.

+ In the session of 1881-2 I read before the Royal Historical Society a paper on this subject, illustrated by the coins and by philological evidence.

also an Iberian region, and that its tin and other products must have been known to the Iberians of Spain and Gaul long before they were known to the Semitic Phoenicians.

The following are illustrations of some British coins, and it is to be observed that the philological evidence is the

same:

VERULAMIUM, Cow.

Cow, &c., Pheræ, Perrhæbium, Pharcadon, Epirus. CAMULO-DUNUM, Ear of Corn.

Corn, Camarina.

CUNO-BELINUS, Horse, Ear of Corn.

Horse, Pella, Pelinna, Bellindi, Pelicania, Ispalis.

Corn, Baelo, Illipula, Hispalis.

With regard to the town names of Britain they conform to the general Iberian class. Thus :

Eburovices, Ephyra, Pheræ, Eburones,

Camboritum (near Cambridge) = Cambolectri, Camarina,
Gambrium, Campania, Compulteria.

Mancunium (Manchester)= Mankhane, Manganur, Mekonah,
Mycenæ, Acmone, Macunia, Migonion, Magnana.

Londinum (London) = Aluntium, Leontini.

Gildas calls Geraint, the King of the Damnonii, "the accursed whelp of the Damnonian lioness." Philologically this is one of the forms for lion, and on a coin we find it on that of Tomarena.

Cantium (Kent) belongs, perhaps, to this list. It is to be noted too that we find a horse on the coins Cæna, Canusium, Cyon, Vocontii, and Zacynthus.

It is not my purpose to enter into a dissertation on these symbols, but to point out their bearing on the early history of the Mediterranean nations, and of the ancient world. As in the examples before us we have found a solution for many difficulties, and the way of knowing what was unknown, so may we hope for the application of such facts to regions still more obscure. Of the early history of India the conception is most indistinct. There is, however, no historical boundary between India and the countries to the west. The map shows us the like river names, the like town names. We have as yet no coins to help us, as in the extension of the Iberian region across the Pyrenees to Aquitania, but the conditions are nevertheless sufficiently determined. With the clue before us we may yet unravel Indian emblems, and make our way to sources of evidence now unexpected. In one respect the examination of India can be most favourably conducted, because we find there living languages having affinities to those of ancient epoch.

India beyond the Ganges belongs, in these respects, to the domain of India, and affords us a new field of exploration.

As has been stated by me more than once,* the languages, animal names, river names, and town names of America belong to the same class as those of the Old World. So long as the town names of either hemisphere could be relegated to the category of chance coincidence or spontaneous generation we might hesitate. We now have reached the explanation of the process on which the town names of the Old World were built up. We have sufficient proofs of the intercourse and communication, and in the legends of the four worlds, and of the Atlantis, we have the historical tradition of the knowledge of North and South America.

The emblems most largely found on the coins are the Horse, the Bull, the Lion, the Sun, the Moon, the Fish

* "Prehistoric and Protohistoric Comparative Philology." (Trübner), 'Serpent and Siva Worship and Mythology." (Trübner, 1876.)

"The Khita and Khita Peruvian Epoch," by Hyde Clarke (Trübner, 1877), p. 69.