Abstract
AMONG recent additions to the ethnographical collections of the British Museum (Bloomsbury) announced at the November meeting of the Trustees, were four loans by the King from the Royal collections. Of these, one is a war drum carved from the trunk of a tree, with human skull attached, taken from the King of Ashanti at his defeat in 1826 and presented to George IV; and a Maori chief's staff of office, a combined spear and club, which was presented to Queen Victoria by Maori chiefs in 1884. The National Art Collections Fund has purchased for the Museum a gold Persian wine-bowl of the eleventh or twelfth century, having a Kufic inscription around the rim in praise of wine, and an ornamental design in which several realistic representations of ducks are a prominent feature. Among other gifts are a collection of antiquities, including small bowls, dishes and scarabs of the Eighteenth Dynasty (c. 1370 B.C.) from the excavations of the Egypt Exploration Society at Sesebi in the Sudan, given by that Society; a small finely carved Egyptian lion of ivory, probably dating from the First Dynasty about 3300 B.C., given by Mr. and Mrs. Alec Rea; and a bronze head of a Pharaoh, probably Ptolemaic, given by Lord Harlech; while Mr. Reay Geddes has deposited on loan an Indian sculpture in stone of the eleventh or twelfth century, which represents Agni, the god of fire, surrounded by worshippers and goat-headed attendants. Mr. Alvan T. Marston, with the consent of the Portland Cement Manufacturers, Ltd., has presented to the Trustees the Swanscombe skull and the bones and implements associated with it. The skull and some of the implements have been allotted for exhibition at the British Museum (Natural History), while the remainder are to be exhibited in the archaeological collections at Bloomsbury. These implements have been pronounced to be Early Middle Acheulean, Breuil's Acheulean III.
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Recent Accessions to the British Museum. Nature 142, 947 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/142947c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/142947c0