syntax, and I have myself endeavored to do the same for the vocabularies; but neither the labors of Rochemonteix nor my own attempts can be taken as more than initial steps in a field in which the philologist, especially equipped, and equally familiar with the work of Basset, Motylinski, Masqueray, and others, in Berber studies, and with that of Erman, Sethe, and Steindorff in Egyptian, could not fail to secure very valuable results. Secondly, despite de Vaux's new presentation of the Ugro-Altaic theory for the origin of Etruscan, here again we are in need of expert philological opinion to confute or to support the hypothesis of Brinton and Sergi, who looked for the solution of this quæstio vexata by means of Berber philology.

To turn to questions more strictly historical, I would enumerate the following as typical problems demanding the serious attention of students of ancient history:

1. The connection between Libya and Syria calls for further investigation than it has yet received from W. M. Müller or from anyone else. Thus, it appears that the Hittites connived at one of the great Libyan invasions of the Nile Valley in the time of the Twentieth Dynasty, and everyone is familiar with the notices of Lubim or Lehabim mercenaries in the Old Testament. In the Libyan spoil lists are enumerated objects which are almost certainly derived from Syria, as well as others obtained from northern sources; and in an Egyptian relief showing the Egyptian assault on the Asiatic fortress of Satuna the garrison is represented as half Syrian and half Libyan. With what part of Libya did the Syrian Semites of New Empire times have relations? Was there a sea traffic between the two regions? Is Daressy right in asserting that already the Semites had established factories and even colonies in North Africa? These are but some of the questions suggested by the known facts.

2. In the case of the great Greek colony of Cyrene, the leading problem may be said to be the relationship existing between the colonists and the natives. It has been suspected that the historic alternation in the monarchical epoch of the names Battos and Arkesilaos might point to the early existence of some sort of dual control in which Greeks and Libyans shared. I do not at present hold this view, but I am convinced that without an acquaintance with the temper and usuages of the Libyan inhabitants of Cyrenaica, the internal history of Greek Africa is a sealed book. The very names of most of the towns and hamlets in Cyrenaica-Sozusa, Taucheira, Darnis, Barkê, etc.—are old Berber, as is also-despite Studniczka's elaborate relation of the name Kupńn to a Greek radical KYP with the sense of dominor-the name of the metropolis itself. For the name is most easily explained as a Hellenized form of the protoBerber pl. Gyr, Igyren or pl. Kyr, Ikyren with the sense of fontes or aquarum caput, a very probablo designation

because of the copious water-supply of the site (cf. modern → for the value of the first radical; and the Arab gü

as عين

a designation for the site of Cyrene in which the locality is known because of its wonderful "Fountain of Apollo"). Under these circumstances it is merely absurd to attempt the mastery of this field without a scientific knowledge of the native population which the Greeks dispossessed of its heritage.

3. What has just been said applies with even greater force to the case of Carthage, on account of the vigor of her colonizing activities, her extensive use of mercenaries, the freedom with which her colonists intermarried with the natives, her trade with Libya Interior and along the coast, and to that strange racial sympathy which Duveyrier, Barth, Slouschz, and others have noted as existing between the Berbers and the Semites. Some features in Carthaginian sociology, which were long considered very obscure, have received explanation at the hands of modern students of Berber institutions. The šoffetim or suffetes, for example, have their modern parallels among the Berbers, and several fundamental features in modern tribal governments recall similar ones at Carthage. Here again, therefore, the student who sets himself to disentangle the Semitic from the Libyan elements in Carthaginian history will hardly fail to meet with a rich reward.

4. Every item which, either by a critical study of the ancient texts and monuments (Egyptian or classical), or by the comparative study of modern survivals, one is able to glean with regard to the pre-Islamic cultus, illuminates some point in Egyptian, Cyrenaic, or Carthaginian religion. The excellent work in this particular field of Toutain, Doutté, and other students in the brilliant new school of French scholarship, has set a high standard for these researches, but has not exhausted the field. Thus, the nature of the god "Amon " anciently venerated at Siwah has become clear to us only recently, and until last year the affinity between the bull-god Gurzil of Corippus and Mnevis of Heliopolis and similar conceptions, had not been pointed out. Many such elucidations remain to be made, not only with regard to the pagan divinities, but with regard to the saints of Northern Africa as well. In the field of African hagiography, for example, the work of Ewald Fall and Karl Maria Kaufmann at the desert sanctuary of St. Menas can not be called finished until critical study has determined how much that saint's popularity was due to the incorporation in his legendary acts of those pagan Libyan elements which survive in Berber Moslem stories of great local sheikhs.

The above are some of the topics for research offered by Hamitic North Africa. From the outset, as the subject has been so neglected, I may have suggested the objection that the field offers more in the way of problems than it does of sources of information which might

solve them. This is not so great a difficulty as to deprive the serious student of a reasonable hope of reward.

In the first place, a study of modern Berber dialects, which number over forty, will some day serve for a work on Libyan antiquity erected on lines similar to those of Schrader's Sprachvergleichung und Urgeschichte der Arier, and I am of those who dare to hope that something of value will eventually be wrung even from the so-called "Numidian" inscriptions.

In the second place, the prosecution of Libyan archeology on lines more scientific than any which have yet been followed is sure to abolish the current indifference among students of the Minoan civilization toward North Africa. Eastern Libya, at least, lay well inside the Minoan sphere. The fertile Cyrenaica is situated under Crete, at only a short distance from that island; the Greek sponge fisher, bound for Tripoli or Alexandria, still makes his first landfall in Cyrenaica, then turning westward or to the east. Among the Cretan hieroglyphs which Evans has collected he has, in his Scripta Minoa, signalized one which is identical with the African silphium-plant as conventionalized later on Cyrenaic coins. On the two occasions when I have been in Cyrenaica I have seen Minoan objects reported-in one case on authority certainly good-to have been found on the spot. The great rock-cut forts of the interior of the Sanjak of Barkah strongly recall similar structures in early Greece. These are some of the reasons for believing that the prospects for well-conducted excavation in Tripolitana or the Marmaric littoral will result in finds which will add greatly to our knowledge of the early Aegean world.

In the third place, in the matter of textual evidence the classical notices and those of the Byzantine writers are not so easily exhausted as would at first be supposed. African hagiography and patristic literature have, doubtless, still much to yield. New epigraphical material bearing on the Libyan question will soon begin to come in from Tripolitana and Marocco, while any day may see the recovery in Egypt of new documentary evidence. The Arabic sources, finally, demand a thorough ransacking, and an attempt should be made to trace the facts embodied in the later Arabic historians and geographers to their

sources.

In conclusion, I would recall that one of the figures prominent in Berber studies shortly after their inception was an American, the consul Hodgson, whose name is still generously remembered in France and Algeria. It is to be hoped that, when the European reconquest of Marocco and Tripolitana are accomplished facts, and when these new fields of North African research are thrown open to investigation, American scholars will not be wholly insensible to the stimulus to Libyan studies which will result.

B. THE INTERNATIONAL CHARACTER OF COMMERCIAL HISTORY.

Read in the Conference on Modern History, by ABBOTT P. USHER, of Cornell University.

I should like to add a few words to Prof. Gay's remarks upon the international character of many of the larger problems of commercial history. We all recognize the simple literary virtue of unity when it is presented to us as a matter of abstract principle, but as usual the actual practice of the virtue is not easy. It is not always clear just what unity must be recognized. In much historical work, national boundaries set off the limits of the subject, and not infrequently some deposit of manuscript material will be so intimately connected with the subject that the most natural limits will be imposed and defined by the material available in that repository. In commercial history the relation of the subject matter to the source material is different. The subject is at times essentially international, although the source material is always affected by political boundaries and the character of the political organization of the various regions involved. It is in such cases that the practice of the most elementary virtue of literary composition becomes so difficult. It is hard to follow the subject wherever it goes, and to avoid the temptation of writing up particular masses of material rather than writing upon the subject.

Two illustrations of this difficulty come to mind: Prof. Gustav Schmoller's study of the Prussian grain trade in the "Acta Borussica," and the problems involved in the history of the bill of exchange. In both of these instances the subject is distinctly international, but in each case attempts have been made to approach the problem from a national point of view.

The official character of the great series of "Acta Borussica" naturally confined Prof. Schmoller to the limitations of a Prussian point of view, but in the study of the grain trade the limitation was singularly unfortunate. The Prussian State before and during the reign of Frederick the Great was in the peculiar position of having the most important grain-producing districts of northern Germany just outside its borders. Mecklenburg on the north and the cereal districts of Poland to the east were the most considerable sources of supply. The Magdeburg district alone was within the boundaries of the Kingdom. Under these circumstances, the controlling facts

of grain-trade policy lay in the relation of these outlying sources of supply to the needs of Prussia, and in the interference of Prussian policy with the trade between Poland and the Baltic ports. Furthermore, the partitions of Poland exerted a profound influence upon the whole commercial situation by altering the relation of some of these cereal districts to political boundaries. The subject is thus decisively international and the essential unity is that of the whole commercial movement.

The history of the bill of exchange presents a similar difficulty. It can not be written from the archives of any single country. One can not limit researches to the repositories of Italy as Goldschmidt has done, nor confine one's attention to a single fair system like Des Marez with reference to the credit instruments of the Flemish fairs. The study must pass in review the various forms of credit instruments in all the important financial centers of the different periods. The bill must be followed from Italy northward. Parts of the legal history of the instrument will be written from Italian and French archives. Much of the history of the rise of regular dealing in bills will be written from French, Flemish, and English archives. In such a subject national boundaries count for little and unless the cosmopolitan character of the problem is frankly recognized nothing of permanent value will be accomplished. Research under these conditions is difficult but the rewards are correspondingly great, for few subjects will throw so much light upon the history of modern

commerce.