Note 119 — PART II PLATES.

In the centre of many, if not of all, of the slates under our notice, there is carved on the obverse a ring surrounding a depression. “Mr Quibell’s theory, which is still adhered to by Professor Petrie, is that this ring was intended to receive the green paint with which it is supposed the earliest Egyptians painted their faces,” but Mr Legge in his Paper, from which I have here quoted (contributed to the Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, May 1900, pp. 137, 138), puts forward a different view, which, if it is correct, would lend support to the astronomic interpretation above proposed for some of the carved representations. Mr Legge considers that the rings represented the sun, and that “it is quite possible that this significance was heightened by the introduction of some bright substance, such as gold foil.” He points out that the composite monsters of the slates, all of which are represented on certain ivories, which he names, are always associated with the sun-disk. He believes these figures to have a symbolic meaning, though he does not in his Paper claim the especial astronomic interpretations I have above advocated.