  We investigate cosmological solutions of eleven dimensional supergravity
compactified on a squashed seven manifold. The effective action for the four
dimensional theory contains scalar fields describing the size and squashing of
the compactifying space. The potential for these fields consists of a sum of
exponential terms. At early times only one such term is expected to dominate.
The condition for an exponential potential to admit inflationary solutions is
derived and it is shown that inflation is not possible in our model. The
criterion for an exponential potential to admit a Hawking-Turok instanton is
also derived. It is shown that the instanton remains singular in eleven
dimensions.
