Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/418

The Domed-Tombs of Laconia. m this, however, is precisely similar to a piece from the tomb at Menidi.^ He also came across two other sepulchres, very like those at NaupHa, lying midway between Godena and Mahmoud Bey. All he did was to clear the entrance ; ^ for he had made up his mind to excavate a bee-hived tomb known to exist south- ward of the hamlet called Vaphio, in the plain of Sparta, which since 1888 has leaped into celebrity (Fig. 138).* At first the enterprise did not look promising. Not only had the tomb been visited by a number of former travellers, but it was also shockingly mutilated/ The roof, the stone beam, and one of the door-posts had fallen, and were lying on the ground ; whilst part of the other jamb was broken off. The coo(, it was Fig. 138. —Map of country lound Vaphio. said, had been cast down during the national war ; but it is much more probable that the tomb was plundered in antiquity. The situation of the building must have attracted attention from the very first ; for instead of being hidden away in the flank of a hill, it stands on its summit, previously levelled out for the purpose, and rules the country far and near {Fig. 139). The joints about the walls, and the cracks caused by the heavy stone beams, are made good with lime mortar. The diameter of the ' 'E<j>ifitpif;. .rkina is not marked in the French officia! map; but as its situation occurs between Gorani and Arna, and is duly set down in the map, the reader cannot go far wrong in trying to ascertain the site. ^ Ifii'd. The name of Vaphio appears in the regulation map. ' In Btitms^e (Beixjer), and in the 'E^ij^itpic, will be found the history of the 'aphian tomb, from Gropius, who first saw it in 1 805, down to Conze and Michaelis, by whom it was visited in i860.