Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/472

The Islands of the yEoEAN. 445 The necropoles of the town lying at the foot of the hill are found in rocky masses stretching away east and west of the Acropolis.^ The graves which Biliotti opened here at the expense of the Trustees of the British Museum are forty-two in number. They are rock-excavated, rectangular in form, and as near the Nauplia and Spata examples as it is possible to conceive. The passage leading to them, instead of having a gentle incline as in the tombs of Greece proper, is made up of steps or rock-cuttings like those of the Phoenician, Syrian, and Sardinian tombs.^ These stairs are sometimes one metre sixty-eight centimetres broad, and, in plan, one of the chambers measures three metres srxty-sdx centimetres in width, by four metres twenty-seven centimetres in length. The mode of closing is not adverted to, nor is mention made of the situation and quantity of bones which must have strewn the floor of the chambers. Loeschke was unable to detect any trace of fire on the vases. Although the pottery is by no means as rude and archaic as that of the lower strata at Hissarlik, it all belongs to a primitive and unique period. Ornaments and vases, therefore, stamped with the sign-manual of Greece — or of Phoenicia — are entirely absent here, though so largely represented at Camiros. The terra-cotta pieces are as like as peas from one tomb to another; and their close analogy to the broken pottery which has come from the graves of the lower city of Mycense is most remarkable. Hence we are led to infer that the two points, in time, which separate the older from the later bodies deposited in these pits are not far apart. The chambers are seemingly undisturbed. Appearances of displacement which, according to Biliotti, crop up here and there, may be explained by the fact that they are family vaults : the late-comers disarranged the old tenants somewhat. Vestiges of the primitive epoch, though rare among the rich finds brought out of the burial-places of Camiros by Salzmann, are not wholly unrepresented in that district.^ Thus certain vases found by Biliotti, in the village of Kalvarda, not far from Camiros, are ^ With regard to the situation of lalysos, see Ross, Reisen auf den griechischen Inseln, and his map of Rhodes at the end of the volume. 2 History of Art. ^ Mykenische Vasen, We have inadvertently {History of Art in Phoenicia) attributed to Camiros glass pieces which by rights belong to lalysos. The mistake was brought about by my notes on lalysos having got mixed with the Camiros set.