Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/209

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IN THE LEVANT.
167

Following this line to a place where a piece of Hellenic wall occurs on the left side of the road, we turned off on a cross-road running in a S.S.E. direction, and having on the right a vertical cutting. Proceeding along this road we passed on the left an old chapel of the Knights, at which point the road turns to the S.B. A little further on is a chapel dedicated by the Grand Master Dieudonné de Gozo. I was told that an inscription in large characters had been recently found here, which had been concealed by the Turk to whom the field belongs.

A little further on we came to a cross-road pointing to the N.W. In the wall bounding this road on the right was part of a shaft of variegated marble, and in the same wall about three yards further on, the fragment of an inscription in blue marble, which appears to have been a dedication to Helios, or the Sun- god, by certain Rhodians. The last words of this fragment appear to refer to an earthquake. The inscription is in large letters of the Roman period.

At this point we turned out of the road into some fields on the left. Here were foundations of a Byzantine building, and a little further on two inscriptions near a ruined house and a palm-tree. One of these was on a block of blue marble 3 feet by 2 feet by 2 feet, and recorded the conferring of a crown of gold on Anaxibios, son of Pheidianax, by the people of Rhodes. The letters were of a good period. The block seems to have formed part of a large pedestal. The other inscription was a dedication in honom' of one Timokrates, in fine letters on a square base of blue marble. On this spot are also two drums of tra-