Papers of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens (6.1890-1897 (1897))

STAMPED TILES FROM THE ARGIVE HERAEUM. 301

VI.

But the pearl of the tile-inscriptions from the Heraeum is on
the fragment of the upper face of the edge of a huge bowl, which
must have had a diameter of about three feet. The fragment
was found in 1894 " at the West end of the South Slope, behind
the retaining wall of the West Building, mixed up with a quan-
tity of early pottery and figurines."

The letters are not stamped, so as to appear raised as in those
hitherto mentioned, but are incised, cut into the clay when it
was moist. The inscribed face of the fragment is .22 m. X.06 m.
The letters are .03 m. high.

\MB BPAM £ I I* I x]as "Upas
This inscription judging by and £ and above all by M=o-
must be considerably older than No. XII of the inscriptions on
stone. It must date at least as far back as 500 b. c.

AVhile it may belong to a large amphora, it may also be a
lustral bowl. It might be the very bowl in which the mad king
Kleomenes of Sparta dipped his bloody hands before performing his
-bootless sacrifice so graphically described by Herodotus (vi. 81 ft').

Note.—-Professor J. R. Wheeler desires me to call attention to the fact that
the name Hyhrilas (see paper above, p. 274) is found also in the list of Proxeni,
Bull. Corr. Hell. 1891, p. 412, line 10 of the inscription, and in Bazin, Archiv. cle
Miss. Scient. ii, 369.

Rufus B. Richardson.