Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

160 The Mountain as the Burial-place of Zeus

extremity of which I observed foundations of the massive walls of
a building the length of which was about eighty feet. Within this
space is an aperture in the ground, which may perhaps once have
led into a moderate-sized cave; but, whatever may have been its
former size, it is now so filled up, that a man cannot stand in it,
and its diameter is not above eight or ten feet'

In 1899 Mr A. Taramelli published a sketch-plan of Mount
Juktas (fig. 130)1, marking a grotto near its southern summit and
the precinct-wall on its northern summit. The grotto is a natural
cavern facing west and known as the Nostb Nerd. It is about six
metres from front to back and has two small fissures running left
and right into the rock (fig. 131)2. The earth on the floor of the

Fig. 131. Fig. 132.

cavern, perhaps a metre in depth, has yielded terra cotta figures of
animals and fragments of pottery3. The precinct-wall forms an
irregular square of ' Cyclopean' masonry (fig. 132)4. On the north,
where it rises to an average height of three metres and at a few
points to five metres (fig. 133)5, there seems to have been a gateway.

1 A. Taramelli in the Mon. d. Line. 1899 ix. 350 fig. 23.

2 Id. ib. 1899 ix. 357 fig. 27.

3 My friend Prof. R. C. Bosanquet writes (June 9, 1911): 'There is a cave on
Mt Juktas, a long narrow cleft, into which I have crawled and in which I have found
Hellenic pottery. It is on the left of the present path from Arkhanais to the peak
on which Evans has begun to explore a Minoan sanctuary. There was a monastery
of some importance on the peak in Buondelmonti's time; he obtained a manuscript
from it. See Legrand's edition of B. (preface, I think)' [E. Legrand op. cit. p. xxv
Aiino Domini M.CCCC.XV, v mensis septembris, ego presbyter Christoforus de Bondel-
montibus de Florentia enii hunc librum in monte Iticta in monasterio S. Salvatoris
insult? Creicz, hyper peris XI.].

4 A. Taramelli in the Mon. d. Line. 1899 ix. 353 ff. fig. 25.
0 Id. ib. 1899 ix. 353 fig. 24.