DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.786#0088
72 PALO. [chap, xxxiv.
periphery of nearly eight hundred feet. This wall had two
buttresses on the north, sundry drains on the south, and
on the west a hole containing a small stone cylinder.
Though the sepulchral character of the tumulus was thus
clearly indicated, the entrance to the tomb was long sought
in vain; till at length, some forty or fifty feet up the slope,
a passage was found cut in the rock, and leading to the
tomb; and it was remarked that the mouth of the passage
was pointed at by the cylinder in the basement-wall. The
tomb closely resembled the Grotta Regulini-Galassi of
Cervetri; for it was a long passage, walled with regular
masonry, the courses converging till they formed a rude
Gothic-like arch, which terminated in a similar square
channel or groove ; and the high antiquity indicated by its
construction was likewise confirmed by the character of its
furniture. No painted vases of Greek form or design ;
nothing that betrayed the influence of Hellenic art; all
was here closely allied to the Egyptian.2
No other tomb was discovered in this mound, but a well
or shaft in the floor, twenty feet deep, opened into another
horizontal passage, about a hundred feet long; and here
were three other shafts, probably sunk to other sepulchral
chambers on a still lower level. This system of shafts and
passages reminds us of the Pyramids, and is in harmony
with the Egyptian character of the contents of this tomb.3
At the foot of this mound, sunk beneath the surface of
the plain, was discovered a double-chambered sepulchre, of
more ordinary Etruscan character, and its contents showed
2 Rude pottery of black earth, with lamina with archaic reliefs,
figures 8cratched thereon ; fiat vases of 3 There were other passages opening
smalt, ornamented with lotus-flowers, on that which formed the entrance to the
purely Egyptian in character, and tomb, but Abeken considered them to
ostrich-eggs painted—both as in the Isis- have been the experiments made by
tomb of Vulci (see Vol. I. p. 419); former excavators. Mittelitalien, p.
beads of smalt and amber; and gold 242.
periphery of nearly eight hundred feet. This wall had two
buttresses on the north, sundry drains on the south, and
on the west a hole containing a small stone cylinder.
Though the sepulchral character of the tumulus was thus
clearly indicated, the entrance to the tomb was long sought
in vain; till at length, some forty or fifty feet up the slope,
a passage was found cut in the rock, and leading to the
tomb; and it was remarked that the mouth of the passage
was pointed at by the cylinder in the basement-wall. The
tomb closely resembled the Grotta Regulini-Galassi of
Cervetri; for it was a long passage, walled with regular
masonry, the courses converging till they formed a rude
Gothic-like arch, which terminated in a similar square
channel or groove ; and the high antiquity indicated by its
construction was likewise confirmed by the character of its
furniture. No painted vases of Greek form or design ;
nothing that betrayed the influence of Hellenic art; all
was here closely allied to the Egyptian.2
No other tomb was discovered in this mound, but a well
or shaft in the floor, twenty feet deep, opened into another
horizontal passage, about a hundred feet long; and here
were three other shafts, probably sunk to other sepulchral
chambers on a still lower level. This system of shafts and
passages reminds us of the Pyramids, and is in harmony
with the Egyptian character of the contents of this tomb.3
At the foot of this mound, sunk beneath the surface of
the plain, was discovered a double-chambered sepulchre, of
more ordinary Etruscan character, and its contents showed
2 Rude pottery of black earth, with lamina with archaic reliefs,
figures 8cratched thereon ; fiat vases of 3 There were other passages opening
smalt, ornamented with lotus-flowers, on that which formed the entrance to the
purely Egyptian in character, and tomb, but Abeken considered them to
ostrich-eggs painted—both as in the Isis- have been the experiments made by
tomb of Vulci (see Vol. I. p. 419); former excavators. Mittelitalien, p.
beads of smalt and amber; and gold 242.