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Hogarth, David G.; Smith, Cecil Harcourt [Contr.]
Excavations at Ephesus: the archaic Artemisia: Text — London, 1908

DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4945#0049

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The Archaic Artemisia of Ephesus.

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reduced the general water-level to a point ■ 50 below the Croesus pavement.
Smaller areas were afterwards isolated within the larger one from time to time.
While the steam-pump, by repeatedly exhausting the surface water on the
peristyle and steps, checked inflow into the cella, the water within was kept
still further below the general flood-level by the use of a separate pump and by
baling, the now exhausted Basis being used as a secondary drainage "sump."
The work increased in difficulty as the clearance of the bottom-sand expanded ;
for, while the advance of summer did not perceptibly diminish the leakage from
all sides of the site, several large springs were tapped under the cella itself,
which contributed an even greater volume of water from below (Fig. 10). In
the later stages of the excavation, it was only by keeping the steam and hand-
pumps going at intervals
from dawn to dusk, and by
making balers work at high
pressure for the first five
hours of morning, that we
could get any part of the
lowest stratum clear for ex-
amination in the latter half
of the working day. When
the search was finished in
the cello, and that area was
left to itself on June 10th, the
water rose in less than forty-
eight hours to the base of the
Croesus pavement, and in a week washed again over its surface. Under these
extremely unfavourable conditions the searchers were always dredging in slime,
or groping under a turbid sheet of water ; and while the levels of low-lying
structures could be ascertained precisely, only the approximate positions and
levels of the loose objects contained in the liquid ooze could be observed.

The exploration of the lower strata, undertaken in the second season, was
pushed outwards from all walls of the Basis simultaneously, the latter being the
one point at which the presence of Primitive structures and the depth of the
stratification had been clearly ascertained. The outer limit of the Primitive
stratum was reached earliest on the shorter lateral axis, and on the north side.
The southerly region had to be left undisturbed till nearly the end of the excava-
tions, since the flume of the pump, fixed over the Basis, passed in that direction
On the north a thickening of the extension wall was revealed, and at a

Fie

Pumping out the B.isis in May, 1905. Hellenistic
Foundation Blocks in foreground.
 
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