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

Thk Primitive Structures. 55

yellow limestone, similar to those which form the foundation courses of the walls,
but less carefully shaped and assorted. Deprived of this filling, as the result of our
removal showed, the outer walls are not stable ; and it must therefore originally
have been packed in as each course was laid in position. The filling slabs
were roughly bedded on layers of argillaceous sand, course by course,
down to the marsh surface. This filling mounted to the top of the western
schist wall.

We began to explore the inside of the smaller rectangle on November 22,
but the discovery of treasure (see p. 33) did not begin until the 24th, when we
had penetrated to the level of the top course of the western schist wall ; and
then only within the more restricted area which we knew later to be that of the
earlier rectangle. In the subsequent exploration of the enlarged area of the later
rectangle, certain objects were found, mainly in the filling of the eastern
addition ; but these were so few and small that their presence is easily accounted
for by leakage from the old filling, three faces of which had been exposed by the
collapse of the green schist casing. The whole mass of the core, when we
explored it, was saturated with ground-water, and the objects in metal and other
materials, imbedded between its slabs, were masked with slime, and, except in
rare cases, indistinguishable by the eye until slabs and clay alike had been
washed through sieves. There can be little doubt that such was the case also
in antiquity ; and this fact, apart from the restraining influence of superstitious
fear, sufficiently explains why the treasure, which we ultimately found, was not
remarked and removed by the first enlargers. After that enlargement there
was no further risk of its discovery. An added layer of empty filling was eventually
piled on the top of the old, and upon this again, without penetrating it, the
Hellenistic builders laid foundation blocks of their elevated platform, three of
which we found in situ, undisturbed by Wood, overlying the northern half of
the Basis (see fig. 8).

The tooling of the outward faces of the schist blocks is so carefully
executed, and their alignment so accurate, that it is practically certain that all
these faces were intended to be visible from top to bottom. The original pave-
ment around the Basis must therefore have been laid almost on the sand itself, or
at least on a thin clay stratum, and cannot have risen to a higher level than about
— 4- 70. That there was such a pavement made of flat limestone slabs may be
presumed, if the nature of the marsh surface be considered, although no slab
remains in its place near the Basis. The later restorers doubtless lifted it
entirely and re-used the material. It probably rested on the projections of the
limestone foundation course which supports the schist wall.