DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.25181#0021
142 Different styles of Pottery found in Ancient Tombs in Cyprus.
M. di Cesnola to see whether in any case the Greek tombs containing glass
had been superimposed on the more ancient Cyprian. One was at last found
lying some eight feet below another, but, in searching amongst its debris, broken
fragments of glass were found and not pottery of the ancient kind, and one of the
workmen remembered distinctly having uncovered this tomb and finding glass
there. Had it, however, contained the old kind of pottery, the circumstance
would have been quite immaterial when the manner in which these graves were
originally hollowed out is once understood.
I have already stated that the means of communication with the door of the
tombs was in some cemeteries by a narrow sloping passage, about twenty feet
long, which was afterwards filled in with earth. On examining the hill where
these cemeteries are intermingled, it turned out that the passage communicating
with the tomb containing glass had entered the hill by the steeper side, while the
tomb in the higher level had been entered by a shaft at right angles to it, from a
different face of the hill, the passages in this manner nearly meeting each other. I
learnt that in two other cases the same thins; had occurred. Of course the work-
men in making their excavations proceed by the quicker method of digging
straight down on the tombs from above, so that a person unacquainted with the
presence of the side-shafts would be not a little puzzled to account for their super-
position. M. di Cesnola, we presume, shared this ignorance, and thus imagined
successive generations burying their dead over each other, till a height of forty-
two feet was reached. In giving the above simple explanation of a phenomenon
by no means extraordinary, I hope to have disposed of an untenable theory.
NOTE.
The delay in publishing this memoir has arisen from the small size of the sketches that accompanied it,
which rendered them unsuitable for engraving. Advantage has, however, been taken of the author’s
having sent a portion of his collection to the Leeds Exhibition, 1875, to obtain larger drawings from
selected examples. Where necessary these have been supplemented from the collections of Cyprian pottery
in the British Museum.
PI. IX. All from the Sandwith Collection. Fig. 1 is now in the British Museum.
PI. X. Figs. 1, 2, 6, 7, Sandwith Collection, of which fig. 1 is now in the British Museum. The rest'
in the British Museum.
PI. XI. Pigs. 1 and 2, Sandwith Collection. Fig. 3, British Museum,
PL XII. All from the Sandwith Collection. Fig. 3 is now in the British Museum.
PI. XIII. In the British Museum.
M. di Cesnola to see whether in any case the Greek tombs containing glass
had been superimposed on the more ancient Cyprian. One was at last found
lying some eight feet below another, but, in searching amongst its debris, broken
fragments of glass were found and not pottery of the ancient kind, and one of the
workmen remembered distinctly having uncovered this tomb and finding glass
there. Had it, however, contained the old kind of pottery, the circumstance
would have been quite immaterial when the manner in which these graves were
originally hollowed out is once understood.
I have already stated that the means of communication with the door of the
tombs was in some cemeteries by a narrow sloping passage, about twenty feet
long, which was afterwards filled in with earth. On examining the hill where
these cemeteries are intermingled, it turned out that the passage communicating
with the tomb containing glass had entered the hill by the steeper side, while the
tomb in the higher level had been entered by a shaft at right angles to it, from a
different face of the hill, the passages in this manner nearly meeting each other. I
learnt that in two other cases the same thins; had occurred. Of course the work-
men in making their excavations proceed by the quicker method of digging
straight down on the tombs from above, so that a person unacquainted with the
presence of the side-shafts would be not a little puzzled to account for their super-
position. M. di Cesnola, we presume, shared this ignorance, and thus imagined
successive generations burying their dead over each other, till a height of forty-
two feet was reached. In giving the above simple explanation of a phenomenon
by no means extraordinary, I hope to have disposed of an untenable theory.
NOTE.
The delay in publishing this memoir has arisen from the small size of the sketches that accompanied it,
which rendered them unsuitable for engraving. Advantage has, however, been taken of the author’s
having sent a portion of his collection to the Leeds Exhibition, 1875, to obtain larger drawings from
selected examples. Where necessary these have been supplemented from the collections of Cyprian pottery
in the British Museum.
PI. IX. All from the Sandwith Collection. Fig. 1 is now in the British Museum.
PI. X. Figs. 1, 2, 6, 7, Sandwith Collection, of which fig. 1 is now in the British Museum. The rest'
in the British Museum.
PI. XI. Pigs. 1 and 2, Sandwith Collection. Fig. 3, British Museum,
PL XII. All from the Sandwith Collection. Fig. 3 is now in the British Museum.
PI. XIII. In the British Museum.