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An Attic Cemetery
(Article written in 1893, published in Athen. Mittheilungen XVIII, pp.73-191)
Since
the end of the excavations on the Acropolis, the Greek general ephoria,
headed by Mr. Kavvadias, has been pursuing the plan of uncovering
burial sites on a larger scale and under more precise observation than
before. The reports of Mr. Stals in the Δελτίον
and also in these communications [1] bear witness to the success which
these works had in the Attic landscape, at the grave of the Marathon
fighters, at the burial mounds in Velanidesa and Vurva and elsewhere.
In connection with these goals, it must have been especially desirable
that the General Ephoria was authorized in the spring of 1891 to
conduct research in Athens itself on an extensive plot of land
north-west of the city. The execution of this excavation was also in
the hands of Mr. Stals; he has spoken about them, in particular about
the finds made by this excavation; have been brought to the National
Museum, briefly reported [2]. He was assisted in the work as the
architect of the General Ephoria by Mr. Georg Rawerau.
The
undersigned have been granted full freedom to attend the progress of
the excavations, and as we are about to publish our notes, we are
compelled to acknowledge the gratitude which we guests in Greece owe to
Greek hospitality and scientific liberality. We hope that what follows
will help the (p.74) plan which the general ephoria has in mind to
expand the knowledge of Greek burial customs.
We are aware of
how much what we offer lags behind other grave publications ( i,e,
Italian) in terms of clarity and detail in describing the contents of
the individual graves. For we have made the distinction in the
treatment of the oldest graves and those of the later epoch that we
believed it necessary to give the reports of the finds of those with
all the details, while in the case of these we have restricted
ourselves to the reproduction of the typical phenomena. Thanks to Georg
Kawerau's friendly cooperation, we can make our notes clear with the
plan on plate 7 and some grave views. For the text, it should be noted
that Brückner observed the finds in the first two rectangles (A. B) and
part of the third (C), while Pernice observed the later uncovered
graves. We divided the work during the preparation, so that chapters I
and III were written by Brückner, II and IV by Pernice. But what
ultimately goes back to one and what goes back to the other is
difficult to separate.
I. Location and history of the cemetery.
The
site on which the graves to be described were found is on the south
side of Piraeus Street, opposite the Hatzikosta orphanage and at the
same time adjoins a side street, the Όδός βασιλέως Ηρακλείου [1]. The
owner who gave permission for the investigation is the aide-de-camp to
His Highness the Crown Prince, Colonel Sapuntzakis; Later on, the
(p.75) excavations spread to the property of the widow Karatzäs. One
might expect to find very old graves in this place.
Plate 6-1: Map showing location of the grave sites (in hatched area beside asterisk).
For when the
foundations for a residential building were laid on the corner property
between the two streets a year earlier [1], the ephoria had already
observed important graves: this is where the stately, ancient amphora
comes from, which is the oldest representation of the fight of Herakles
with the 'Netos' offers, hence also the crater, which received the
review it deserved in the last year of this journal for the sake of the
enlightenment it provides about the further development of Attic
geometric painting [2]. To the east of the property of Sapuntzäkis up
to the Πλατεία Ελευθερίας [3], rich grave finds had been made from 1871
before the dwellings located there were performed, also going back to
the remote period of the Geometric style and certainly reaching back to
the fourth century. At the corner of the said square there is still a
grave stele with a relief 1 1/2 m under the present floor, which was
left in the ground [4]. Graves have also been uncovered on the other
side of the Piraeus road; for behind the orphanage the Berlin Thon
pinakes were found, the depiction of a funeral procession rich in
figures, the decoration of a tomb from the sixth century [5].
As
corresponds to the location of this whole area north-east of the
dipylon and close to the city wall, a wide field of death had spread
out here. From what we know about the location of ancient cemeteries in
general, this is not surprising given the time when the Themistoclean
(p.76) city wall existed, separating the outer from the inner
kerameikos. It is more remarkable that 300 years earlier the same room
belonged to a large cemetery that extended beyond it. For the old tombs
that have been found right next to Dipylon and on the Themistoclean
city wall are so dense that Stephanos Kumanudis [1] concludes from
their location that the city's peribolos must have been narrower in
their day—these tombs are well known , which gave rise to the usual
designation of dipylon tombs and dipylon vaults, must be associated
with those uncovered on the Sapuntzakis property and in its vicinity
and will then expect to find more structures from this epoch in the
300m wide gaps. We have no information as to whether the cemetery,
which can be assumed to be continuous, extended further to the east and
west during the Dipylon period. But even if that is not the case, the
ascertained extent of the cemetery is large enough to justify us in
drawing conclusions about the development of Kerameikos.
The
area separates the outer from the inner Kerameikos. It turns out that
it was not the Themistoclean city wall or, before that, a possible
Pisistratic city wall that divided the two quarters, but it is likely
from the location of the cemetery that in the Dipylon period the closed
settlement in Kerameikos had its limit at the cemetery - there , where
today the ορος Κεραρεικου still stands. Only as a result of an
increased development, the cause of which was the strong upswing of the
potters' guild, the partial displacement of their workshops by the
pisistratic expansion of the market and the establishment of the
academy, did the borders become too narrow, it seems, and it a new
quarter arose beyond the old cemetery, the (p.77) outer Kerameikos.
One
more thing can be deduced for the population of the oldest Kerameikos
from the tombstones and graves of their families. Even a free Attic
δημιουργός will not appear in the age of σιδηροφορεΐσΟaι without the
weapon ornaments and accordingly will not be buried without it;
therefore the finds of weapons would not speak against the graves of
κεραμείς. But if we behold the rich pageantry of the funeral procession
on the great tombs which have been found here, and survey the long line
of carriages with fully armed men, we are led to suppose that knightly
landowners kept their courts beside the potters' workshops . So old was
the friendly neighborly relationship that connected the κεραμεύς with
the nobleman and later found its eloquent expression in vase paintings
and inscriptions [1].
For the sake of completeness, an oral
message from Mr. J. Palaeologos may be added to these general remarks
about the time when the cemetery was used north-east of the dipylon.
According to his clear description, during the excavations he observed
near the then Ludwigsplatz, he also found a grave at the greatest
depth, the edges of which were framed by individual stone slabs (p.78)
and which contained a jug. According to this, it would appear that
burials have been going on here since Mycenaean times. We are not aware
of such old graves here.
The overview plan on Plate 6.1 shows
the location of the property where the excavations took place in 1891.
Out of consideration for the rubble to be excavated and how the rubble
to be salvaged, the area had to be refrained from being completely
cleared. Instead, individual rectangular shafts of about 8 by 12 m were
dug and the rubble of the newly started shaft was thrown into the
excavated shaft each time. Eight such shafts have been dug. The first
three and most important ones are included in Herr Kawerau's plan on
plate 7. The eighth, which was only opened in the spring of 1892 and is
only 50 m from the Themistoclean city wall, was taken by Pernice and
reproduced on plate 6, 2.
Plate 6-2: Plan of graves in Rectangle H.
In total, our records contain
information on 231 graves. However, the number of graves actually
uncovered is somewhat higher, since at the beginning of the work we
neglected to number some of the amphorae in which children were buried
and also some poor ostotheks and to enter them in the plan. Of the 231
tombs, 19 are from the Dipylon period. Apart from about 5-10 tombs in
the top layer, the rest belong to the sixth to fourth centuries BC—for
they contain the usual painted vases—mostly to the fifth and fourth;
Graves with strictly black-figure vases have been found remarkably few,
so that it seems as if the cemetery was little used after the Dipylon
period, and was only used to a greater extent after the erection of the
Themisholdean wall.
Among 186 of the more recent graves
described in our records were 45 cremation graves in which the body was
burned on the spot (p.79) 8 ostotheks (it has already been noted that
this figure is too low for the whole is); 43 shafts in which the body
was buried; 60 brick tombs, with buried corpse; 17 clay jars with
buried children's corpses (this number also has to be doubled in order
to get the true proportion of the entire find); 10 stately graves made
of large stone slabs put together, the corpse buried in them. In 3
large stone sarcophagi the corpse was buried.
After clearing
modern masses of rubble that may have gotten onto the derelict property
during the excavation of the neighboring houses and the construction of
the Όδός βασιλέως Ηρακλείου, the workers initially encountered a layer
of loose soil and lots of rubble. Beneath this layer of rubble lies the
old cemetery, which was used from the Dipylon period until around 300
AD. Before it was buried, it naturally had a wavy surface, caused by
lower or higher burial mounds that had been built over the natural
ground using the soil excavated when the grave was laid. Depending on
the height of these elevations, the layer of rubble had a thickness of
1.20 m and more, at the southern end even up to 3m. For the height
determinations within the cemetery, we have assumed the level of the
groundwater for the large plan. It turned out that in antiquity the
groundwater had a much lower level; for the graves reached down even
more than today's mirror and the earth was burnt at the shafts of the
burnt graves.
The coals of the pyre lay deep in the water
several times. The floor level of the old cemetery was around 1.90 m
above the level of the groundwater at the time of the excavation; it
arose from the presence of an extensive sacrificial site at the end of
the VI century under the tumulus A mentioned later (p.80), which we
shall discuss in detail below; for these sacrifices will have been
offered on the ground. It also resulted in agreement from several
smaller sacrificial sites and also from tumulus B, where the sole of
the edge walls and a stucco line in front of them lay at the same
height. It is finally confirmed by the fact that the graves are
consistently below this floor: the poor brick graves and the even
poorer amphorae with cattle corpses are often only a little below. Only
in two places does the grave reach so close to the floor level that a
mound must have been used to cover it. But the erection of tumulus B
and the sacrifices at the site of tumulus A are now separated by a
period of at least 150 years. This is important, because it shows how
the floor has not increased significantly at the time when the cemetery
was used most actively, despite all the excavations, a fact that
certainly does not come about without special care, but probably only
because of the state surveillance of the burial ground has come. And
since we come across the evenly grown clay soil just below the
designated sacrificial sites, the soil cannot have been significantly
lower even in the Dipylon period.
In other words, since people
continued to be buried here from the same floor in the 5th and 4th
centuries, there can only have been little hesitation in disturbing the
peace of the dead; the bones and the strange weapons and harnesses of
the long-forgotten Dipylon time one stood when digging a new pit, such
as e.g. B. appeared at the laying out of graves Nos. 3t and 4t (plate
7, B), with the same inquisitive feeling towards the moderns in their
scientific excavations. Anything that was a hindrance was cleared aside
and the place cleaned up for its new owner. After all, with such great
separating periods of time, this is not surprising, the new era laid
claim to the ground, which (p.81) must have been precious enough at the
time. The old tombs had fallen into disrepair, the desolate place
henceforth appeared adorned with beautiful tombs of shining marble. But
anyone who overlooks the criss-crossing of graves on our attached plan,
which almost all belong to the period of the white lekythos, will also
recognize that the bones of people who were closer in time were not
treated with much more consideration at that time. It is true that the
wealthy family, who buried their member in a stone coffin, will have
provided for a suitably dignified tomb, so that the gravedigger was
already prevented from disturbing the dead by the outward sign. But in
the case of the graves of the less well-to-do, who will have preferably
found their rest here on the side away from the main streets, the
earthen and brick graves and the fire shafts cut arbitrarily into one
another; at least the shafts of such graves were not scrupled to be cut
into.
We cannot prove with certainty that people would have gone
so far as to destroy the grave itself; nevertheless the crowded
position of these tombs testifies to how poor the tombstones must have
been, which could so easily be removed when a new tomb was laid on the
site of an older one. For the owners of these tombs, the Solonian law,
which ordered the preservation of the tombs, seems to have had little
application.
It is all the more remarkable how subsequent times
related to this burial site. None of those marble grave pillars, which
usually bore the excavators on the surface of the Attic cemeteries with
their dreary sobriety, have been found here, nor any of those graves
that are so common in the higher strata of the Hagia Triada, made of
roughly hewn marble slabs of the lowest sort put together without joint
closure. The old graves have remained untouched.
Rectangle H
(cf. the plan in Plate 6.2) shows that two groups of graves can be
distinguished according to their elevation. The graves 2, 3, 3a, 4.
(p.82) 8 are so considerably above the other tombs of this rectangle
that they cannot be laid out from the same floor. While these latter
are shown by the grave goods to be from the VI to IV centuries, the
ones mentioned contain nothing of the sort. Only in grave 4 was a glass
bead and a clay figure disfigured to the point of indeterminacy; apart
from the cremation grave, there were 8 poor brick graves. A cremation
tomb built just as high above the tombs of the IV century is found in
the fourth rectangle. There is also a brick grave, which contained an
unadorned lamp as an accessory, in accordance with the later widespread
custom. Within the layer of rubble, two brick graves without any
objects were also found in rectangle C, 1m deep; they are not indicated
in the plan. A grave was also found in the rubble layer close to
tumulus 13.
So there were only a few scattered graves in this
heaped-up layer: we cannot exactly determine their number, because it
is possible that during the quickly carried out clearing work some of
the graves, which were always very poor, were not noticed by us. Above
all, the cremation graves prove that the heaped-up layer dates back to
antiquity. It was clear that it was not gradually formed by alluvial
deposits. Their coarse rubble, mostly building rubble from somewhere,
was heaped up over the old burial mounds, creating a new surface 2.2 m
above the floor level of the old cemetery. Some sherds of the latest
black-glazed vessels have been found in the top layer, but nothing to
suggest late Roman or even more recent times.
We should perhaps
have to content ourselves with pointing out the peculiarity of these
strata and refraining from explaining them if they were not repeated in
a clearer way elsewhere. Located nearer the gates and the great
highways, the cemetery at the Hagia Triada has been much used (p.83) at
all times. There, too, it can be seen that the graves of late antiquity
were laid out in such a way that they left the earlier ones untouched.
The tombs of the Roman period are at about the same level as the tombs
of the fourth century BC, such as ie. next to the tomb of Demetria and
Pamphile, at the same level as its base, are the marble slabs of a late
tomb. Here, too, a high deposit was made in antiquity. Recently, this
has been shown particularly clearly in the excavations, which Mr.
Mylonas conducted in 1889 on behalf of the archaeological society. The
tombs laid out in Roman times have left the natural soil into which the
older tombs led almost untouched.
Already Ath. Rusopulos, who
started the excavations of the cemetery at Hagia Triada, received the
impression that the building up was not done gradually but all at once
[1]; this emerges from the explanation which he drew up for it. He
believes that Sulla built a dam here to bring siege engines up to the
city wall at this point. The date of the tombs above and below the
deposit would agree with this assumption, however, apart from the fact
that the same phenomenon in our excavation field would remain
unexplained, the assumption that Sulla's attack was directed against
this very spot is also based on this assumption. serious concerns [2].
It is not credible that a region so close to the main gate of Athens
could have remained unguarded by the defenders, and the siege engines
were hardly to be associated with a night raid, which, according to
Sulla's Hypomnemata, begins with the scaling of the wall served.
The
accumulation at the (p.84) Hagia Triada and our excavation site to the
east of it is more likely explained by the determination of the place
as a cemetery itself
It was neglected and desolate in its heyday,
the troops of Philip V of Macedonia had devastated it, only a few
magnificent tombs were still standing, and useless hands had an
opportunity to immortalize the name on them. No wonder that the
Athenians of about the first century BC tried to make use of these
places close to the gate and close to the wall.
Looking back,
increased piety and the law prevented the removal of the tombs of the
glorious fathers for profane reasons: the resistance that S. Sulpicius
found among the citizens testifies to the fact that S. Sulpicius found
the place for the tomb within the city walls of M. Marcellus [1]
coveted. One helped oneself by pulling a protective layer of earth over
the θηκαι προγόνων, and thus bequeathed to later posterity the
possibility of enjoying the fresh view of ancient Athenian civic
customs. The considerable raising of the floor of the cemeteries had
the necessary consequence of weakening the city walls, so it is
advisable to start the raising after the capture by Sulla, when the
Athenians, in the midst of the pacified Roman Empire, had ceased to
take care of their city walls, του δέ τείχους ρ.ηδεαι3ίς, οτε σύλας
τούτο διε'φθειρεν, άάιωοεντος φροντίδας, as Zosimos 1, 29 reported from
the time of the Valerian.
With such a procedure it was
inevitable that, although the bones of the ancestors remained
untouched, the tombs were damaged. But even there, at least in places,
piety was allowed to prevail. The road that cuts through the cemetery
at the Hagia Triada could not be raised well, so it now led through the
4 and 5 m higher cemeteries of the (p.85) Roman period. But the tombs
that lined the roadside, the reliefs of Dexileus and Corallion, the
tall stele of Agathon and his family, remained visible, and the strange
relief of Charon, despite its unappealing form, was placed on a rasis
that originally did not suit it listened to, and the base was
previously underpinned [1]. Even in the post-Christian period, the most
attractive find of the excavations of Lord Mylonas, the tombstone of a
distinguished Athenian woman, who strides along in a solemn pose as a
hydrophore, was used for decoration in the peribolos of a late
sanctuary that was founded here in the midst of the tombs.
Fig.1: Section of the area of Graves 1-5, showing overlying layers.
A
more radical approach was taken to covering the old cemetery on our
excavation site with the tombstones. Because apart from a few very
insignificant tombstones [2], almost nothing has been found of the
stone decoration of the tombs. And yet it can be assumed with certainty
that similarly rich funerary steles rose above the stately marble and
porous coffins, as on the Hagia Triada. For even a wealthy Athenian
family did not endow their dead richly in the IVth century BC, as the
tomb of Dionysios on the sacred road testifies, in which, under the
magnificent Naiskos, besides the bones, nothing more than φλοιοί αυγών
κοινών [3] was found (p. 86) have been.
In order to be complete
at this point about the remains of tombstones noticed on the surface of
the cemetery, we still have the sherds of a strictly red figure
Lutrophoros with a depiction of a prosthesis and the fragments of the
goblet-shaped openings of two clay lekythos [1], which alone are 6-10
cm high, both according to their size and the height of the find, must
have belonged to tombs and not to grave goods. So before the site was
buried, all stones that could be reused were cleared away; for apart
from the firmly attached remains of two low-lying peribolos walls,
nothing has been discovered of foundation stones and bases.
Only
two tombstones resisted the destruction of the cemetery because of
their simple material, two tumuli, which we want to describe in more
detail in order to illustrate the type of graves underneath them and
their position in relation to one another with a few examples.
When
in the first rectangle the upper stratum of earth had been raised to
about the depth of the old surface of the cemetery, the intersection of
the strata in the eastern wall of rubble showed that the upper stratum
of rubble had spilled over an older arch of earth; compare the adjacent
cross-section of grave I to III (fig.1.) and the plan on plate 7, AL
The old loamy heaped-up earth rose almost in the middle to a height of
1.30 m, it fell towards the sides so that the late layer of rubble
reached down all the deeper there. Below the deepest points of the
descending line, which, due to the difference between concealing and
covered soil were clear, remains of mudbrick walls became visible,
first in the excavated first rectangle A at two points of the shaft at
a-b, then, when the work encroached on the second rectangle (B), also
at a third, in the east wall at a.
Upon closer digging, it
then turned out that these were the remains of a peribolos wall that
had been preserved during the work (p.88), which ran in an arc around
the earth bracket. We have followed them into the ground, namely at A,
a, here to a length of more than 3m, were able to determine a height of
8 clay brick layers for them and at the same time, from the wide curved
line that they described, we could determine that the The tumulus,
which it surrounded, must have reached far into the neighboring
property, whose house wall prevented us from further advance. If, as it
appeared, it was roughly circular in plan, it must have been about
10-12m in diameter. Analogous to the tumulus of Alyattes or, to keep to
smaller proportions, the tumulus of Menecrates in Corfu, the visible
debris cone had risen above a vertical κρeπίς, which in our case
consisted of a wall of mud bricks.
Only a small segment of the
tumulus fell to our excavation area. In this lie two graves related to
the structure of the tumulus; the burial shaft of No. 3 was announced
by a low mudbrick border, on three sides they were stacked four on top
of each other, they could only have been put there for some purpose for
the funeral ceremony, on the fourth side they were missing because
that's where the excavated earth. In the middle of the enclosure the
vertical shaft went about 2.40 m deep, down to below the ground water,
in a length of 2.40 m and a width of 1.10 m. On one of the long sides
there was a ledge, a step, apparently made to lower the coffin more
easily. On the bottom lay the corpse stretched out, its head to the N.
The workmen fished out of the ground water more than half a dozen very
sketchy lekythos: on one was a horse-drawn carriage, with a woman
seated in front of it, on another six men, except for one, who sat in
their midst, standing together in a cloak, only a lekythos with a fine
yellow coating seemed to be of a more careful kind. There was also a
thin round disc of bone, 0.055 (p.89) in diameter, with a small hole in
the middle, apparently a spindle whorl. It had been a woman's grave
afterwards. The poorness of the finds was disappointing given the care
taken in the construction of the tomb.
The second tomb to the
south, No. 4, had a square shaft. It was not quite so deep, but reached
down to about the level of the ground-water; at the bottom was a round
cista of Poros containing a bulbous bronze urn with the calcined bones.
The more detailed description will be given along with the illustration
in Section IV.
From the course of the layers above the two tombs
it was evident that these were not sunk into the already existing
tumulus, but that this and the peribolos wall were prepared only after
the construction of the second tomb, which was also recognizable as the
younger one from the upper layers a process of gradual formation of
such a great cairn, of which the burial mound at Velanidesa affords
another example. The time of the graves is determined not only by the
content, but also by an older layer of sacrificial fire extending
horizontally on the base of the tumulus and perhaps even beyond. Its
narrow blackish and dark red stripe reached under the mud bricks of the
peribolos wall as well as under the edging of tomb no. 3, it extended
over the tombs to be mentioned further, which are uncovered around
tombs no. 3 and 4 [1]. The layer must then be younger than these graves
and older than those graves. In fact, the numerous crockery that lay in
the strip next to the charred remains of grain and poultry bones were
of an older character than the lekythae of Grave No. 3. They consisted
mostly of thick clay plates, the center of which occupies a large black
ray rosette ( p.90) (see figs.2 and 3).
There
were also vessels whose rims were decorated with animal stripes, e.g.
B. Ebern, was still painted in the manner reminiscent of the Corinthian
vases. A graceful hydria, glazed in black, showed a small four-horse
chariot in a recessed field at the shoulder, whose austere manner was
still reminiscent of the style of the Francois vase. Apparently all
these vessels, after having served with the sacrifice, were thrown onto
the sacrificial parts [2]. We have no guess as to which dead or who in
particular these sacrifices were intended for. We cannot say anything
about the extension of the sacrificial area either, because on the one
hand it may have spread further to the neighboring property, on the
other hand, if it extended beyond the borders of the tumulus, it almost
had to, as a result of the many grave excavations of the 5th and 4th
centuries BC to have disappeared. But the layer was important for
viewing the cemetery, insofar as it indicated the level of the floor
for the VI century BC, a level that had not changed even up to the V
century, since the lower edge of the presumably walls of
Peribolos, dating from the beginning of the 5th century.
(p.91)
Whoever bought this place for his family's burial place at the
beginning of the 5th century BC found it leveled. And yet it had
already been cut through by graves of various kinds. Grave No. 1, which
encroaches on the area of the later tumulus, was a 1.90 m deep
cremation grave; in the middle of its floor ran a channel, which
continued up the narrow side walls: the same device, probably for
better combustion, which has also been observed at Vurva and
Velanidesa. According to the tombs there, the tomb contained a very
deep layer of charred wood; only the mouth of a highly archaic
lekythos was noticed (with a shape like that in Furtwangler, Description of the Berlin Vase Collection, Plate VI, 174).
Grave
no. 2, also a cremation grave, was laid out a little higher, 1.40 m
below the layer of fire and had one narrow side cut off from no. 1, so
it was younger than this. The layer of coal had the usual depth of 0.06
to 0.10 m in the usual cremation graves. Nothing was noticed about the
additions.
The two dipylon tombs surrounding tombs 1 and 2 are
more interesting because of the finds made in them [1]. As
eyewitnesses, we can only report the opening of No. III, but our
observations began immediately after the previous clearing of I, so
that we were able to get precise information about it. The grave
reached down to 1.70m below the sacrificial layer, had an impressive
length of 3.10m and a width of 1m. At its bottom the corpse had been
stretched out, its head to the north; with him lay a narrow golden
diadem, at his feet a row of dipylon vases. But a meter above the
bottom of the grave, in the middle of its shaft, the fragments of a
huge vessel were found close together, which was later put together in
the (p.92) museum up to a height of 1.80 m.
We were to see the
same facts when they dug down south of tomb No. 4 under the
well-preserved part of the peribolos wall. Hardly had the layer of fire
broken through beneath it than two large blocks were found within a
shaft that could be felt, which had been thrown in before the area was
leveled, presumably when the sacrificial room was being prepared. The
material of this was a hard limestone; one block was a slab 0.80 m wide
and just as long preserved but broken at the top and bottom, the other
block was a square pillar (0.28 by 0.23 m), somewhat pointed at its
smoother end.
Fig.4: Dipylon vase overlying bronze urn in grave south of Tomb 4.
After
lifting the vase, we dug down, following the hard edges of the shaft.
Another layer of rubble of 45 cm had to be removed, then the shaft
narrowed on the two long sides and soon we came across the 0.85 wide,
1.70 m long grave in the middle. To the east stood a bronze urn,
containing the few calcined bones of what appeared to be a boy or girl.
The bronze was so thin that the urn, which was already slightly dented
by the weight of the earth, broke when it was removed.
The
above sketch (fig.5) was made when the urn was still in the ground: it
is a broad urn, closed with a domed lid. Toward the center of the tomb
lay a large amphora—the height of the tomb was evidently not high
enough to place it—next to it were two cans, a skyphos, and a jug,
close together and all well preserved; (p.94) they were only given at
the last act of the funeral, at the burial of the urn and did not go
through the burning of the pyre. First of all, in contrast to opinions
which have been expressed earlier regarding the use of the large
Epipylon vessels, it is evident from the find facts presented that the
large vessels with the rich depiction of the funeral procession were
not used as ash containers, but because they were placed over the
associated graves were found when they served as tombs. This was
recognized when the Netos amphora was discovered. Our excavations at
graves II and IV provided two further pieces of evidence. At II, a
dipylon grave that was partially destroyed by a later cremation grave,
the shards of the associated grave vase were found 1.20 m above the
grave's floor, while at IV they were found 0.90 m high at the head of
the corpse. Thanks to the sacrificial layer that was spread over it
early on, we can get a clearer view of the original condition of a
dipylon grave from Grave III.
It certainly seemed as if the
large vase stood in its original position; Of course, when the wooden
ceiling of the tomb, which had been lying on the steps of the shaft,
rotted and as a result the falling earth filled the tomb, it must have
sunk by about 30 cm, and this sinking must have happened before the
construction of the peribolos wall be struck, since the upper rim of
the vase almost immediately abutted the bottom surface of the peribolos
wall when it was uncovered. According to this, she would originally
have stood with a little more than her foot below the floor level
inside the grave shaft, which, since the foot of the vase is so richly
ornamented, was only filled with earth up to the lower edge, so that it
remained visible (see fig.4).
After that, the burial shaft was
not completely filled again or a mound of earth was even built over it
- in none of the dipylon graves we observed (p.95) were there any signs
that it had been elevated by a tumulus, no matter how low - but the
grave was only covered with soil up to a moderate height, and a pit
remained in the grave shaft, which together with the tomb marked the
grave. One could not avoid the assumption of such a pit even if one
thought that the large vase above grave III and also the sherds above
I, II and IV only got into the grave shaft when the cemetery was
cleared up, the tombs would have objected originally stood next to the
graves.
Even then, there would still have to be an open spot
to salvage the vase from Tomb III as well as it came to light. It would
be extremely strange if one had dug into each individual grave at that
time in order to set up the vessel of III in the shaft nicely,
especially since the upper edge was then cut off. In reality, one would
doubtless have smashed the body and base of the vase with a few strong
blows and buried the shards somewhere. It is precisely due to the fact
that they were placed deep that so much of the clay tombs of the
Dipylon period has survived, in contrast to the certainly much more
numerous clay lekythoi and lutrophori that are so rarely and
incompletely found today as tombs [1 ].
We turn to the
description of the second earthen mark (B), of which the work led to the
discovery. To the south between (p.96) the first and second
rectangles, when the higher layers were being excavated, a round, thin
stucco layer was found. The circle he enclosed was eight feet in
diameter. As could be seen at a point where the stucco was still
preserved up to a height of 0.40 m, the diameter gradually decreased
higher up, and it then seems as if the structure had the shape of those
beehive-shaped tall forms, always shown in white τύχβοι, which so often
appear as tombs decorated with taenia in the pictures of the white
lekythoi [1].
Fig. 6: Behive-shaped tomb.
The present tymbos, however, was certainly of
particularly stately dimensions and particularly solid construction
among its urban contemporaries. It consisted of a loose heap of earth,
which was surrounded by a shell of ring-shaped clay brick layers on the
outer periphery, which gave the structure support and form. Originally
about 3m high, the beehive rose above a wide oblong base surrounded by
four retaining walls of didactic brick. Only one of these walls (F)
touched the circle of the Tymbos, that to the east. It rested on a
foundation of small stones that was not visible, was a mud brick length
d. i. in this case 0.42 m thick and had a height of about 1 m until it
reached the lower stucco edge of the tymbo. Its length was a little
over 6m.
We have only been able to trace part of the side
walls running at right angles to this wall. Nothing was found (p.97) of
a corresponding fourth wall in the west in the immediate vicinity of
the stucco edge; it must then have run at a greater distance than wall
F, perhaps at the same distance as the two side walls. Since there was
no access to the tumulus in either this or F, it must have been in the
assumed fourth wall, and perhaps that is why it was further away from
the edge of the tymbos, in order to have the necessary depth of 1-1.5,
n to win. If local conditions were not decisive for the transfer of the
ascent to this side, one could have taken into account the foundations
of the hero cult when orienting such a sophisticated tombstone, whose
ascent seems to have been primarily from the west. The whole monument
originally shone in the splendor of a brightly shimmering stucco. A
layer of thick yellow stucco was not only found on the outer walls of
the retaining walls, where we found them intact, but also the platform
supported by the walls was covered with it, as was the tymbos itself
and the ground immediately in front of the retaining walls. There were
also traces of a temporary renewal of the stucco.
One can see on
the plan that to the east in front of Wall F there is still a narrow
square wall. However, this did not belong to the first structure of the
Tymbos. Because the yellow plaster of wall F goes through to the corner
g, from which it follows that wall K K was added a little later. Their
continuation had already been discovered during the work in rectangle
A, before slab grave no. 26 was uncovered in the depths below. What
purpose the enlargement should serve we cannot say. Since the
construction of a new tomb did not prompt them, aesthetic
considerations were perhaps decisive, in that the tymbos were not left
standing so hard on the edge, but the platform on this side was also to
be made as wide as on the other three.
We awaited the contents
of the tomb (p.98) (27) with some excitement, the adornment of which
was the extensive complex. They dug down under the round stucco. The
filled rubble in the core of the tymbos contained isolated fragments of
white lekythos, in particular the fragments of a pretty strict lekythos
with the inscription ΛI + AS and with coloring - K A Λ O S bold
painting; the picture represents a girl wrapped in a black himation,
holding a red fruit in one hand and a yellow object (apple?) in the
other. In front of the girl stands a youth in a red cloak, accompanied
by a white dog. Stylistically, the lekythos follows that type treated
by Weisshäupt in these communications (XV p. 40 ).
When you
had penetrated through the embankment, it turned out that the burial
shaft went down into the solid earth below the foundation level of the
mudbrick walls. Its longitudinal axis ran parallel to the side walls of
the tomb monument. The tomb, 2.30 long and 1.14 m wide, was decisive
for the mass of the Tymbos. Of course, to our disappointment, we soon
noticed that the edges of the shaft showed traces of burning pretty
much up to the top, so the prospect of a nice grave find disappeared.
But they dug further down to the level of the groundwater, and when
pumping still did not allow the hard ground to be felt, the Athenian
fire brigade had to help pump out the water until finally, at a depth
of 4m below the lower edge of the stucco round, the ground was reached.
A high layer of charcoal lay above it, in which the only finds
were a tiny shard of a fine black-varnished vessel and the fragments of
an alabastron of fine alabaster. At least the sherd, in connection with
the time when the cemetery was used, provides evidence that the grave
will not be much later than the end of the fourth century BC. A terminus post quem
was already found when the described lekythos was found, which probably
dates back to the first half of the fifth century BC. The graves
discovered on (p.99) the area of the tomb monument, which must have
been laid out before its erection, lead to the same upper time limit.
Four
older graves have been found at this point in the deep digging, each of
which represents a special type, two dipylon graves and two younger
graves. The shaft of a 1.30 m long tomb (IX) descended into the narrow
quadrangular room formed by the extension of the complex. At its
bottom, where the grave narrowed, about six feet below the horizontal
floor of the grave monument, lay the scant remains of a youthful
corpse, the head to the north; the skullcap was only 2mm thick. All
around were 7 cup-like, one-handled Skyphoi, 6 one-handled jugs of the
simplest kind and only partially painted, a kantharos-like cup with two
high pointed handles, sherds of an aryballos with pressed ornaments: so
far everything in the delicate proportions of children's toys. A
dipylon horse made of clay was also included, the head and tail of
which seemed to have been lost in the hands of its little owner, at
least the fractures are old. Of larger proportions is one of the usual
dipylon bowls and a crude saucepan of unpainted brown-red clay, the
outer walls of which were blackened by the smoke of the hearth fire.
A
child's corpse was also found in the second dipylon grave (X). A large
pithos of coarse, unpolished clay, which lay under the round stucco two
paces from the first grave and at a little greater depth than this,
served as her coffin. It was closed by a slab of green slate leaning
against the mouth. The pithos contained only the corpse; Beside it
stood the grave goods, a cooking pot as in the other grave, a large
painted amphora and a small single-handled cup, perhaps also a small
jug, about which we are not entirely sure. (p.100) For illustrations
and more detailed descriptions of the contents of these two graves, see
Section II.
In the ground between these two graves, a little
higher, vertically under wall F, lay one of those coarse amphorae which
the Greek excavators called στάραι. In it we found very fine children's
bones and as an accompaniment a small one-handled jug 0.09 high, two
small Skyphoi with horizontal handles, one 0.045 m in diameter with
black dots, the other a little larger, black varnished and decorated
with a fine dark red stripe , and a 0.09 in diameter box, also
ornamented with black and red stripes.
Finally, the mudbrick
walls, which, as mentioned, served as an extension of the great tomb
monument to the east, ruthlessly cut across a stately tomb (26): it was
a sarcophagus, not hewn out of one block, but of thick ones, in the
manner of the fifth century Porous plates carefully put together so
that two large plates form the floor, two or three plates standing on
top of them enclose the considerably tall tree on each long side and
one plate on the narrow side, and two more plates cover the whole
thing. The upper band of the grave was about 1 m below the floor level
of the grave monument, the grave itself was almost 1 m deep and was
filled with groundwater.
As always in these sarcophagi, the
body was buried; the head was to the south. The grave goods consisted
of about twenty lekythoi and alabastrons. The style of their paintings
was less strict, e.g. already freer, so that one will assume the time
of the grave around 450 BC. With the large number of vessels, it was
noticeable that their paintings all depicted women and Nikes. It is
therefore permissible to identify a woman's grave here (cf. Section IV
below). The tomb that was to be assumed above it had to be removed
before the large monument reached over here.
Footnotes:
1\
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