1937

-2- new Paphos roads, about two thirds of the way from the Bamboula to the river. There are many hewn blocks on the surface, and the villagers have long been telling me that that general region was a good source of large stones. The sherds are primarily L.C.II, with a good admixture of M.C. and E.C. This is where the seal was found about which Christo wrote me. I bought it today, for three shillings. It is not a cylinder, but it is an imported "Post Hittite" (i.e. Cilician or north-Syrian, of 1200 B.C. or later) stamp seal. It is of serpentine, shaped very much like a large lump of sugar, pierced longitudinally. Both the front and back are engraved with horses, anything but elegant, but very sprightly. In Tarsus I grew to have quite a fondness for these sloppy spirited seals. It is in no way comparable to the rather good work of our cylinder seals, but it is a nice thing to have even so.

This morning I paid another visit to the Late Bronze Age cemetery of which I have often spoken, east of Apollo, and just east, across the valley, from the hill with the two small Roman temples (?). The news is very good indeed. There are a number of plundered tombs, whose sherds are L.C.I, early and very good White Slip and Base Ring ware, together with late Black Slip ware. The tombs are large and promissing. What I had seen before and believed to be tombs are perhaps not. In any case they are beehive shaped, with no dromos, but a small round hole, sometimes not more than 0.50 m in diameter, square at the top. That they may be cisterns or bothroi I gather from the fact that they do not seem rich in sherds, that the openings are so small as to make a dignified funeral quite out of the question, and that they are scattered among house walls. Why I did not notice the walls when I was last there I do not know. But there they are, and very imposing too. In some places the walls themselves are visible, in other places only the stones from them, along with saddlequerns, mortars and the like. Architecturally this is very exciting. There is none of the sloppy rubble of the Bamboula. The walls are carefully built of huge well-surfaced blocks. The visible walls are