Kourion Complex Palace

Continued from scan 13

… cisterns and reservoirs. Natural caves under the northeast part of the house were finished with built walls and used as cellars. The earliest of these was in the south corner of the excavated floors. The [handwritten: the palace was in its eight or more mosaic floors] ... area. Three fragments were found belonging to a room which was demolished when the square southeast room and the adjacent long hall were built. It represents an intermediate period between the first palace and the third century rebuilding. The mosaic consisted of an even number of panels decorated with geometric patterns, and surrounded by a broad border of simple octagonal figures. It was executed with rather large tesselae in crude colours on a prominent white background. The second mosaic in point of time is that of the square southeast room. It has a narrow ivy leaf border enclosing a frieze of maeanders alternating with panels of intricate geometric arrangement. The central part of the floor is covered with a pattern of octagons, hexagons, and crosses. This same pattern is used again in a more ornate version in the southwest hall, and on a mosaic floor in the palace of Diocletian at Spalato, where it is dated to 300-305 A.D. There was an inscription of seven lines by the door into the long hall, opposite the Os pote Phoibos elegiacs. Parts of five lines are preserved, but no reading can be attempted. The circular letter forms, typologically earlier than the rectangular which were common in the early fourth century, monumental considerations, and a coin of Macrinus which was found in the foundation of the mosaic, indicate a third century date.