Ayios Ermoyenis, Discovery of Trench 43, V. Grace 1941Virginia Randolph Grace

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wall, and a gold frontlet, #67. Leaves and frontlet lay about where the skull must have lain, and the earth near them was tawny and smeary. 4) More or less parallel to (3), partly on the rise of ground in the northeast section of the tomb, lay the skeleton of what must have been the last burial. The bones of both shoulders, some vertebrae and ribs, the bones of the left arm, and to a less degree of the legs and feet, lay in fair order, though the upper arm bone was broken through. The broken ends lay at a difference in level of 0.05. The unevenness of ground in this quarter may have been compensated by a bier, propped up by the two stones found one on either side of the skeleton at its midpoint, resting a little lower than the actual bones. The right arm had been pulled about before dissolution, also apparently the head: of the latter no part was found in position, but it may possibly be identified in some cranium fragments, the only ones uncrushed in Tomb 1, which lay on top of the west edge of the pile near the east wall; and this finding place perhaps explains xxx the position of the gold frontlet and leaves #9 which cannot be assigned to any other burial. The frontlet seems to imply a woman. Hers must also have been the small bowl #7 and the early Roman lamp #8. The unguentaria 38 and 39-42 had been discarded before this burial was made, and may have belonged to burial (2).

The order at this level seems then to have been, first burial to the right of the entrance, second to the left, then right again, then left again, the displaced individuals having been pushed back to the south and east walls. Incomplete decomposition of 1 when moved would indicate that burials 1-3 occupied altogether a short period. Burial 4 seems to have followed rather more of an interval.

Curled up over where must originally have been the head of Burial 3 was the skeleton of a small beast, resting at a level about 0.05 higher than 3. Here perhaps is the cause of the disarrangement of burial 4. Beside the beast were some pieces of eggshell, from eggs as large as those of hens.

Over these bones for more than two centuries the roof flaked, and recurrent flood waters, mixing brown earth with the whitish flakes, finally lifted six pots to from 0.15 to 0.20 above the second and final burial level of Tomb 1. Then the mass of the roof fell.