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

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Tomb 1, the old tomb continued to be used for poor relations and hangers-on. The gold frontlets #16 and #20 are slightly puzzling, unless we suppose a temporary return to Tomb 9. A guess may be made at the sequence: in the second quarter of the 2nd century BC the family affairs look up, a large new tomb is cut. At the end of this century or the beginning of the next, the northeast corner of the new deeper tomb, which partly undercut the old one, collapses, probably with part of its tunnel entrance. The debris falls directly on the bones in Tomb 1, which have not been covered over. There is fall also in the higher Tomb 9, but the chamber can still be entered and a clearing made without major operations. Before a new entrance to Tomb 1 can be provided (it may have required some negotiation with cemetery authorities or owners of other plots), two respectable female members of the family die and are arranged for as decently as is practical at the moment. The renovated Tomb 1 is however available after no great delay, as may be seen by the good preservation of the latest burial of Period I, covered for Period II (see pp.7-8). So the collapse probably took place not much earlier than 100 BC, by our dating of the first burials of Period II. The date of the cutting of Tomb 1 is that of the stamped Rhodian amphora, the earliest hazarded for the cutting of Tomb 9. The evidence is of course entirely indefinite; suggestion of affluence in Tomb 9. The evidence is of course entirely indefinite; but more than 50 or 75 years for Period I seems unlikely in view of the single round of burials, all in fair order up to the last.

There is little new information about burial customs. The dead were carried in feet first and laid in the line of the entrance, or parallel to it first right then left; when the back of the tomb was used, the head was to the right as one looks in. Where space was needed, earlier burials were swept aside. All this is in the tradition of the Bronze Age in Cyprus; but the bodies are now laid out in an extended position on their backs, arms at their sides. In one case Charon's obol is provided (see p.8); it is possibly a coincidence that this is the only undisturbed skeleton of a man in the two tombs. Gold frontlets or forehead bands are worn by women, sometimes a wreath of gold "leaves" in addition; but it has seemed necessary to assign one group of leaves (#61) to the athlete with the strigil #15. Wreaths were of course worn by men