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

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piece of bone cleared over the right knee. Extended one beyond the other beside the cranium which probably belongs with C, were the two gold frontlets #16 and #20. If these may be assigned respectively to C and B, presumably the two were women, as knock-knees would anyway suggest for C at least. Finally, D lay just beyond A, over pots #1 and #2, his legs on the discard heap. Some vertebrae and a cranium fragment which we cleared probably belonged to the same skeleton, but much of its upper part had been lost over the edge of the break into Tomb 1. No items among the finds in Tomb 9 could be attributed to this burial, the only one in the tomb which did not seem to have been superseded. Besides these four skeletons, at least four more must be reckoned from what had been swept toward the back and side of the tomb. Against the preserved northeast side, the pile reached in places a height of 0.40 above floor level, bones mixed with small vases (unguentaria) and disintegrated pebble rock or brown earth, topped at intervals all along by large pieces of the Rhodian jar #13. In brown earth toward the north corner, under the unguentaria 24-26 and bones with these (not in the drawing) were some pottery fragments, 29 and 30, which do not join with anything in either Tomb 9 or Tomb 1. There was evidently a considerable fall of rock and leakage of earth to be cleared from the floor of the tomb before the last two or three persons were laid there. The rock fall probably smashed #13. These large storage jars usually seem to last fairly intact in the tombs until the roof falls on them. It is not unlikely that they were sometimes refilled with new food or drink offerings at successive funerals.

Burials in the larger and deeper Tomb 1 were at two distinct levels, bones from the later being on an earth floor 0.06 to 0.12 thick strewn neatly over most of the earlier skeletons. These were four, an elderly woman, apparently lame, along the west, right, side, head north; two children along the opposite, east, side, heads again north; and along the south, with head west, a rather light-boned man who probably stood five feet seven or eight in life. Although none of the skeletons had been deliberately disarranged, that of the man was much the best preserved, being almost intact except for the skull, of which only fragments remained. Presumably the … continues