W. E. G.
HAWARDEN, November, 1877.
DR. SCHLIEMANN'S ACCOUNT OF A TOMB AT SPATA, IN ATTICA.
Athens, 1st Oct., 1877.
For some months past it has repeatedly been asserted in the Press by travellers that there exists a very great similarity between the Mycenean antiquities and those recently discovered in a tomb at Spata. Having now visited the latter, in company with my esteemed friend Professor E. Castorches, of the University of Athens, and his daughter Helen, and having carefully examined the objects found in it, I think it in the interest of science to offer the following remarks on the subject. The village of Spata, which is exclusively inhabited by Albanians, lies about nine miles to the east of Athens, on the further side of Mount Hymettus, on the road to Marathon. Close to that village is a small mount, whose circular summit has evidently been artificially levelled; it is covered to a depth of about three feet with débris, in which we see now and then fragments of archaic vases with painted parallel horizontal bands. The villagers assert that until very recently the summit was surrounded by the ruins of fortress walls, which have now altogether disappeared, the stones having been used for the building of the new village. The name of the settlement which existed here in antiquity is altogether uncertain. Colonel Leake[17] recognises in the present name, Spata, a corruption of the ancient demos of Sphettus (Σϕῆττος or Σϕηττός), which is mentioned by Aristophanes,[18] Strabo,[19] Pausanias,[20] Stephanus Byzantinus,[21] and others.
In the south-west side of the mount, which slopes at an angle of 52 degrees, there occurred last winter in one place a sudden breaking down of the ground, and in the hollow thus formed there was discovered a sepulchre cut out in the sandstone rock. The Archæological Society had the place explored, and it was found that an inclined road, cut in the rock, 74 feet long, led into the tomb. The road is 8¼ feet broad up to the entrance, which is 10 feet long and 3⅓ feet broad. The sepulchre consists of three quadrangular chambers, which are united by two passages 6½ feet long and 3⅓ feet broad; and the ceilings of these chambers are cut out in the rock in the form of roofs with two slanting sides. The primitive architect had evidently intended to give to each of these three chambers exactly the shape of a house, because the slanting sides of the roof-like ceiling do not converge directly from the vertical walls, but hang over by 8 inches like the eaves of a house. The height of the first chamber is 16½ feet, its breadth 15, and its length 20 feet; the two other chambers are 12½ feet high, 12 feet long, and 11½ feet broad. Of the existence of wooden doors there are no traces, except in the passage from the first to the second chamber. Seen from the extremity of the "dromos" this tomb reminds us of the Egyptian sepulchres.[22]
In each of the three chambers was found a human skeleton, with a quantity of ashes and charcoal, which seems to prove that each body had been burnt on the pyre in the very spot where it lay, but so superficially that the bones were preserved. In this respect, as well regarding the burning of the bodies in the tombs, we find a resemblance to the mode of burial of the bodies in the five royal sepulchres at Mycenæ. But here the bones crumbled away on being exposed to the air. This tomb had evidently been already rifled in ancient times, for but a few objects were found with the bodies; nearly all of them lay dispersed in the débris, in and before the entrance. They consisted of bone or ivory, glass, bronze, stone, and terra-cotta. Only a few flowers of very thin gold-leaf having been found, whose aggregate weight cannot exceed the eighth part of a pound, it appears that the tomb-robbers only aimed at the golden ornaments, and that they threw away all the rest.
The few terra-cotta vessels found here are all wheel-made; among the number there is one which perfectly resembles the vase represented under No. 25, p. [64]; it is ornamented with red and black circular bands, and is in the shape of a globe with a flat foot; it terminates above in a very pretty narrow neck, without an opening, the top of which is joined on each side by a beautifully shaped handle to the upper part of the body. The real mouth of the vase is in the shape of a funnel, and near to the closed neck. There was also found the upper part of a similar vase. I remind the reader that forty-three vases of exactly the same form were found in a sepulchre at Ialysus in Rhodes, and are now in the British Museum; that they sometimes, though but seldom, occur in Attica, and that some specimens of them have also been found in the Egyptian tombs and in Cyprus.
Another vase found in the tomb of Spata is ornamented with black spirals.