There was an entire absence of Roman or Byzantine coins. I may here remark that Mycenæ proper appears to have struck no coins; at least none has ever been found.
No. 25. Terra-cotta Vase. (3 M.) Size, 3:4, about.
ARCHAIC PAINTED VASES.
Below the comparatively modern Hellenic city I find by thousands the fragments of those splendidly-painted archaic vases, which I have already mentioned when speaking of Tiryns. The type of vase which I most frequently find here is in the shape of a globe with a flat foot, and terminating 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 always near to the closed neck.[179] These vases always show the most variegated painted ornamentation of horizontal circular bands, spiral lines, or other fanciful decorations, which vary on each vase. In the centre of the flat top of the closed neck is usually a white point, surrounded by three, four, six or more red circles; but sometimes there is a cross painted in the middle of the circles.
No. 26. Terra-Cotta Jug. Ground yellow: lines black. (3 M.) Size, 7:9, about.
Vases of the same form sometimes occur in Attica; some specimens of them have also been found in Cyprus as well as in Egyptian tombs. Mr. Charles T. Newton has called my attention to forty-three vases of exactly the same form, which have been found in a tomb at Ialysus on the island of Rhodes, together with other objects which also occur in Mycenæ; but in the same tomb was also found an Egyptian scarabæus with the cartouche of Amunoph III., who is thought by Egyptologists to have reigned not later than B.C. 1400.
No. 27. Vase of Yellow Ware, with black and yellow lines. (3 M.) Actual size.