No perforated lids were found, but I have no doubt that they existed, and that, as with nearly all those found in Troy, the perforations in the vases served not only for hanging them up, but also for fastening the lids, so as to secure the contents.
All the painted vases hitherto found have been made on the potter's wheel, except the very small ones, which are evidently hand-made. It is true that I found two fragments of coarse hand-made pottery, which can only be compared to the rudest pottery of the Danish "kitchen-middens" (Kjökkenmöddinge); but they had evidently been transported hither from another place.
As at Tiryns, the goblets are for the most part of white clay, and in the shape of large Bordeaux wine-glasses; nearly all have one handle (see No. 83). But there are a great many other goblets of the same form which have a uniform bright red colour, and others which, on a light red dead ground, have an ornamentation of numerous parallel dark red circular bands (see Nos. 84, 88).
No. 83. A Goblet of Terra-cotta. (3 M.) Size 5:8, about.
It deserves very particular attention that goblets of perfectly the same form were found by me in Troy at a depth of 50 feet (see my 'Atlas des Antiquités Troyennes,' Plate 105, No. 2311); further, that fourteen goblets of exactly the same form were found in the tomb at Ialysus in Rhodes, already mentioned, and are now in the British Museum. Only the painted ornamentation of these latter goblets is different, for it represents mostly the cuttle-fish (sepia), but also spirals, or that curious sea-animal which so frequently occurs on the pottery of Mycenæ (see No. 213, a, b, p. 138), but never on the Mycenean goblets.
Nos. 84-89. Fragments of Painted Pottery. Half-size.
HERA-IDOLS IN TERRA-COTTA.
Since the 7th inst. I have been able to gather here more than 200 terra-cotta idols of Hera, more or less broken, in the form of a woman or in that of a cow.[187] Most of the former have ornaments painted in bright red on a dead ground of light red, two breasts in relief, below which protrudes on each side a long horn, so that both horns together form a half-circle; and, as I have said regarding the idols in Tiryns, they must either be intended to represent cow-horns, or the symbolic horns of the crescent moon, or both at once. The head of those idols is of a very compressed shape, and usually covered by a large "polos." The lower part is in the form of a gradually widening tube. It deserves particular attention that a terra-cotta idol of exactly the same form was found in the aforesaid tomb in Ialysus, and is now in the British Museum.