On the top of the tumulus, which is half an hour distant from the Pergamus, and which, according to the Iliad (II. 811-815), was called by men the tomb of Batiea, and by the gods the tomb of Myrina, I have had a shaft sunk, 10¾ feet broad and 17½ feet long; and I find that the layer of soil there is scarcely more than ¾ of an inch thick, and then follows brown earth as hard as stone, which alternates with strata of calcareous earth. In the brown earth I found a mass of fragments of brilliant black, green, and brown vases, of the same description as those which I find here in the Pergamus at a depth of from 8 to 10 meters (26 to 33 feet); also many fragments of jars (πίθοι). Beyond these I discovered nothing at all, and at a depth of 4½ meters (13¾ feet) I came upon the white limestone rock. What is most surprising to me is that I did not even find any charcoal, much less the bones of the burnt corpse. That I should have missed the traces of the funeral pile, if such really existed, is inconceivable to me, when I consider the size of my cutting and of its perpendicular walls.
Now, although I have failed in the actual object of this excavation, still it has this important result for archæology, that, by means of all the fragments of pottery discovered there, it enables us to determine with some degree of certainty the date of the erection of this mound; for it evidently belongs to a time when the surface of the Pergamus was from 26 to 33 feet lower than it is now. It is therefore of the same date as the Tower-road already described, which is paved with large flags of stone, and above which I have carried on the excavations with the greatest industry. I finished these excavations to-day. They have brought to light two large buildings of different ages, the more recent of which is erected upon the ruins of the more ancient one. Both have been destroyed by terrible fires, of which the walls bear distinct traces; moreover all the rooms of both houses are filled with black, red, and yellow wood-ashes and with charred remains. The more recent house was erected when the ruins of the more ancient house were perfectly covered with ashes and with burnt débris, as is obvious from the fact that the more recent walls run in all directions above the more ancient ones, never standing directly upon them, and are frequently separated from them by a layer of calcined débris, from 6½ to 10 feet high. The lower, as well as the upper house, is built of stones joined with earth, but the walls of the lower house are much thicker and much more solidly built than those of the upper one. The Tower-road can only have been used when the more ancient house was still inhabited, for it leads directly into it, and the more recent house was not built till the street was covered to a height of 10 feet by the ruins of the more ancient house.
PLATE XII.