ARCHAEOLOGY. (GKECIAN.) 



37 





The Na?al Arsenal of the Plrsens. In the ex- 

 ploration of the Piraeus a building has been 

 uncovered which is described as a long paral- 

 lelogram, open in front, where it faces the sea, 

 and shut in behind by a wall of fine squared 

 masonry. It is divided into compartments by 

 rows of three pillars, and an abutment in the 

 wall behind, placed about twenty -five feet 

 apart, some of which pillars are still standing, 

 but broken off at about four feet from the 

 ground. The space between the rows of pil- 

 lars is filled by a mass of masonry, which 

 slopes toward the sea, while piers of stone 

 of the same inclination, running straight out 

 from the shore, can be seen in the water all 

 round the harbor, in some cases exactly op- 

 posite the inclined planes visible on the land 

 above. The object of these structures was evi- 

 dently to enable the sailors of the Athenian 

 fleet to draw up their galleys on to dry land 

 for the winter ; and the building was one of 

 the naval arsenals called veoxroiKot. Another 

 straight wall, but of inferior masonry and ap- 

 parently of great length, appears imbedded in 

 the cliff above, and is to be cleared. 



Continued Excavations at Tiryus. Excavations 

 have been continued on the site of the ancient 

 fortress palace of Tiryns, which, as its age may 

 be probably fixed at a thousand years or more 

 before the Christian era, may be regarded as 

 the oldest building in Europe. On the walls, 

 which are from thirty to forty feet thick, have 

 been discovered an outer staircase of sixty steps, 

 very low and easy of ascent, and a row of rude- 

 ly vaulted chambers built in the thickness of 

 the wall, at about twenty feet above the ground. 

 The half-dozen rooms that have been laid bare 

 on the east side of the building are vaulted 

 without key-stones by the aid of unhewn rocks 

 closely fitted together and shelving inward. 

 An irregular crevice was thus left along the 

 top, which admitted light, and perhaps allowed 

 the escape of smoke; but the rudely fitting 

 walls of this primitive roof had in time given 

 way to pressure, and, falling in', filled the rooms 

 underneath with rubbish. On a hearth have 

 been discovered some unconsumed wood-cin- 

 ders, looking like fresh charcoal. 



Temple of Apollo at Monnt Ptonm. The walls of 

 the Temple of Apollo at Mount Ptoum, in Bce- 

 otia, have been discovered by M. Foucard, of 

 the French School, but with" the foundations 

 greatly disturbed. A fine life-size statue in 

 archaic style of the god, of which the feet only 

 are wanting, a head of Apollo of heroic size, 

 and parts of other sculptures, have been recov- 

 ered. Among the inscriptions are one belong- 

 ing to the Boeotian confederation, and others 

 giving a list of magistrates and the names of 

 various artists of the sixth century B. o. The 

 votive offerings show that musical contests took 

 place on Mount Ptoum every fifth year. 



The Inscription of Gortyna. Dr. Halbherr has 

 discovered at Gortyna in Crete a fragment of 

 an inscription built into a wall, in archaic 

 letters and a Doric dialect, of about 500 B. o., 



which proves to be part of a law of penalties 

 for debt and of a law of inheritance. Other 

 fragments of the same inscription are in the Mu- 

 seum of the Louvre, so that it may be possible 

 to reconstruct it nearly entire. 



The Stone from ana in Galilee. Excavations 

 carried on by the French School of Archaeol- 

 ogy around the Temple of Athene Cranaaa, at 

 Elatea, in Phocis, brought to light, in the ruins 

 of the Church of the Mother of God, a block 

 of white-gray marble about four and a half 

 feet long, twenty-five inches broad, and thir- 

 teen inches high, bearing the inscription, which 

 is assigned to the sixth or seventh century of 

 the Christian era : 



+ OYTOC ECTIN O AI90C AHO KANA 

 THC TAAIAEAC OIIOY TO YAQP OINON 

 EHOIHCEN O KC HMQN 1C XG + 



M. Diehl, of the French School, translates 

 this inscription, " This is the famous stone 

 from Cana in Galilee, where our Lord Jesus 

 Christ turned the water into wine." M. Spyr. 

 P. Lambros, of Athens, would translate the 

 first words to mean, " This stone comes from 

 Cana in Galilee," etc. Concerning the prob- 

 able origin of the stone, it has been observed 

 that various monuments connected with the 

 presence of Christ there were carefully pre- 

 served at Cana, and regarded with devotion 

 by pilgrims. Some of these relics were re- 

 moved to western countries as early as the 

 fifth century, and before the thirteenth centu- 

 ry all had gone from there. Among the pil- 

 grims who have described these objects wasj 

 Antoninus of Piacenza, who, in the sixth cent- ' 

 ury, saw two of the pitchers in which the mir- 

 acle of the conversion of the water into wine 

 was said to have taken place, and even declared 

 that he had himself drawn from one of them 

 wine instead of the water which had been put 

 into the vessel. He also relates, in his " Itine- 

 rarium," that he saw the couch on which our 

 Lord reclined at the wedding, sat in it, and 

 inscribed the name of his family upon it. A 

 commission was appointed by the Greek Gov- 

 ernment to examine the stone and the inscrip- 

 tion, one of whom, W. Dorpfeldt, has expressed 

 the opinion that the stone originally formed 

 part of a chair, and was accompanied by other 

 similar stones. M. Diehl described the stone 

 as bearing, when he found it, the remains of 

 another smaller inscription, of which he de- 

 ciphered the words rfjs fiijrpos pov ' Avr&vivov. 

 M. Lambros asserts, however, that he was not 

 able to find this inscription. The church in 

 which the stone was discovered was found to 

 have been built upon the site of an ancient tem- 

 ple, of which a part of the ruins were exposed. 

 The excavations of the Temple of Athene Cra- 

 naea (so called from the name of the hillock, 

 Cranae, on which it was built) revealed the 

 ruins of a very beautiful building, of Doric 

 architecture, about a hundred feet long and 

 forty feet wide, which had suffered from earth- 

 quakes and from a conflagration. From the ex- 



