,CLARftE ? S TRAVELS. 
m 
for the human body. Examining its interior by means of the 
aperture here afforded, we perceived another small square 
opening in the floor of this vast soros, which seemed to com¬ 
municate with an inferior vault. Such cavities might be ob¬ 
served in all the sepulchres of Teimessus, excepting those cut 
in the rocks; as if the bodies of the dead had been placed in 
the lower receptacle, while the soros above answered the pur¬ 
pose of a cenotaph; for, wherever the ground had been suffi¬ 
ciently cleared around them, there appeared, beneath the soros, 
a vault.* Almost all these tombs have been ransacked : but 
I suspect that the one to which reference is now made, has not 
yet been opened. Gipsies, who were encamped in great num¬ 
bers among the mins, had used some of the vaults, or lower 
receptacles, as sheds for their goats. A question is here 
suggested, which it may be possible to answer. Whence 
originated this distinction, observed in the Telmessensian 
sepulchres, between the tombs having a Persepolitau character* 
and the cenotaphs exhibiting the most ancient form of the Greek 
soros? The first seem evidently Asiatic; they correspond with 
the remains of customs still discernible in many parts of India, 
The last are of European origin; and their introduction may 
be referred to periods in the history of the country, when the 
first colonies from Greece took possession of the coasts of Ea¬ 
rn and Lycia. The Dorian dialect is yet retained in almost 
every inscription found upon those shores.f 
Upon the right hand of the mouth of the soros, as represented 
In the annexed engraving, is an inscription, in legible characters, 
of the highest importance in ascertaining the identity of the 
city to which it belonged, as well as in the illustration it offers 
concerning the nature of the monument itself. I copied it with 
all the care and attention it was possible to bestow, when ex¬ 
posed to the scorching beams of a powerful sun, and to mephitic 
exhalations from the swamp w herein it is situated. By the le¬ 
gend, this monument is proved to have been the T 031 B of Helen* 
DAUGHTER OF JASON, A WOMAN OF TELMESSUS. It IS difficult 
& Such a mode of interment is still exhibited in all our English cemeteries. It is a 
practice we derived from the Romans; and the form of their sarcophagus may yet be < 
noticed in almost every churchyard of our island. 
f The late professor Person, to whom the author showed the inscription he discovered 
■upon this soros, maintained that it was evidently older than the hundredth Olympiad 
.Reckoning,,therefore, to the time in which it wa3 found, the antiquity of this monu¬ 
ment amounted to two thousand one hundred ami seventy one years; tor the hundred 
Olympiad terminated w ith the year 377 B. C- Professor Person himself afforded the 
translation of this inscription, as it will be found here given; the author having care' 
fully ins^rlQd it, literally and verbally, fron^the copy left with, him..-by his 
