the excavation of the athenian agora twelfth season: 1947

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156 HOMER A. THOMPSON the body (P1. 39, 3, Fig. 4). The table itself is attested by the stain of decayed wood and by the blue pigment with which it had been painted. The larger sword is a splendid rapier, 0.74 m. long, of the horned type, its hilt plates, presumably of wood, secured I I Fig. 3. Plan of Mycenaean Chamber Tomb on North Slope, of Areopagus by means of rivets with prominent heads overlaid with sheet gold. A hollow hoop of thin gold, ca. 0.02 m. in diameter, found beside the sword probably adorned its hilt (P1. 40, 1).' The tang of the shorter sword is largely corroded away; this weapon, 9 This type of sword is well represented in the chamber tombs of Mycenae and of the Agrive Heraeum and in the Zafer Papoura cemetery at Knossos. A particularly close parallel is that from Tomb XXXVII at the Argive Heraeum, dating from early in the Third Late Helladic period. Blegen, Prosymnna, I, pp. 127 f., 329 f.; II, fig. 298, 301. It is worth noting that the two long swords found at the Argive Heraeum were each accompanied, like ours, by a dagger,-apparently the normal equipment.
EXCAVATION OF ATHENIAN AGORA, 1947 157 however, would seem to have been closely similar to its companion piece and may be restored with a length of ca. 0.50 m. The " cleaver " is of heavy bronze, tanged for a handle that was, no doubt, of wood.'0 The bronze bowl was found crumpled and heavily oxidized; its profile, however, could be recovered with fair assurance and it seems certainly to have had only one handle. Near the middle of the floor, and probably to be related to Burial B, lay nine conical pierced buttons of dark steatite (P1. 40, 1). Thirty-eight rosettes of thin gold were recovered from the tomb, and of these thirty-two lay in a compact group at the ---------- - ,~~ - . | ~~~~ cm A Fig. 4. Bronzes from Mycenaean Chamber Tomb on Areopagus (A= B 778; B==B 781; C==B 780; D =B 782) base of the wall near the feet of Burial C, as though they had served as ornaments on a garment, now utterly vanished, hung on a peg in the wall (Fig. 3, P1. 40, 1). The date of our tomb is clearly indicated by the vases. In the first place it should be observed that there can be little difference in date between the three much broken vases to be associated with the earliest burial (A) and those placed on the occasions of the later interments. The vases from this tomb, moreover, are closely contemporary with those from the larger tomb found in 1939 and illustrated in Hesperia, IX, 1940, figs. 17-25. Although the finds of 1947 are on the whole less fine in quality and less pretentious than those of 1939, the shapes of amphora and of ewer are exceedingly close. The vases of the tomb found in 1939 have been referred to the earlier part of the Third Late Helladic period, and a similar classification may be accepted for the new group. A welcome clue to the absolute dating is given by the close correspondence between the " pilgrim flask " found in the Agora tomb (P1. 40. 2) and one found by 10 Examples of this implement, sometimes, though not very plausibly, identified as razors, have been found elsewvhere in contexts of the Third Late Helladic period. See Blegen, Prosym'na, I, p. 347.
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.House Walls on West Slope of Hill
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3. PLATE XLIX
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VW,; 1. Terracotta Bust of Attis (T
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1. Black-Figured Amphora (P 18,348)
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-_ .... PLATE LXIX 1. Fragments of
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