The room at the greatest depth which I have excavated is 10 feet high and 11¼ feet broad; but it may have been higher; its length I have not yet ascertained. One of the compartments of the uppermost houses, below the Temple of Athena and belonging to the pre-Hellenic period, appears to have been used as a wine-merchant’s cellar or as a magazine, for in it there are nine enormous earthen jars (πίθοι) of various forms, about 5¾ feet high and 4¾ feet across, their mouths being from 29½ to 35¼ inches broad.[247] Each of these earthen jars has four handles, 3¾ inches broad, and the clay of which they are made has the enormous thickness of 2¼ inches. Upon the south side of these jars I found a wall 26 feet in extent and 10 feet high, built of sun-dried bricks, which, however, had become really burnt bricks through the conflagration. This wall, which likewise appears to me to be a fortification and very thick, I have had broken down to the perpendicular line of the foundations of the Temple of Athena.
A.--THE EXCAVATIONS IN THE TEMPLE OF ATHENA.
B.--THE MAGAZINE, WITH ITS COLOSSAL JARS, _Page 290._
I am in great fear lest the Turks should make off with the large stone altar, the upper part of which forms a crescent, to use it for building a minaret in the village of Chiplak; therefore, without moving it from its place, I shall have it carefully split in two, so that it will be useless for building purposes. This stone and its pedestal are daubed over with a white crust of clay, which upon the pedestal is nearly an inch thick.
I have continued the excavation on the south-east side of the Pergamus, and I have found that the great wall, which I regarded as a continuation of the Tower, is part of a very ancient and large wall of enclosure.
[Illustration: No. 203. Fragment of a Terra-cotta Vase, with Egyptian hieroglyphics, from the bottom of the Greek Stratum (2 M.).]
[Illustration: No. 204. A Greek Lamp on a tall foot (2 M.).]
[Illustration: No. 205. Fragment of a two-horned Serpent (κεράστης), in Terra-cotta (3 M.).]