For some days these masses of stone have diminished in number, but we continually find many single large blocks. Instead of the stone strata, however, we now have before us, upon the whole breadth of the platform (230 feet), and to the height of 20 feet (hence at a depth of from 10 to 16 meters, 33 to 52½ feet), a damp wall as hard as stone, composed of ashes mixed with small shells, bones, boars’ tusks, &c., exactly like that which we before found at the east end. This mass is so tough, that it is only by making shafts, and breaking down the walls by means of huge iron levers, that we manage to get on at all.
The signs of a higher civilization increasing with the greater depth--which I mentioned in my last report when speaking of the large urn with Assyrian inscriptions--continue down to the native soil. Close above it I find a great quantity of fragments of brilliant black and sometimes red or brown pottery, with engraved decorations, of a quality more excellent than I have hitherto met with even in the highest strata, among the ruins of the Greek period. I also found several fragments of cups, the lower part of which likewise forms a cup, but not a large one, and hence I do not doubt that these are fragments of double cups (δέπας ἀμφικύπελλον). In Homer it indeed seems as if all double cups were made of gold or silver with a gilt rim,[131] but I do not doubt that there were at the same time also double cups made of clay.[132]
[Illustration: No. 76. Fragment of a Vase of polished black Earthenware, with Pattern inlaid in White, from the Lowest Stratum (14 M.).]
The other vessels, of which I found fragments, were made so as to be carried by strings, as is proved by the two rings projecting beside one another on either side. I also found upon the primary soil the head of a brilliant black pitcher, with a beak-shaped mouth bent back; also the fragment of a vessel painted white, but divided into two compartments by black lines drawn horizontally; the upper compartment contains undulating black lines, which are perhaps meant to represent water, the lower one is filled with a row of arrow-shaped decorations, with square pointed heads, in the centre of which there is always a dot.