No. 163.
Mr. Read
to Mr. Evarts.
Off Corfu, Greece, July 24, 1877. (Received August 13.)
Sir: I have had the good fortune to find upon this steamer my friend M. Dumont, the distinguished director of the French Archaeological Institute at Athens, who has brought to my notice a most important discovery which was made only last week at Sparta, a small village on the southern side of Mount Hymettus, at the distance of two hours’ drive from Athens. Some time ago the attention of M, Dumont and of M. Ernest Curtius, the learned German archaeologist, was directed to several ancient tombs lying upon the side of a small hill in the midst of a great plain near Sparta. An investigation showed that there were three chambers in the tomb, which these gentlemen especially examined. These chambers were hollowed out of the friable stone of the hill, which may be cut with a knife when it is fresh, but hardens upon exposure to the air. The top of the principal chamber had fallen inward, and M. Dumont and M. Curtius (descended by means of ladders. They found that the principal chamber communicates by corridors with two other chambers, the one smaller than the other. The largest chamber was perhaps 12 by 15 feet. The arrangement was entirely that of the Etruscan tombs whose remains exist to-day in ancient Etruria. It is the belief of M. Dumont that, in accordance with the general plan of such tombs, there must be other tombs on other sides of this hill. A detailed account of these valuable preliminary researches was published in the Journal of the German Archaeological Institute at Athens, and in the Bulletin de Correspondance de l’Ecole Française, at Athens, page 261.
These important indications led the Arch geological Society at Athens also to turn its attention in this direction, and it dispatched M. Stamatakis, the exact and conscientious assistant keeper of antiquities in Greece, to make excavations on the spot. This wise movement has resulted within the last week in a most important and precious discovery which confirms in the most conclusive manner the antiquity of the objects discovered by Dr. Schliemann, at Mycenae, for M. Stamatakis has found upward of two thousand objects whose appearance and decorations resemble exactly the relics of Mycenae. By the side of these were found other objects, which M. Dumont states are unquestionably of Assyrian origin.
There are ten ivory ornaments, of perhaps an inch and a half by an inch and a quarter in size, upon which there are various designs in relief. Four represent the Sphynx, two depict a fight between a lion and a bull, and one contains the figure of an Assyrian king. There are about one [Page 295] thousand glass or pâte de verre ornaments, and fifty different subjects in relief are found upon them, Nearly all of these resemble the types at Mycenae.
The glass ornaments are smaller than the ivory, and they were all originally covered with a thin sheet of gold, which rendered distinctly the figures beneath them. These resemble similar forms at Cyprus, but in the latter locality the objects were of solid gold. Some of the thin gold-leaf coverings of these glass ornaments have also been found in the tomb at Sparta. I have said there were three chambers in this tomb.* * * The smaller chambers bad evidently been previously entered, and it is supposed that the solid golden objects which they must have contained were taken by the peasants in the vicinity. The glass ornaments probably possessed no value in their eyes, which accounts for their remaining. No inscriptions were found.
The importance of the discoveries at Sparta cannot be overestimated, when taken in connection with those at Mycenae.
I have, &c.,