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Tomb I (Plan, Fig. 2; Plate 49b). This was the original tomb whose collapse led to the discovery of the cemetery. It was also apparently the earliest in point of time, containing four clay vases (1–4) decorated in a fine style which may go back before the destruction of the Last Palace. The main chamber was more or less rectangular (L. 1·90, W. about 2·50), approached by a level dromos (L. 3·00, W. 0·85–90), on the left side of which was a walled recess (L. 1·78, W. 0·75) exactly like the chamber in graves of the pit-cave type as found in the Zafer Papoura cemetery (PT 15 f., and fig. 11a, b). The dromos was entered by an unusually steep ramp descending at an angle of nearly 45 degrees.
The tomb was quite intact and unplundered. But the roof of the main chamber had partly collapsed, together with the top of the entrance, so that the upper part of the blocking wall had fallen into the chamber. The solitary burial had been contained in a wooden coffin, set against the south wall of the chamber, of which traces survived together with some indications of the blue paint with which it had been decorated (Plate 49b). The dusky patch indicating the decayed wood of the coffin lay above the floor of the tomb to a depth of between 5 and 10 centimetres over an area of about L. 1·50 m. and W. 0·50 m. The coffin traces began immediately on the floor over most of the area where they occurred, but in some places they were a little above it.
- Type
- A Minoan cemetery on Upper Gypsades (Knossos Survey 156)
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1959
References
1 For blue-painted coffins, see BSA 51 (1956) 86.
2 The very well-preserved wooden coffin found by Alexiou at Katsamba was about 1·30 long and 0·45 wide (KCh 6 (1952) 11 f.). For an account of such wooden coffins in Crete see BSA 51 (1956) 86.
3 BSA ix, pl. x. 1, 7. Cf. Zervos, L'Art de la Crète, figs. 232–3.
4 We are much indebted to Dr. J. C. Trevor for the identification of these and of the other skeletal remains from the tombs. Bones from tombs dug after Dr. Trevor had left Crete, notably those from the Middle Minoan tomb XVIII, have not yet been examined.
5 Cf. Schaeffer, , Enkomi-Alasia 319.Google Scholar
6 Cf. BSA xlvii. 249: Hospital Site Tomb III, and ibid, note 21 for others in Crete and on the mainland.
7 There was one example of a shaft-grave containing a larnax at Zafer Papoura (PT 15, 50: T 34), and another in the Mavro Spelio cemetery (BSA xxviii. 283; tomb XX).
8 Cf. some much later graves in the Kerameikos Cemetery at Athens (Karo, , An Attic Cemetery, pl. 14aGoogle Scholar: 8–7 cent. B.C.).
9 This shape with a pillar left in the middle of one side to help support the roof is a natural one for a large rock-cut chamber. Cf. The M.M. tomb VII in the Mavro Spelio cemetery (BSA xxviii. 246, 261) and L.M. tombs at Isopata (TDA 30, fig. 40: T. 6 and T. 2 (Tomb of the Double Axes)). For tombs of this shape of the end of the Middle Bronze Age (Hyksos period) in Palestine, see Tell Fara (Petrie, BethPelet i, pl. xvii, ii, pl. xlv. Cf. Schaeffer, , Strat. Comparée 164–5, fig. 133Google Scholar). They also occur in Cyprus (Aström, , The Middle Cypriote Bronze Age (1957) 8, fig. 6Google Scholar).
10 BSA xxviii. 259: tomb VI.
11 See the account of Middle Minoan Peak Sanctuaries by Platon, (KCh 5 (1951) 96 f.)Google Scholar.
12 ILN Sept. 27th 1952, p. 507, fig. 12. Ibid. Mar. 6th 1954, p. 364, fig. 9. PAE 1952 (1954) 443, figs. 12, 13; 1953 (1956) 222, fig. 11, 226, fig. 13.
13 A number of miniature vases, found in an ossuary pit in one of the Middle Minoan tombs on Ailias east of Knossos (excavated in 1953 and not yet published) had evidently been placed there as offerings to placate the dead at the time their bones were swept into the pit.
14 e.g. in tombs in the Ailias cemetery.