What seemed to be the covering slabs of a tomb were noticed by the School's foreman, Manoli Markoyiannakis, exposed in the low field bank which forms the southern continuation of the high bank with the Geometric tombs dug by Hogarth and Payne, a couple of metres north of the path running eastwards across the base of the Kefala ridge past the Hellenic tower (BSA 52 (1957) 244ff.). During the course of the School's excavation of the early Christian building on the neighbouring Sanatorium site in 1953 Dr. N. Platon, Ephor of Antiquities for Crete, kindly gave me permission to examine the slabs, which were found to cover a grave roughly rectangular in shape and measuring 1·60 × 0·70 at the bottom (Fig. 1). The grave's floor was only 1·15 at the west end and 1·60 at the east below the modern surface of the rock; but the surface here must have once stood much higher, and have worn away owing to erosion.

The three large slabs over the grave were blocks of dressed limestone. That at the east end (A) had a ‘branch’ sign (L. 0·25, max. W. 0·13), boldly carved with broad shallow V-shaped grooves, on the upper exposed face in the north-east corner (Fig. 1, Plate 66d). The joints between the three slabs were carefully wedged with small stones. In the grave below them was a clean fill of kouskouras, the soft white chalky rock of the area, containing a few nondescript Minoan sherds. The cover slabs with the smaller stones wedged in the joints between them seemed to be in place; but the earth below contained small lumps of rock, as if the grave had been deliberately filled before the cover slabs were laid in position. This agrees with what has been observed in the case of other Minoan shaft-graves in the Gypsades cemetery (see p. 219). At the bottom of the grave were the scanty remains of a skeleton, lying on its back with the knees flexed and originally perhaps raised in the usual manner (see p. 218). Although the cover slabs appeared to be in position, and the grave undisturbed, nothing was found with the skeleton. The grave is, however, like other similar shaft-graves at Knossos, presumably Late Minoan, and perhaps early rather than late in the period. The cover slabs may well be old building blocks, and they and the ‘branch’ sign carved on one of them may therefore be considerably earlier than the grave.