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Excavations near Mamousia in Achaia
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 October 2013
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About four miles south of the modern railway station of Diakophto in Achaia, on a high saddle between the valleys of the rivers known to Colonel Leake as the Bokhusia and River of Kalavryta, just north of the modern village of Mamousia, are the remains of a small walled ancient city. Leake supposed these ruins to be those of the ancient Achaean city of Keryneia: later the French Scientific Commission in the Morea identified them with the town of Bura: Leake accepted this view, which prevailed generally until it was refuted by Professor Ernst Meyer of Zürich in 1938. I was not at first inclined to accept all Professor Meyer's arguments; he has, however, courteously answered my objections, and a re-examination of the evidence has convinced me that he is right and that the ruins are indeed those of Keryneia.
I visited the ruins at the end of 1950 and in the foundations of a small building above the theatre discovered an antique bronze in the form of the head and neck of a goose. This I took to the National Museum in Athens, where it was cleaned and found to be of such interest that a small joint excavation by Mr. Zapheiropoulos, Ephor of Antiquities, and myself, was agreed upon.
This excavation was carried out in May 1951. Unfortunately Mr. Zapheiropoulos was unable to be present himself, but I had the benefit of the guidance of his experienced foreman, Mr. Andreas Mitropoulos.
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- Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1953
References
1 Travels in the Morea III 182 ff.
2 Boblaye, , Recherches Géographiques sur les Ruines de la Morée 26 ff.Google ScholarLeake, , Peloponnesiaca 387.Google Scholar
3 Meyer, , Peloponnesische Wanderungen ch. 12, especially 127 ff.Google Scholar As I am now converted to Professor Meyer's opinion, I will content myself with referring the reader to his book for a fuller description of the site and an account of the literary evidence.
4 I would like to express my thanks to the Oxford Craven Committee, whose generosity enabled me to pay my share of the expenses, and to the Students and Governing Body of Christ Church, in particular to Mr. R. H. Dundas.
Of the many people who have helped me with advice and in other ways I must make particular mention of Mr. J. M. Cook, Director of the School, Mrs. S. Karouzou and Mr. Zapheiropoulos, of the Greek Archaeological Service, and Miss S. Benton, who first suggested to me the idea of a topographical survey of Achaia.
The plans are the work of Mr. G. U. S. Corbett of King's College, Cambridge. The sections of pots were drawn by Miss Audrey Petty, and I owe the photographs of the bronzes to the kindness of the authorities of the National Museum.
I would also like to express my gratitude to Mr. Alexander Theophanopoulos, of Mamousia, for his hospitality on numerous occasions.
5 The base of Pithos B was similar to that from the ‘Pyramid’ of Ligurio in the Argolid published by Scranton, , Hesperia VII 533–4 and fig. 5.Google Scholar
6 A fuller description and discussion of the finds is reserved till later.
7 See below, no. 41.
8 Homer Thompson, A., ‘Two Centuries of Hellenistic Pottery’, Hesperia III 311 ff.Google Scholar, is referred to as ‘Thompson’.
9 Vases grecs à reliefs pls. XI–XIII.
10 Corinth IV ii 49 ff.
11 E 88.
12 Scranton 529.
13 BSA XIII 155 ff., especially fig. 6 ƒ, and table at bottom of 163.
14 Ibid. 163.
15 Cf. Thompson, , ‘Terracotta lamps’ (from the Athenian Agora), Hesperia II, esp. 204.Google Scholar
16 E.g. Wiegand, and Schrader, , Priene 465 ff.Google ScholarDȩonna, , Délos XVIII 230 ff.Google Scholar and pl. LXXVI. Petrie, Flinders, Naucratis I (1884–1885), 45 and pl. XXIX.Google Scholar
17 Hesperia Supplement VII, ‘The Small Objects from the Pnyx’ 79.
18 I am particularly obliged to Dr. Emil Kunze and Mrs. Karouzou.
19 Furtwängler, , Olympia IV, no. 970, pl. LVII.Google Scholar
20 Formerly part of the Empedocles Collection. Now in the National Museum at Athens. I am indebted to Mrs. Karouzou for permission to publish it.
21 Walters, BMC Bronzes no. 882.
22 Renard-Grenson, in AA 1908, 267.Google Scholar
23 AA 1941, 127, fig. 6.
24 Edgar, Greek Bronzes in the Cairo Museum 27.746–27.748. The attachment of 27.747 resembles that of our handle, but the tendrils are more elaborately and carefully executed.
25 Furtwängler, op. cit. no. 1280: if this piece is complete, the shaft is a very short one.
26 Acta Archaeologica XV 101 ff., especially 167, 168.
27 I have been unable to obtain access to the article by Radnóti, (Dissertationes Pannonicae, Ser. II, no. 6 (1938))Google Scholar to which Gjødesen refers.
28 Zahn, in Berliner Mus. Berichte XXX (1909) 263 ff.Google Scholar (also AJA 1910, 246, fig. 4). Zahn mentions replicas in Göttingen and Alexandria.
29 E.g. Richter, Catalogue of the Greek, Etruscan and Roman Bronzes in the Metropolitan Museum, no. 444.
30 E.g. Belleten IV, pl. XLIX, fig. 43.
31 Compare also Waage, , Antioch on the Orontes IVGoogle Scholar, fig. 24, no. 11 (‘Middle Roman’).
32 Quoting Pindar, Nem. X 45–8.Google Scholar
33 Wiegand and Schrader, op. cit. 396, fig. 526 no. 7.
34 Wace and Dickins, op. cit. 165, fig. 9.
35 AM XXVI 76.
36 E.g. De Ridder, , Bronzes Antiques du Louvre nos. 1024–1027.Google ScholarBabeélon, and Blanchet, , Bronzes Antiques de la Bibliothèque Nationale nos. 1239–1241.Google Scholar Richter op. cit. no. 605 (a bronze phiale mesomphalos fluted to resemble a shell, from Cyprus).
37 Wiegand and Schrader, op. cit. 389, fig. 501.
38 Ibid. 391.
39 Athenaeus I 57. For other references see Frazer's Pausanias, note to VII 25, 5.
40 Our plates are clearly of the same class of table-ware as Thompson's E 1–21. But a comparison of the sections with Thompspn's fig. 116 shows that they are by no means exactly the same; our out-turned, slightly thickened lips with incised grooves on the inside are quite different from his E 1 (heavy lip undercut on the inside) or E 19 and E 21, whose lips are hammer-headed in section. Waage's shape 17 (Antioch on the Orontes IV i 12 and pl. II) provides a closer parallel. Waage (op. cit. 15) says that shape 17 came in at the end of the Early Hellenistic period, but that ‘the listing of shapes as Early Hellenistic does not of course imply that none of them lasted into the Late Hellenistic period’. Compare also Scranton, op. cit. 532 fig. 3c, Wiegand, and Schrader, , Priene 424 nos. 81, 82Google Scholar, also fig. 539 for bowls like our no. 11, but rather larger. Bowls of similar shape were also found by Wace and Dickins in Sparta (op. cit., especially Table III on p. 164). Their fig. 8a comes from Tomb C III and may therefore be as late as the reign of Augustus or after, though the evidence from this tomb is not conclusive.
41 But Wace and Dickins found ‘two skyphoi with white or red and incised patterns’ in Tomb C III (op. cit. Table III and fig. 10).
42 Op. cit. 456.
43 After the War of Independence against the Turks many of the hill villages in the Peloponnese were partly abandoned, for example, Peristera near the Styx.
44 VII 25, 5 ff.
45 VII 25, 7.
46 The Rev. V. E. S. Kenna and Mr. R. V. Nicholls have examined a cast of this stamp and a photograph and made many valuable suggestions about the nature of the objects depicted: the credit for making sense out of this stamp belongs to them, but if my interpretation of its religious significance is wide of the mark, the fault is entirely mine.
47 The evidence that these clay stamps were used on sacred cakes is that they were clearly used for stamping something; this something was perishable, or at all events has not survived, though the stamps have in large numbers, and there is plenty of literary evidence (a little of which is given below) for the use of cakes of various sorts at religious festivals. Of course not all the stamps are obviously religious in significance.
48 SirEvans, Arthur in JHS VII 44 ff.Google Scholar first identified them as ‘moulds for sacred cakes’. McDaniel, (AJA XXVIII 24 ff.)Google Scholar gives a useful collection of illustrations, but calls them merchants' seals.
49 For example, on the stamp published by Sir Arthur Evans (op. cit.) there are: a thunderbolt for Zeus, a trident for Poseidon, the torches of Persephone, the club of Herakles, the lyre of Apollo, a caduceus for Hermes, amphorae for the Dioskouroi, and a lot of unexplained symbols. This multiplicity of gods is one of the reasons which makes McDaniel regard these stamps as compound seals.
50 Diogenes Laertius VIII 13, quoting the Δηλίων πολιτεία of Aristotle; Iamblichus, v. Pyth. 25, 35Google Scholar; Cook, Zeus II 223 n. 3.Google Scholar Compare the offering of cakes to Zeus Hypatos outside the Erechtheum (Pausanias I 26, 5). LS 9 translates πόπανα as round cakes used in sacrifices.
51 Scholiast on Thucydides I 126; Cook op. cit. II 1138 n. 2.
52 Op. cit. II 297 fig. 189.
53 E.g. on a Attic red-figure crater of about 450 B.C. from Cumae, Cook op. cit. I, pl. XX.
54 E.g. on an Apulian amphora ibid. pl. XIX.
55 Ibid. 211 ff.
56 Pausanias VII 18, 2.