Few English scholars have an exact knowledge of the history, the constitution, and the labours of the German Archaeological Institute, although the existing science of classical archaeology may be roughly said to be a creation of that Institute. So when, some months ago, an authoritative paper by Professor Michaelis of Strassburg, a member of the Central Direction, appeared in the Preussische Jahrbücher, supplying exactly such information on these matters as should be current among us, the Editors of this Journal thought that the opportunity thus offered was one of which advantage should be taken. Accordingly permission was obtained from Professor Michaelis and the Editors of the Jahrbücher to publish in these pages a translation of the article. The translation was undertaken by Miss Alice Gardner; and Professor Michaelis has himself made some additions to the text to fit it more completely for an English audience. [ED.]

Scientific institutions, which take their functions seriously, live a silent life. This is a result of the very nature of scientific work, which in most points of its manifold occupations cannot appeal to a wide public. Only in case of especially important discoveries, or of conspicuous performances, and on festal occasions do such institutions step out of their quiet round of work into public light, and demand the sympathy of wider circles.

The British Museum has long been in possession of a limestone stele from the Cypriot village of Salamniou, some 12 miles north-east of Kouklia (Old Paphos). It has been published—save in one particular—very adequately (B.M. Catalogue of Sculpture no. 430). It is excellently illustrated by the photograph here reproduced (for which I am indebted to the kindness of Professor Ashmole); and I can usefully comment only upon the inscription which fills somewhat chaotically the pediment above the naked archer. The Catalogue is content to reproduce for this inscription a text of Deecke (SGDI 41) over which we need waste no time whatsoever: as Deecke himself very soon saw (Bezz. Beitr. xi 317 f.), he had read it backwards, not in the characteristic direction of the fifth and fourth century Paphian signary, but from right to left.

The two fragmentary stelae here published were discovered in the course of the excavations of the British School at Kynosarges in the winters of 1895 and 1896. One had been built into a Roman wall, the other into a late Hellenic watercourse. Within the area excavated there was no trace of any tombs of the period to which these reliefs may be referred, nor was any such trace to be expected. But the masons may very well have picked them up from close at hand; originally they may have stood by the side of a neighbouring road; indeed, they may be two of the actual tombstones desecrated by the soldiers of Philip.

The first of these two stelae attaches itself to an early group of gravestones described and dated by Köhler in the Athenische Mittheilungen of 1885. The letters which remain of the inscription run …τησικ… (perhaps Σ]τησικ[λ༵ια or Κ]τησικ[λ༵ια) and end with a second σ on the other side of the break. The H is evidently the Ionic H, and the sigma has four limbs; but this need not prevent the conclusion suggested by the style, that the stele was erected some time, but not a long time, before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War.

There is a type of resurrection myth, originating in Thrace and in North Greece, the connexion of which with the sun and moon worship is at present unduly set aside in favour of the Demeter-Persephone derivation. This type is seen in the stories, so popular in the art and drama of fifth century Athens, of the wife or husband who prevails against death, for a time at least, by recovering the beloved one. The most famous examples form a triad which is frequently mentioned, the tales of Laodamia, Alcestis, and Orpheus.

In a paper published in this Journal last year (xvi. p. 280) I proposed an arrangement of the sculptures of this basis. Unfortunately I overlooked a very able paper on the same subject by Dr. Amelung, Die Basis des Praxiteles aus Mantinea, München 1895, in which certain observations of a technical kind in regard to the sculptures are made, observations which must be carefully considered before any arrangement of the basis can be regarded as established. I give a translation of these observations.

‘All three slabs are on their left end cut off by a straight line, and have there at bottom a vertical dowel-hole, to receive a dowel rising from below. Thus all on this side joined other slabs. Both the slabs with figures of Muses on their right end have similar flat surfaces. The Marsyas slab is different. At its right end the marble projected above and below so far as the mouldings are concerned, but these projecting mouldings are roughly cut off. The surface of the end between the projections is not perfectly flat, but follows a slight curve. It is evident then that this slab at its right end met neither of the Muse-slabs. Clearly the cornice and basis projected from the front of the basis to the side, and were roughly cut away when the slab was fitted into the pavement of the church.

In this section of the Report it will be my object to present as complete a statement as I can of what is known and what has been written on the subject of Paphos; and this should include a short specification of the chief points on which the late excavations either have thrown, or may be expected to throw, more light. On large and general questions, such as the origin and history of the Aphrodite worship in general, or even its history in the whole of Cyprus, I cannot enter here.

It is inevitable that the chapter must consist largely of quotations. The source of these is not far to seek. Meursius' ‘Cyprus’ in Creta, Cyprus, et Rhodos (Amsterdam, 1675, in 4to) contains a wonderfully comprehensive survey of the ancient literature of the subject. An essay by Frederick Münter, Bishop of Seeland, carries this survey a stage further, and makes some further additions to it. This essay is entitled, Der Tempel der Himmlischen Göttin zu Paphos (Copenhagen, 1824, 4to). It forms a supplement to his former tract, Religion der Karthager. It is illustrated with four plates, and supplemented by an architectural essay on the plan of the temple, from the pen of Gustav Friedrich Hetsch. These two books have assisted me to most of my quotations. I have added a few others from later books, and from my own reading.

The strong point of D. Mirhady's work (hereafter ‘M.’) lies in his interpretation of the rhetorical handbooks (technai). I agree in general with Part III, though admitting my lack of specialist knowledge in this field. To a large extent Part III confirms my observations on procedural law published in 1977 (Beweisführung, quoted supra n. 4). I approve of the opinion that, despite the use of written rather than oral testimony, the formulas, by which the evidence was used, did not change (M. after n. 62, see my recent article in: Die athenische Demokratie, ed. W. Eder [Stuttgart 1995], p. 329 f.). M. states an appealing hypothesis, that the introduction of written testimony did not so much change the procedure as provide the cause for a new handbook on rhetoric to be written, which he suggests was the common precursor to Aristotle and Anaximenes.

I derive the materials of the present paper from some memoranda which I find amongst my archaeological notes and which relate to certain explorations to which I was not a party, made so long ago as 1887. I have thought that the particulars then obtained may be deemed sufficiently interesting to deserve a record in the history of Trojan archaeological discovery.

The subject is one of the four small tumuli dotted about and near the hill of Balli-Dagh, the crest of which according to the now exploded theory of Le Chevalier (1785) was supposed to represent the Pergamos of Troy. In a memoir contributed to the Journal of the Archaeological Institute of 1864, I proved that the site in question was no other than that of the ancient city of Gergis. In the same paper I gave an account of the results of the excavation of one of the group of three tumuli on Balli-Dagh, the so-named Tomb of Priam. The other two, namely Le Chevalier's Tomb of Hector, and an unnamed hillock, were excavated respectively by Sir John Lubbock (about 1878) and Dr. Schliemann (1882) without result. The present relates to the fourth mound on the road between the villages of Bournarbashi and Arablar (as shown in the published maps), which goes by the name of Choban Tepeh (Shepherd's hillock) and the Tomb of Paris, according to Rancklin (1799).

During the excavations of Messrs. Hogarth Grenfell and Hunt for the Egypt Exploration Fund in the winter of 1895–6 on the site of Karanis (Kom Ushim) in the Fayum, a considerable number of clay-sealings were found, mainly in the cellars of the Roman houses. These were recently put in my hands for investigation and offer some interesting material.

The sealings have evidently come from various kinds of articles: in many instances the clay is too much broken for any determination of the shape which it had taken to be possible; but among the better preserved pieces are examples from the mouths of bottles, some of which have been squeezed down into the neck like a cork, others placed over a linen covering, sometimes tied down with cord: others are from the flat sides of wooden boxes, often showing the marks of cord: others again from parcels of irregular shape, in some cases seemingly wrapped in papyrus. The common points of all are that they consist of lumps of Nile-mud, and that they have been impressed, while the clay was damp, with signets, which were presumably those of the merchants who forwarded the goods upon which the sealings were placed.

Mr. W. R. Paton, who is very well acquainted with the Gulf of Cos, has been good enough to send me some impressions and copies which he recently made of inscriptions at Keramo, the site of the ancient Ceramus. So few are the documents hitherto published from this town, that I readily consented to edit these copies for the Journal, the more so because I had been led to study the history of Caria somewhat minutely in connexion with another town of this region, Iasos. It happens also that one of the very few instances where Ceramus is named, even in inscriptions, is in a decree of Ephesus, discovered by Mr. Wood and now in the British Museum, which I have recently prepared for the press. We shall have occasion to refer to it presently.

Before proceeding to examine the inscriptions, I am glad to transcribe an account of the neighbourhood of Ceramus which I begged Mr. Paton to draw up, knowing well how interesting such particulars are to less-travelled students of Greek antiquities.

When the fragments of the Nereid Monument, which had been discovered by Fellows, were brought to England they were of course examined by all the experts in classical art, Cockerell, Falkener, Watkiss Lloyd, and others. It was Cockerell who first laid down the lines which all other students have accepted as obviously correct. In a letter to Newton, or rather a note added to the letter, printed in the Classical Museum (vol. v. 1848, p. 194), he wrote regarding the peristyle which is the key of the scheme—‘that such an arrangement of the cella may be obtained from the fragments themselves and the observations made by Mr. Rohde Hawkins [the architect to the expedition] I was able to demonstrate, when by his ingenious father's introduction I had the honour, as a veteran in antiquities of this kind, to be consulted by him.’ Rohde Hawkins had many measurements and sketches taken at Xanthus before the stones were shipped for England, ‘when the backs of the slabs were sawn off for transport [and] the original joints were in some cases lost.’ He made a restoration, following Cockerell's suggestions, which is represented by a drawing at the British Museum and by a description printed in the Civil Engineer (vol. viii.). Fellows made another attempt; but while following the same general scheme, he proceeded on the assumption that he had discovered all the slabs of one of the sculptured friezes. His result is embodied in the model now in the British Museum. Although his restoration of the structure was certainly too small, he associated many of the sculptured slabs together in groups—doubtless with the assistance of Scharf, his draughtsman—in a way which is convincing.

Perhaps an apology is due to the readers of the Journal of Hellenic Studies for venturing to call their attention to so fragmentary a vase as the one depicted in the accompanying illustrations, Figs. 1, 2; the excuse must be that the design offers certain points of interest which make one regret its mutilated state.

All that are preserved are the stem and part of the interior design, cm. 5·5 × 4·8, of a r.-f. kylix which was purchased at Orvieto and purports to have been found there. The clay is fine and well worked, the black varnish of the stem of a brilliant lustre. Of the exterior design there remains only a small section of the ring indicating the ground, and one long, slender foot.