Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/339

Rh and found a glass bowl of very elegant form, turned over the pelvis, the mouth downwards; higher up, towards the head, was another earthenware jug, and a small vase of the sort formerly called lachrymatories. We then took out the bones and the whole of the earth of the skeleton; and lifting it with great care, found a silver coin, the, which was always placed in the mouth of the dead person, to pay his passage in Charon's boat. This proved to be an unedited coin of Cnidus, with a magistrate's name. The present Archbishop of Mytilene, who has been much in Macedonia, told me^ that in that uncivilized and remote part of the Turkish empire the Greek peasants still retain the custom of placing a in the mouth of the dead. "Wishing to put an end to this relic of paganism, he explained to them that the coin they used for the purpose being a Turkish para, and being inscribed with a quotation from the Koran, was consequently quite unfit to be placed in a Christian tomb.$130$ The skull was that of a woman; the teeth were very perfect, and as remarkable for whiteness and regularity as those of the Calymniotes of this day. The grave itself was a narrow bed, just large enough to hold a body, very neatly cut in the rock.

After we had finished this tomb, we dug on and came to a second close by. Here the head was towards the west, and lay between the two thigh- bones. We therefore concluded that this body had been in ancient times shifted from its place. This skeleton appears to be that of a man about thirty years of age. We found hardly anything in the