Page:Travels & discoveries in the Levant (1865) Vol. 1.djvu/362

312 To the east and S.E. of the temple I found the foundations of two large Byzantine monasteries, which had been built close to' the church. Some time in the Middle Ages they must have been destroyed; and afterwards the deposit of alluvial soil from the hills completely obliterated all traces of their walls. In these foundations, and in the soil about them, I found many fragments of Greek inscriptions which had been broken up and laid like tiles in the masonry to give it more bond. The labour' of breaking up these walls was very considerable; and, as one of my Greek workmen observed, with Homeric simplicity, the work of demolition required "a brazen man with iron hands." Some small fragments of statues of a good time were intermixed with the rubble of these walls; and in the soil of the field I found a small marble term with a Satyric head, the only object in the shape of statuary which had escaped the iconoclastic zeal of the monks of Calymnos. In the course of the excavations in this field, I dug up several fragments of vases with red figures on a black ground, of the best period of fictile art, and very superior in fabric to any which I found in the tombs. In the foundations of the monasteries were many coins, and a few bronze implements of the Byzantine period.

While I was gradually forming a collection of inscriptions from these excavations, I employed all my leisure time in copying the inscriptions inserted in the walls of the various churches in the town of Calymnos and the neighbourhood. Nearly all