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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 October 2013
In the course of a search for tombs in the Knossos area during the spring of 1951 I noticed some large blocks of limestone masonry with curved edges that had just been removed from a newly planted vineyard, the property of Georgios Kargatzes, near the top of the hill forming the southern end of the long ridge on the northern tip of which stands the Isopata Royal Tomb. The site is about 250 metres north-west of the Zafer Papoura cemetery of Late Minoan tombs dug by Evans in 1904, and at the bottom of the slope to the west is a high bank with important Geometric tombs (Knossos Survey 15), explored by Hogarth during the first year of the excavations at Knossos in 1900.
The curving blocks, together with the situation on the top of a hill less than half a kilometre south of the Kefala tholos tomb (Knossos Survey 8), excavated by Mr. R. W. Hutchinson in 1939, immediately raised hopes that another tholos tomb might await discovery here; and the fragments of Minoan pottery everywhere on and below the surface encouraged this belief. Dr. N. Platon, Ephor of Antiquities for Crete, visited the site and granted permission for the School to make trials to discover from what the blocks came. The Director of the School, Mr. J. M. Cook, gave his sanction for the work and asked me to undertake it. The plans were drawn by Mr. Piet de Jong, then the School's Curator at Knossos; the drawings of the vases are by Miss Susan Wood.
1 Apart from the possibly defensive character of parts of the Minoan Palace (PM i. 141; iii. 6, 262; iv. 77). But see Lawrence, A. W., JHS lxii (1942) 84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Lawrence, A. W., Greek Architecture (1957) 233.Google Scholar For a similar ground plan compare the large tower at Rhodes which Kontis would assign to the late second century B.C. (PAE 1953 (1956) 273 f., pl. i opp. 284, and 278 for the date). Cf. also the towers flanking the gates 
at Thebes, which may be late fourth-century (ADelt iii (1917) 7 f.).
3 See Guarducci, M., Inscriptiones Creticae i. 47.Google Scholar Cf. van Effenterre, H., La Crète et le monde grec (1948) 245 f.Google Scholar
4 Measurements are given in metres throughout.
5 Lawrence, loc. cit.
6 Cf. the classical fort explored by the Italians on A. Elias at Arkades south of Knossos, which has round towers similar to but smaller than ours (Ann x–xii. 32 f., pl. iii).
7 For clay pellets from Middle Minoan sanctuaries, see Petsofa, (BSA ix. 379)Google Scholar and Juktas, (PM i. 153).Google Scholar Can these belong with the beetles of which models have been found in other contemporary sanctuaries? (For Platon's discussion of these, see 
5 (1951) 136 f.)
8 BSA xlv (1950) pl. 12, D, E.
9 Ibid. 171, 175, pl. 13, Aa.
10 These will be published by Mr. J. N. Coldstream, who kindly showed me the pottery from the first well, and informed me about that from the second and from the Royal Road area.
11 From the ‘waveline’ hydriae of archaic East Greece (e.g. CVA British Museum viii, IIDp, pl. 1 (606), 4; cf. Hanfmann, G. M. A. in The Aegean and the Near East 176–82)Google Scholar, themselves dependent on Late Mycenaean prototypes, to the decoration of Hellenistic painted wares (e.g. G. Laroux, Lagynos nos. 35, 91–121).
12 Cf. Head, B. V., HN 2618Google Scholar; BMC Caria 104, nos. 18–19 ‘early 2nd cent. B.C.?’ But from ibid. p. lv it looks as if a third- rather than a second-century date is indicated. The Fitzwilliam Catalogue (iii. 187, 8491) certainly dates this type to the third and not to the second century B.C. Mme Varoucha of the National Coin Collection, Athens, who also kindly examined the coin, would assign it to the third century while not excluding the possibility that it might even go back within the borders of the fourth. But Halicarnassus' silver coinage of the fourth century (BMC Caria pl. 18, 3), and that of the Carian dynasts, have the Rhodian Apollo head, which is frontal. The only other Apollo head appears on some small gold coins of Pixodarus (340–334 B.C.; ibid. pl. 28, 9–12), where the type is distinctly earlier than that on the bronze coins. There seems also to be a stylistic difference between the eagles on the silver (ibid. pl. 18, 3) and the bronze coins; the latter have a more fiery, Hellenistic set to the legs and wings.
