George T. Dennis

Two Archaic Greek Sarcophagi.

These sarcophagi were brought to light by accident in the summer of 1882, by peasants digging in the fields. Hearing of the discovery I made an attempt to purchase them, but before my negotiations were completed, the Ottoman authorities stepped in and appropriated the monuments, which are now lying in a porch of the Governor Generals palace, much injured by the rough handling they have received in their transport to Smyrna. These sarcophagi possess a peculiar interest as presenting to us the only specimens of local pictorial art of an early Greek period as yet discovered on the coast of Asia Minor. It is a singular fact that no figured vases, so far as I can learn, have been disinterred on this coast, save a few of small size and insignificant character found in the Troad, and two amphorae of a late period discovered by Mr. Newton in the necropolis of Halicarnassus ( Discoveries in the Levant , vol. ii. p. 63). The scarcity of such vases seems to suggest that these exceptions had probably been imported, as we know that Greek vases were articles of commerce in ancient times (Plin. H. N. xxxv. 46); but these sarcophagi from their size, weight, and material cannot have been other than of local manufacture and adornment, and are the only monuments which afford us a knowledge of Ionian pictorial art at a period before Herodotus wrote or Pindar sung, and, it may be, before Anacreon fled from the neighbouring city of Teos to sing the praises of love and wine at the court of Polycrates.