Part 9 (2/2)

Coins were issued in Cyprus from the sixth century onward; first in silver; later (in the fourth century B.C.) occasionally in gold, and from the fourth century commonly in copper. A Ptolemaic coinage succeeded in the third century that of the local rulers; the Roman coinage, with inscriptions sometimes in Greek, sometimes in Latin, lasts from Augustus to the beginning of the third century. Coins of the Byzantine Emperors and of the Lusignan Kings are common.

[ILl.u.s.tRATION VII: BILINGUAL (GREEK AND CYPRIOTE) DEDICATION TO DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE FROM CURIUM.]

CHAPTER V

CENTRAL AND NORTH SYRIA

[See the diagrams of flint implements, Ill.u.s.tration II; of pottery and weapons, &c., VIII & IX; of alphabets, X & XI.]

The following notes are to be accepted as only a rough and imperfect guide, since no part of Syria, north of Palestine, has been widely or minutely explored, and the archaeology of the earliest period, in Central Syria, for example, is almost unknown.

The periods into which the archaeological history of Syria should be divided are roughly, as follows:

I. Neolithic and Chalcolithic Age, to about 2000 B.C.

II. Bronze Age or Early Hitt.i.te, to about 1100 B.C.

III. Iron Age or Late Hitt.i.te, to about 550 B.C.

IV. Persian Period, to about 330 B.C.

V. h.e.l.lenistic Period, to about 100 B.C.

VI. Roman Period.

VII. Byzantine Period.

I. Neolithic.

No purely Neolithic sites yet known, but lowest strata of remains at Sakjegozu and Sinjerli, on the Carchemish citadel, and in certain kilns at Yunus near by, and also pot-burials among house remains are of this Age. (But see Chapter VIII, Mesopotamia, whose Neolithic period is similar.)

Stone implements: as in Greece, including obsidian of very clear texture, probably of inner Asiatic, not Aegean production. Bone needles and other implements.

Pottery.

Four varieties have been observed: (1) buff ground with simple linear decoration applied direct on the gritty body-clay in l.u.s.treless pigments, black, chocolate-brown, or red, according to the firing; (2) greenish-buff face, hand-polished, with polychrome varnish decoration of vand.y.k.es and other geometric motives; (3) monochrome, black to grey, not burnished, but sometimes decorated with incised linear patterns; (4) plain red or buff (e.g. large urns in which Neolithic burials were found on the Carchemish citadel). All pottery hand-made.

Figurines: rude clay and stone figurines are likely to occur, but have as yet been found very rarely in Neolithic strata.

Copper implements: traces observed at Carchemish: to be looked for.

II. Bronze Age (Early Hitt.i.te).

(a) Early period to about 1500 B.C.

Cist-graves made of rough stone slabs, near crude brick houses.

Conjunction of such slabs with bricks would be an indication of an early Bronze Age site. Rare pot-burials survive.

Implements.

Spear-heads of long tapering form rounded sharply at the base which has long tang (IX, Fig. 5): poker-like b.u.t.ts (IX, Fig. 2): knives with curved tangs: 'toggle' pins: all bronze (but a silver toggle-pin has been found) (IX, Figs. 1,8).

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