meal, honey, and oil. It is well understood that this custom was connected with the return of spring. *

On Good Friday, the Dead Christ is represented in His bier in the churches; the bier, decorated with palms and flowers, and cakes shaped like animals, or dolls, birds, crabs, snakes or tortoises, are made of meal, honey, and oil, as of old. The dish called the Kolyva is also very famous in Cyprus, in connection with religious rites, and is made each Sunday by one peasant of the congregation for the rest. It consists of soaked wheat, with fruits (almonds, raisins, figs, and pomegranates) and sesame seed, to which preserves and sugar plums are added. Wheat loaves, unleavened and sugared, accompany it, and it is brought into the church with the consecrated wine; and lighted tapers are stuck in it and in the loaves; both being placed near the icon screen before the apse, on a table, and incensed and sprinkled by the priests. After the service it is eaten in the churchyard, and the more honoured guests are sprinkled with rose and orange water, poured on the head and hands. So important a part of the service is this custom, that the saying, 'No Kolyva, no service,' is common. It is prepared also in honour of anniversaries, and in memory of the dead, and recalls the bloodless sacrifices of the Paphian shrine, and the offerings shown on Egyptian pictures. Herr Richter compares the Pyanepsia and the Eiresione of ancient Athens.

The Cypriotes call the Kolyva the Sperma, which recalls the old Greek panspermia-a sweet stuff in pots-represented on ancient vases, and used for consecrations, and in fulfilment of vows. Cyprus is not peculiar in the survival of such ancient rites among the Christian population, for the same may be remarked in the Lebanon; but the isolation of the island causes the native customs to be specially immutable. The same may probably be the case among the Turkish hill populations, though little seems to have been gathered concerning them. In the middle of the bazaar at Nicosia is a sacred tree, in which the Turks keep a lighted lamp; and this very ancient

* Like other antiquaries Herr Richter quotes Isaiah xvii. 10-11, in this connection as referring to this custom, but the connection is not very close.

tree worship is common also among Syrian Moslems. The stones of an ancient building, at the Salt Lakes of Larnaka, were, according to the Turks, the tomb of the Prophet's nurse, and three of them floated over the sea-a legend common enough. Holy stones are indeed as numerous in Cyprus as in other lands.

Dr. Richter gives some further information as to the curious pairs of pierced stones, which are found in different parts of the island, which some have taken to belong to olive presses. They are much larger than the stones usually forming part of such presses, and they are intimately connected in Cyprus-as are menhirs and monoliths all over the world-with peasant superstitions. Two of these stones, near Old Paphos, have often been described; and in the same region is another one called the holy pierced stone'-recalling the Odin Stone of our own islands. Four other 'holy stones' (agia petrai) are found at Agios Photios, and another near the ruined church of Kolossi, between Kurion and Limasol, which till quite recently was venerated, ailing children being passed through' the hole in the stone, and lighted tapers and lamps, placed in niches in its sides; coins were also laid on it as offerings, and the hoard removed from time to time by the priests. Over another such stone barren women used to jump, girls broke glasses beside it, and old women lighted tapers to be cured of diseases. Lovers also have plighted troth by joining hands. through these stones, and parallels to all these customs might be drawn from the peasant rites of Ireland, Scotland, or England, indeed of all Europe and Asia, as far as India, or with the recorded rites of Greeks, Phoenicians, Arabs and others in ancient days. The holy stone, the sacred tree, the consecrated stream, and grove, and hill, meet us in all parts of the world, in mythologies described from the very earliest times, down to the present day.

One of the most curious Christian rites is that of the Judas effigy, which is punished annually. The figure is stuffed with fireworks and inflammable materials, and is put to death in the court of the church of St. Lazarus, at Larnaka, in various ways, being shot, hung, blown up, or burnt, young and old

dancing on the embers. Like the straw figures which the Vestals used to fling from the bridge of the Tiber, this custom may mark the survival of the old rite of human sacrifice, which, though put down by the Romans in the West, long survived in Syria and Arabia, and near Carthage, among the Semitic races, who were most given perhaps of all early nations to this terrible practice.

At Whitsuntide another kind of festival takes place, when Cypriotes pour water over each other, and indulge in maritime rites of boating and bathing. Herr Richter compares the St. Lucia at Naples, where in August the lazzaroni parade in procession, with music and fireworks, and decked with fruit and flowers, fling themselves and one another into the sea. The custom was also known to the early Romans, and similar marine rites occur in India. The propitiation of sea deities, during the season for sailing, was common to all sea-side peoples; and Sennacherib offered gifts to the waters of the Persian Gulf.

It is to be regretted that the attention of antiquaries is not called to the medieval antiquities of Cyprus. From the time when King Richard Lion Heart, bestowed his conquest on Guy of Lusignan, after the loss of Jerusalem, the island remained in the power of the Franks, until it was bought by the Venetians, who were in turn expelled by the Turks. Some of the finest churches and castles built by the Normans are to be found in Cyprus, and many traces of the occupation, and of the Templars and other military orders, might no doubt be described; but the student of Oriental antiquities regards such remains though the buildings are older than most of our English cathedrals-as being quite modern, and without interest. Through want of study of Byzantine and Latin archæology, however, it has resulted that the Phoenicians have at times been credited with the erection of Roman or Norman structures.

Returning however to the earlier times, a few words may be added as to Cypriote tombs and metal work, and concerning some of the plates which accompany Herr Richter's volume, and which number over two hundred in all. The history of

the tombs is no doubt the same as on the mainland, and they may be divided into three classes-Phoenician, Greek, and Roman. The Phoenicians cut a square chamber in the rock, and placed the bodies in kokim, or tunnels large enough to hold one body, which ran in from the chamber side by side, the corpse being placed with its head at the further end, and its feet towards the chamber. The koka was closed by a slab, and each chamber held from six to twelve bodies. This kind of tomb, used wherever the Phoenicians dwelt-in Malta, at Carthage, and elsewhere-continued in use in Palestine almost to the Christian era, but was gradually superseded by the Greek tomb, which held three bodies, each in a rock-cut sarcophagus at the side of the chamber, under an arcosolium or arched recess. The facades of the finer tombs of this class were ornamented with porches and rock-cut pillars, or with pediments carved on the face of the rock. The interment of pottery statuettes-the penates or teraphim of the familyappears to have been common to both classes; and tear bottles, and vases for unguents, are found in both, sometimes with more valuable remains of property. The Roman tomb was often structural and above ground, or was sometimes only a grave sunk in the rock, with a heavy covering stone like the roof of a house. The structural tombs or towers such as are found in Palestine, especially beyond Jordan-were family vaults, in which the stone coffins or sarcophagi were placed in rows-sometimes in two tiers-as members of a wealthy family died; and these sarcophagi were sometimes well carved. In Phoenicia and Cyprus pottery sarcophagi were often used, sometimes with a recumbent figure on the lid; but the most beautiful examples of sarcophagi known are those from Sidon, which belong to about the age of Alexander the Great. These came from a rock-cut chamber at the bottom of a shaft, sunk from the flat surface of the rock-an arrangement in which the Phoenicians may have copied the Egyptians. Considering that none of these tombs as a rule are inscribed, the distinction of the above classes is of archæological importance. The Greek tomb continued to be used by the Byzantine Greeks to a very late period, and at Jerusalem the inscribed tomb of the

Princess Thecla Augusta is of this class, and belongs to the 9th century A.D. The tombs of the Franks, though rock-cut, are quite different in arrangement, and often contain leaden coffins.

A fine structural tomb, which appears to be possibly of the late Greek period, was opened by Cesnola at Amathus, and seems to have been covered with earth after it was built. There was in one chamber an elaborately carved sarcophagus, representing a procession of chariots, but the figures are badly drawn, and the style suggests that it may be Greek work carved in Roman times. There can be no valid reason for assigning such a monument to the Phoenicians, who, like the Jews, were remarkable for the plainness of their sepulchres, until they came under Greek influence. A plan of a true Phoenician tomb in Cyprus has been given by Mr. Munro of the Cyprus Exploration Fund. *

It is regrettable that much of the greatest interest had been stolen from such tombs before the English occupation; and Herr Richter says the two silver pateræ in the Louvre, from Dali, belonged to a set of twelve, of which ten were melted down by the natives. One of those preserved † is 7 inches in diameter, and semi-Egyptian in the character of its figures, which represent a king conquering his enemies in the centre, and combats of heroes with lions and winged griffins on the outer circle. The other is yet more beautiful, and is nearly 10 inches across. The designs represent deities conquering monsters, and the conventional sacred Assyrian tree, with a semi-Egyptian procession of horsemen, following a king in his chariot to the chase.

Another patera from Amathus is now in the New York museum, and the character of its art is the same, recalling the Egyptian on the one side and the Babylonian on the other. The siege of a city by horsemen and bowmen, the scaling ladder raised to the wall, the cutting down of palms and fruit trees round the town, are the subjects of the outer circle; and

* Journal of Hellenic Studies, April 1890, p. 30.

+ See Perrot and Chipiez Hist. of Art in Phoenicia, II., pp. 349, 353.