Page:Troja by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/326

sparingly intermixed with rude thoroughly-baked red ware, such as was found on Fulu Dagh, and with monochrome glazed red or black Hellenic pottery of the Macedonian time. As all the excavations I made were on the perfectly flat plateau of the city, I am altogether at a loss to explain the insignificant accumulation of débris, for Cebrené is mentioned by Xenophon,^[1] Scylax,^[2] Stephanus Byzantinus;^[3] and others, and, as the site is so well fortified by nature, there can hardly be a doubt that it was inhabited from a remote prehistoric period. But all we know of its history is, that Antigonus forced the inhabitants of Cebrené to settle in Alexandria Troas. Strabo^[4] mentions the Thracian Cebrenes, by whom the city of Cebrené may have been founded. In two of the holes I dug I struck rock-hewn tombs, containing human skeletons, which had suffered so much from moisture that they crumbled away when brought in contact with the air. In one of the tombs there was nothing else; the other contained a pair of silver earrings, an iron tripod, a bronze or copper bowl, and some utensils of the same metal, which were too much broken for their form or use to be recognized. The date of these sepulchres I do not venture to fix even approximately.

I found in my excavations a number of bronze coins and a silver coin of Cebrené, having on one side a ram's head with the legend K E, on the other a head of Apollo. I bought of the villagers on the hill many other Cebrenian bronze coins, as well as two bronze coins of Scepsis. The latter have on one side a palm-tree with the legend ΣK, or a Dionysus standing on a panther and holding a bunch of grapes in his hand; on the other side a hippocampus or a Roman emperor's head. The usual size of the bronze coins of Cebrené is 0,009 mm., but there are a vast number which are only 0,005 mm. in diameter, less than a sixth part of the diameter of a penny. If we are to judge of the