But, perhaps, the most interesting matter in connection with the island of Rhodes is the history of the researches recently conducted there by Messrs. Biliotti and Salzmann on the site of Camirus, one of the three chief original cities of that island, the combining of which together, about B.C. 408, resulted in the creation of the capital city, Rhodes. It was natural, therefore, to expect that any antiquities discovered at these places would be earlier than this date. The ground all round is now covered by a pine forest, in the clearing of which the old necropolis was discovered by a bullock falling into a tomb. In 1853, Mr. Newton obtained many _terra-cotta_ vases of a very archaic type, and other fictile vases from the peasants’ houses of the adjacent village of Kalaverda. Some of the _pinakes_ or platters, with geometrical patterns painted in brown on a pale ground, resembled the oldest objects of this class from the tombs of Athens and Melos; the sites, too, of Mycenæ and Tiryns are also strewn with similar fragments.[112] Other amphoræ and oinochoæ, with black figures on a red ground, or red figures on a black, were also met with.[113] Footnote 112: As has been well shown in Dr. Schliemann’s recent researches. Footnote 113: Travels in the Levant, i. p. 235. Shortly after this, a _firman_ was obtained from Constantinople, empowering Messrs. Biliotti and Salzmann to make a thorough investigation into this ancient site, the result of which has been the opening of at least 275 tombs. From these tombs many precious works of art in gold, bronze, and glass, with figures in terra-cotta, and calcareous stones, together with vases and alabaster jars, have been procured, some of them probably as old as B.C. 650. The whole may be grouped under the heads: (1) Asiatico-Phœnician, or Archaic Greek; (2) Greek of the best and latest periods; (3) Egyptian, or imitations of Egyptian. The first is the most important, as comprehending most of the gold and silver ornaments, with a few terra-cottas. It has been supposed that the makers of these objects were Phœnicians of Tyre and Sidon; but, as many of the specimens betray a marked Assyrian character and influence, they are more probably copies, at second hand, of works originally Assyrian.