It is obviously difficult to find any simple, clear, consistent interpretation of the extraordinary inhumation disclosed to us by these researches. Such an interpretation may be found hereafter: it does not seem to be forthcoming at the present moment. But the way towards it can only be opened up by a painstaking exhibition of the facts, and by instituting a cautious comparison between them and any indications, drawn from other times or places, which may appear to throw light upon them. For my own part, having approached the question with no predisposition to believe, I need not scruple to say I am brought or driven by the evidence to certain conclusions; and also led on to certain conjectures suggested by those conclusions. The first conclusion is that we cannot refer the five entombments in the Agora at Mycenæ to any period within the historic age. The second is that they are entombments of great, and almost certainly in part of royal, personages. The third, that they bear indisputable marks of having been effected, not normally throughout, but in connection with circumstances, which impressed upon them an irregular and unusual character. The conjecture is, that these may very well be the tombs of Agamemnon and his company. It is supported in part by a number of presumptions, but in great part also by the difficulty, not to say the impossibility, of offering any other suggestion which could be deemed so much as colourable. The principal facts which we have to notice appear to be as follows:-- 1. The situation chosen for the interments. 2. The numbers of persons simultaneously interred. 3. The dimensions and character of the graves. 4. The partial application of fire to the remains. 5. The use of masks, and likewise of metallic plates, to adorn or shelter them, or both. 6. The copious deposit both of characteristic and of valuable objects in conjunction with the bodies.