All this splendid pottery denotes a high civilisation, such as the men who built the Cyclopean city walls can hardly have reached. Hence, all this beautiful pottery was either imported, or (and this appears more likely) it has been manufactured by the nation which succeeded the Cyclopean wall-builders, and to these latter must belong all the hand-made monochromatic pottery which I found in Tiryns on and near the virgin soil. The colour of this pottery is that of the clay itself, which on the vast majority of the smaller vases has been wrought by hand-polishing to a lustrous surface; nearly all the black vases have been hand-polished both on the inside and outside, and are very pretty. All the larger jars are bulky, as well as many of the other large vases; and many of them have on each side a very short handle placed horizontally, with a broad hole, which may have been used for suspension by a string. In this stratum I found neither cows nor female idols. Of this hand-made pottery I have been fortunate enough to take out, besides hundreds of fragments, two entire vases, of which I give the drawings annexed (Nos. 13 and 14).[61] [Illustration: No. 13. Terra-Cotta Vessel, from Tiryns. (3 M.) About half-size.] [Illustration: No. 14. Terra-Cotta Vessel, from Tiryns. (3½ M.) Size 2:3 about.] With regard to the chronology of the Tirynthian pottery, if the date of about 1400-1200 B.C., generally attributed to the most ancient Attic vases, were correct, we might perhaps assign a like date to the establishment in Tiryns of the second nation; for to the same period must be ascribed the bird-headed idol described above,[62] and a quantity of fragments of very ancient painted vases with similar patterns. But for several reasons, which will hereafter be explained, I am unable to attribute these vases to a remoter age than from 1000 to 800 B.C., and I cannot therefore admit the settlement of the second nation at Tiryns to have taken place at an earlier epoch. It will probably for ever remain mere guesswork to what date belongs the stratum of hand-made pottery on and near the virgin soil; but if we suppose that the most ancient examples of this pottery are older, by 800 years, than the most ancient painted vases of the second nation, and that, consequently, the building of the Cyclopean walls of Tiryns was from 1800 to 1600 B.C., I think we shall be very near the right date. I have vainly endeavoured to recognise an affinity between the primitive Tirynthian pottery and that of any one of the four prehistoric cities of Troy. After mature consideration, I find that there is no resemblance whatever, except in the goblets whose form is also found in the oldest prehistoric city on Mount Hissarlik.