white stone, some pieces of which I found. The site had been nearly cleared out by the native diggers; and I only came in time to get fragments of the temple, and to open up the great rubbish trench, where all the temple refuse was thrown. Very precious this rubbish was to me, layer under layer of broken vases, from the innumerable small bowls to the great craters of noble size and design; and most precious of all were the hundreds of dedications inscribed on the pottery, some of them probably the oldest examples of Greek writing known, and altogether far outnumbering all our past material for the [Illustration: 26. OLDEST IONIC DEDICATION, 660? B.C. 2: 5.] [Illustration: 27. NAUKRATITE CUP. 1: 3.] archaic alphabets. The temple of Aphrodite I found the next year, and Mr. Gardner cleared it out, and unearthed three successive buildings, one over the other. Though, perhaps, as old as that of Apollo, its inscriptions are not so primitive; but it has a charm from the tale of Athenaios about the mariners from Cyprus, who had a statuette of the goddess a span high in their boat; and how they besought it in the storm, and were soon at peace, and their boat bespread with myrtle boughs; wherefore they dedicated the statuette in the temple of Aphrodite at Naukratis, and the people of the city made myrtle wreaths for many an age after. Fine vases were found here; and great quantities of a particular kind of cup, which was apparently made on purpose for offering here. It is a bowl with a very tall upright brim, deeper than the bowl itself, and covered over with a white coat, on which delicate painting in brown is sometimes added; that these were specially made here we know from the name of Aphrodite being painted on one before the baking. The temple of Hera has been entirely swept away, and we only know of its place from some pieces of dedication on bowls found by Mr. Gardner; these lay not far from the Apollo temple, in a great enclosure, which I planned the first season. The Dioskouroi had a small temple near that of Apollo; of which only some brick pillars, and flakes of brilliant red and blue stucco, were found. But several pieces of dedicated bowls showed the nature and early age of this shrine. [Illustration: 28. EXAMPLES OF DEDICATIONS (TRANSLITERATED) TO APOLLO, APHRODITE, HERA, AND THE DIOSKOUROI. 2: 3.] The greatest and most celebrated building of Naukratis was the Panhellenion, with the central altar of the Greek community in Egypt. This was in the large enclosure around the fort, as all are agreed; but the depth of earth there prevented my reaching any remains of the altar. Herodotos expressly mentions that certain Greek towns were excluded from the