The bema of S. Sophia was indifferently called the _adyta_, _hierateion_, _thusiasterion_. The history of Michael Attaliotas also speaks of it as the “second skene, that is, the Holy of Holies.”[99] The apse proper is by Paulus mentioned apart from the space contained by the straight walls, and it is possible that this is the _kuklios_ (cyclius) of Porphyrogenitus. From the poet we gather that the priests’ stalls against the wall were plated with silver. The upper part of the curved wall is incrusted with precious marble of sombre golden tones, beneath which the surface has been disturbed and is now covered by plain gray slabs. When we recall the immense quantity of silver that Procopius says was used in the sanctuary, and remember that the iconostasis and the altar-ciborium were of silver and the Holy Table of gold, it seems likely that the plating of the silver stalls covered the whole of this narrow strip, which would not be more than six or eight feet above the top seat, the level of which we suppose is marked by the projection of the lower part of the wall. In the small oratory of the Saviour built by Basil in the palace “the whole pavement was of massive silver wrought by the hammer and enriched by niello, and the walls to the right and left were covered with great plates of silver damascened in gold and glistening with precious stones and pearls.”[100] To this space we should refer the four panels with images in the wall mentioned in the _Novgorod Chronicle_,[101] which we suppose were of embossed silver or enamel. The most eastward point of the apse was occupied by the patriarch’s throne.[102] A bishop’s chair with a canopy preserved in the cathedral church of S. George at Constantinople, said to have belonged to S. Sophia, is in any case quite late. It is of wood, ornamented with inlaid work representing the two-headed eagle, which was not adopted earlier than the tenth century. In Fig. 8 we give an outline of a miniature in the _Menologium_ (Jan. 16) of the adoration of S. Peter’s chains, which were kept in the chapel of S. Peter attached to the great church. We have here a bema fully represented with the altar, ciborium, and apsidal stalls for the clergy. We can hardly suppose that these latter could have belonged to a small dependent chapel, and hence the miniature in the symbolic way of these old drawings is probably intended as a view of the great apse.