The Extramural Sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone at Cyrene, Libya, Final Reports, Volume VIII. Donald O. White

A squatter wall (W30) crosses its upper surface. In other words, any further revelation of its character must await future excavation.

       North Wall (W31)

      Roughly 4.80 m. of the north face of W31 is exposed before its line is masked over by the later terracing, S25. Its 2.40 m. high elevation consists of five standing courses of limestone headers and stretchers which, at least in the case of several blocks, appear to have been salvaged from earlier buildings. This is especially evident in the case of the third course from the top, made up of headers dressed with diagonal slashes otherwise unrepresented by the remainder of the wall’s elevation; one block preserves an L-shaped cutting in its lower righthand corner that seems to have been left over from some earlier function. The upper two courses measure 0.40 m. in height; the third course from the top is 0.55 m. high, and the fourth and the fifth are 0.50 and 0.45 m. high, respectively. Block lengths from upper to lower course average 0.72, 1.15, 0.70, 1.20, and 0.90 m. The total thickness of W31, which is here doubling as a retaining wall for the earth beneath S10’s mosaic floor, is a respectable 1.00 m.

      The height-to-length ratios of the wall’s two stretcher courses work out to 1:2.88 and 1:2.18.

      Only the upper surface of the eastern 4.5 m. of W31’s top course is visible where the wall runs to join with Wall T16 to form S10’s northeast corner. Here the inner face appears to have been moved 0.35 to 0.40 m. south, but because of a lack of excavation across most of the eastern two-thirds of the chamber’s interior, it is impossible to determine whether the shift has been caused by earthquake activity or, in fact, represents an intentional dogleg in the line of the wall.

       East Wall (T16)

      What is taken to be S10’s eastern limit consists of a single course of stretchers, ca. 0.55 m. wide, 0.45 m. high, and 1.25 m. long (in the case of its single complete example), giving a height-to-length ratio of 1:2.8 that is comparable with Wall W31. As already mentioned, this segment of wall was laid obliquely over the earlier line of Wall T8 without benefit of dowels or cement. In its present position, T16 fails to form a proper right angle with any of S10’s other three walls and, as a result, has the appearance of having been pushed out of alignment by earthquake action.

       Mosaic Floor (Fig. 11, Pl. 11)

      The floor’s remains are restricted entirely to the western end of S10 and are broken off in a ragged line that provides little hope for the future discovery of intact sections under the unexcavated fill farther east.¹⁰⁹ The surviving section measures ca. 3.80 m. north-south by 2.60 m. east-west. Its tesserae are set in a plaster grout ca. 0.10 m. thick covering an earth fill mixed with scattered masonry blocks and broken roof tiles that must be associated with whatever construction originally lay north of Wall W29. There are an average of only 35 tesserae per 10 sq. cm., with traces of some repair in slightly larger, coarser units along the south side of the central panel.¹¹⁰

      The central rectangular panel, 2.25 m. wide from north to south, consists of a 0.04 m. wide outer black band enclosing a 0.22 m. wide black frame decorated with white beads and reels; a lozenge design occupies the bead-and-reed band’s southwest corner. The central panel is occupied by a trellis with stepped diamond centers in red and black. Thin black vine tendrils cover the outer field west and north of the central panel.

Figure 11. S10 mosaic floor.

      For most of the preserved length of its south side, the mosaic was laid close to the face of the late squatter Wall W29b but nowhere extended under its blocks; it moreover shows no evidence of overlapping the portico’s stylobate course, W29a. On the other hand, a limited test conducted during the 1979 study season brought to light the surprising fact that the stylobate block supporting the west half of the second column on the west of S10’s portico was trimmed back nearly 0.10 m. The effect of this apparently was to allow the mosaic’s grout bedding (but not, so far as one can tell, an actual extension of its tesserae) to continue under a section of the column base. This could mean that either the preparation of the chamber’s floor preceded the erection of the colonnade or the colonnade had been removed before the mosaic was laid. The likelihood is that a weakness was discovered in the stylobate block prior to the erection of the colonnade, requiring a section to be cut away and then filled, but more excavation would have to be carried out in order to determine with complete certainty the actual sequence.

      Context and Date of the S10 Portico Chamber

      Stratified evidence for the chamber’s construction is sparse. The fill south of the colonnade against the outer face of Wall W29a (Fig. 12) consists of mainly (C15/D15, 1) St. 2 earthquake debris. St. 3 is a homogeneous dry, brownish-gray soil buildup, largely empty of sherds and other dateable material. It appears to have been cut into by the builders of W29a to make way for their colonnade’s stylobate, which therefore should theoretically postdate anything found in St. 3. Apart from a reported 2nd/3rd century A.D. corrugated ware sherd, which probably was mixed into C15/D15, 1, 3 from the St. 2 earthquake layer immediately overriding it, the latest dateable find is a small marble head of a child, Kane no. 99, attributed by Kane to the Hellenistic-Roman period. Wall W29, which supports W29a, already has been assigned a tentative late Hellenistic date, with the possibility of its being raised to early Imperial.

Plate 11. S10 mosaic floor from the east.

      Commentary