A still richer and more remarkable tomb is that known as the Regulini Galeassi Tomb at Cœre, the chamber of which is represented in the annexed woodcut.
It is filled, as may be seen, with vessels and furniture, principally of bronze and of the most elaborate workmanship. The patterns on these vessels are so archaic, and resemble so much some of the older ones found at Nineveh, whose dates are at least approximately known, that we may safely refer the tomb to an age not later than the tenth century B.C.[1]
We have thus around the eastern shores of the Mediterranean a group of circular sepulchral tumuli of well defined age. Some, certainly, are as old as the thirteenth century B.C., others extend downwards to, say 500 B.C. All have a podium of stone. Some are wholly of that material, but in most of them the cone is composed of earth, and all have sepulchral chambers built with stones in horizontal layers, not so megalithic as those found in our tumuli, but of a more polished and artistic form of construction.
The age, too, in which these monuments were erected was essentially the age of bronze; not only are the ornaments and furniture found in the Etruscan tombs generally of that metal, but the tombs at Mycenæ and Orchomenos were wholly lined with it. The holes into which the bronze nails were inserted still
- ↑ More particulars and illustrations of these tombs will be found in the first volume of my 'History of Architecture,' and they need not, therefore, be repeated here.
