DELOS - 2009

Street of the Lions. P. Hatzidakis (ΚΑ' ΕΠΚΑ) reports discoveries made in the course of a cleaning operation to remove old excavation spoil along the Street of the Lions. A Hel manufacturing and commercial quarter was discovered on the E side of the street. This included a workshop for the manufacture of metal figurines; a painter’s workshop, with remains of paints, palettes and fragments of figures, including a well-preserved copy of the Aphrodite Ourania of Pheidias on which traces of colour are preserved; and shops selling bread and wine, including a bakery in which the oven and the base of a mill of Santorini lava were preserved. Slightly further on were found gold earrings, a medallion and necklaces dating from the E1st Ct BC, products of a local goldsmith. A rare find for this period is an engraved gold bead bearing the word ‘eirene’. Opposite, close to the palaistra, was a shop selling perfumed oil. The entire area bore evidence of the 2 catastrophic fires attested in 69 and 88 BC. On the Terrace of the Lions were found a large quantity of Hel pottery, 2 deposits of cooking vessels, as well as sherds of older Cor and Cyc vessels, and a purple-dyer’s shop.