Читать книгу Looking for Aphrodite - David Price Williams - Страница 25

The dirt road became narrower and more rutted as we climbed the slopes, with jagged peaks lacerating a sky blushing pink in the slowly setting sun. We clattered ever westwards – I was sure of that now with the sun going down in front of us – until we reached the cobbled street of a little village crowded with stone houses which I learned was Yazιköy, later to become my very own village. The driver stopped the jeep outside a miniscule café-style building and glasses of tea were handed out again and a couple of cigarettes smoked before we lurched onwards. It was getting dark by this time and the shadows of trees crowded in along what had now become a very rough single track. The jeep vibrated its slow, winding way into the dusk. I was speculating where on earth we were heading when abruptly in the headlights a classical polygonal marble wall appeared and fell behind, then another and another, with pieces of fallen, carved stonework lying about in the undergrowth. This, I later learned, was the necropolis of Knidos and my spirits rose that we were arriving at an archaeological focus of some description out here in the wilderness. The driver pointed in front and shouted ‘Kinidos’ over the noise and way in the distance I could make out the dark reflection of the sea and some small points of light. A few bumpy minutes later we arrived in a cloud of dust and I found a group of men seated watching a film being projected onto the back of what was to be my drawing office. No-one looked at us. They were too intent on the film. But in no time a couple of Brits arrived out of the gloaming and I was welcomed with open arms. My Knidian experience was about to begin.

✳ ✳ ✳ ✳

There were few if any permanent buildings at Knidos when I arrived apart from the dig house, our drawing office and the police post. The lower orders of our own Expedition staff, of which I of course was one, were billeted under canvas, three or four to a tent, pitched on the open space of the isthmus half way between the island and the mainland. We had little if any mod cons. But the workers had even less, and spent each night

17