The village of Arkalokhóri in central Crete lies a short distance to the south-west of Lyttos. To the east of the village is an eminence to which the ruined church on the top has given the name of Prophetes Elias. Below the summit on the western slope is a cave, the mouth of which is shewn in Fig. 1. Many years ago the peasants found bronze objects and potsherds at this point, and began an excavation of the cave in the hope of finding buried treasure. On entering the cave they found more and more pieces of bronze, described as blades of knives and lances, as well as some beads, and in order to get more quickly to the bottom of the cave, where they supposed that the treasure would be, they broke up the greater part of it with dynamite. They say that they collected eighteen okes of bronze objects, for the most part rusted blades, and sold them in Candia as old metal. No report of this had ever reached me, but last year a peasant from Arkalokhóri brought some blades to the Candia Museum from this cave, and thus led me to go and make an examination of the place.

The mouth of the cave was then choked with large boulders which had fallen down from above; these I broke up and rolled down the slope. Beneath and amongst them I immediately began to find blades of swords and knives and double-axes, all of bronze with the exception of a small axe which was of silver. The area thus cleared after rolling away the boulders in front of the present cave, is about 4 metres in length, and in width from 1 to 2 metres, and seems to have been the floor of the original cave.