The piece that I am publishing was first noticed by the late Dr. Ioannis Papadimitriou, then Ephor of Antiquities for the Argolid, early in 1948. I measured and photographed it in situ before he removed it to the Nauplia Museum, and a few days later I drew it as assembled on the floor of the Museum. For various reasons, I had to do this rather hastily; and I give the fragments the numbers used by Papadimitriou.

Fourteen years ago I had just drawn out the block and was ready to publish it when, hearing that Papadimitriou was in London for a few days, I was persuaded to send him my work for corrections and comments. I never saw it again. Some years later, not long before his death, he published the block in Πρακτικά for 1955, illustrating it with no drawings and with only one photograph (Plate 79a), of one face only. At that time the block, remaining in the Nauplia Museum, was already set in plaster, as it still was in March 1964. The place at Mycenae where it turned up, in the prodomos of the Megaron, is now covered with the unattractive chippings of an artificial floor in gypsum. As the block was of some interest and beauty, I set down what I learnt about about it soon after its discovery.