h pearl drops. Mingled with the vertebrae of the neck and
back were a gold necklace, woven as a chain, with thirty-seven
pendants of green jasper, and a brooch with an amethyst intaglio of
Greek workmanship, representing the fight of a griffin and a deer.
Where the left hand had been lying, we found four rings of solid gold.
One is an engagement-ring, with an engraving in red jasper
representing two hands clasped together. The second has the name
PHILETVS engraved on the stone; the third and fourth are plain gold
bands. Proceeding further with our exploration, we discovered, close
to the right hip, a box containing toilet articles. The box was made
of thin pieces of hard wood, inlaid _alla Certosina_, with lines,
squares, circles, triangles, and diamonds, of bone, ivory, and wood of
various kinds and colors. The box, however, had been completely
disjointed by the action of the water. Inside there were two fine
combs in excellent preservation, with the teeth larger on one side
than on the other: a small mirror of polished steel, a silver box for
cosmetics, an amber hairpin, an oblong piece of soft leather, and a
few fragments of a sponge.[140] The most impressive discovery was made
after the removal of the water, and the drying of the coffin. The
woman had been buried in a shroud of fine white linen, pieces of which
were still encrusted and cemented against the bottom and sides of the
case, and she had been laid with a wreath of myrtle fastened with a
silver clasp about the forehead. The preservation of the leaves is
truly remarkable.

Who was this woman, whose sudden and unexpected reappearance among us
on the twelfth of May, 1889, created such a sensation? When did she
live? At what age did she die? What caused her death? What was her
condition in life? Was she beautiful? Why was she buried with her
doll? The careful examination of the tomb and its contents enable us
to answer all these questions satisfactorily.

Crepereia Tryphaena lived at the beginning of the third century after
Christ, during the reigns of Septimius Severus and Caracalla, as is
shown by the form of the letters and the style of the bas-reliefs
engraved on the sarcophagus. She was not noble by birth; her Greek
surname _Tryphaena_ shows that she belonged to a family of freedmen,
former servants of the noble family of the Creperei. We know nothing
about her features, except that she had a strong and fine set of
teeth. Her figure, however, seems to ha