Some of the buildings are eternally burning, with flames which glows a strange blackish-green hue. Alongside the humanoids are several books and other writings written in a language that has not yet been translated. Their anatomy is very different from that of a human's, with massive sharp teeth, a tall lanky figure, and what appears to be growths coming from the skull vaguely resembling deer antlers. Within the remains of the town are the skeletal corpses of unidentified humanoid Entities. The town is currently inhabited by a small group of wanderers, although they are not a fully established colony. The town contains rudimentary architecture and houses, which somewhat resembles the building style of the Medieval ages. In an area deep within Level 8 is what appears to be an abandoned town, build within a massive open area carved into the walls of the cave. There have been rumors of undying spiders crawling through the Levels, but this has not been confirmed as of now.Ĭolonies and Outposts Unidentified Abandoned Town While this Level is comparatively easy to escape from, some end up staying here to mine for the crystals.
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These crystals are most commonly found in the pools, which are hard as diamonds, and seem to be highly pressurized salt. Crystal growths are extremely common here (mostly sharp pink ones like depicted in the attached photograph. The lower sections of the Level are far more wide open, and easier to travel through.
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Low deep winds and the dripping of water echo through the caves. The areas closest to the 'top' of the Level resemble normal caves, with long narrow passageways and occasional Firesalt deposits in the walls, illuminating the Level with a low red light. Inscriptions from this period are relatively rare, and experts said this makes it all the more striking that the newly discovered ephebic list belongs to the same year and cohort as the inscription at the Ashmolean.Level 8's cave system is massive, and is assumed to go on for several thousand miles, both in length and depth. The Arts and Humanities Research Council-sponsored Attic Inscriptions in UK Collections is a four-year project, led by Cardiff University with the University of Durham and the University of Manchester.ĭr Margaret Maitland, principal curator, Ancient Mediterranean, at NMS, said: “To have the team come and visit and confirm it was something that had never been published before was really thrilling.”
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The inscription is published this week on the website Experts said the discovery represents an important new source of information about elite Athenian society in the mid-first century AD, a period that was crucial for Athens as it adapted to its place under the Roman Empire. “It’s the ancient equivalent of a graduate school yearbook, although this is one which is created by a number of individuals who wanted to feel like they had come together as friends.”
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It is not known where the list was displayed but it is thought it could have been put up somewhere such as the gymnasium where the young men trained.ĭr Liddel said: “It was made to create a sense of camaraderie and comradeship among this group of people who had been through a rigorous training programme together and felt like they were part of a cohort. It's the ancient equivalent of a graduate school year book “It is a really interesting inscription, partly because it’s new but also because it gives us new names and a bit of insight into the sort of access or accessibility of this institution which is often associated with elite citizens.” “It turned out to be a list of the cadets for one particular year during the period 41-54 AD, the reign of Claudius, and it gives us new names, names we’d never come across before in ancient Greek, and it also gives us among the earliest evidence for non-citizens taking part in the ephebate in this period. When they first read of a reference to it, experts thought it might be a copy of a similar list in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, but realised that was not the case when they saw it.ĭr Peter Liddel, professor of Greek history and epigraphy at the University of Manchester, who led on the discovery, said: “Because of lockdown we were not able to travel to the museum until July 2021, and on seeing it we realised that this was not a copy of an already known inscription but it was a completely unique new discovery which had been in the storerooms of the NMS for a very long time, since the 1880s, and it listed a group of young men who called themselves co-ephebes or co-cadets and friends. The stone is inscribed with a list of names (National Museums Scotland/PA)