name from a manuscript as Etera. He says that he saw “inscriptions, old churches, tombs, and ruins.” The ruins “extend over the hills and slopes which overlook two small bays.” He then proceeds to enumerate most of the ruins as they were found in the archaeological site: the city wall to the south, the two akropoleis, the buildings between them, the churches. He found and copied inscriptions. The monks of Toplou Monastery cued him as to where they were. These monks had exposed them in superficial digging and then had covered them up again. Italian mission For four years, 1884–1887, the Italian government financed a mission to central and eastern Crete under the direction of Domenico Comparetti, then minister of public instruction. He did not go himself, but sent a then student, Federico Halbherr, to take command. They were both epigraphists. The Gortyn code had been turning up piecemeal at Gortyn. A number of other agencies were on-site. At first Halbherr worked with them to recover and restore the code, completing the task in 1884. He then carried the mission to eastern Crete, hiking over the terrain, looking for inscriptions. He reported in 1891: “These researches extended from the province of Rettimo … as far as the furthermost eastern part of the island, exploring as it were foot by foot the soil of about two-thirds of Crete, and carrying out the first real systematic excavations.” Toplou Monastery owned northeastern Crete. Halbherr discovered that the monks were removing inscriptions from Erimoupolis. Dissatisfied, he sought and received permission to examine them. He had read Spratt, who had also removed inscriptions from there and had turned them over to the Fitzwilliam Museum of Cambridge. Halbherr happened to arrive at Toplou just as a fresh batch of inscriptions from Erimoupolis was being sorted. Of those known to be from that location and those that had been left in place he found five mentioning Itanos and the Itanoi: “Only in 1884 a large number of epigraphical monuments collected and copied by me, partly in situ, partly in the monastery of Toplu, whither they had been recently carried, have enabled the site of the ancient city of Itanos to be definitively identified with the ruins of Erimopolis, …. Admiral Spratt, … was not lucky enough to find a single one bearing the name of the ancient city; whereas at the present day … we possess five….”