Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/516

Secondary Forms. 489 thick wall against which they leant, as well as by the masonry above the lintel. The arrangement shown about the main entrances testifies to greater technical skill ; the intimate union between posts and pilasters assured the solidity of the whole system. In these several entrances the mode of closing was ruled by ' their greater or minor degree of importance. Of the forty doors in the Tirynthian palace, some appear to have been shut by a simple curtain ; seven were double folded, the two propyl^a and the door which from the vestibule leads to the men's megaron, for example. All the others were single. The presence of only one pivot-hole at the side of the entrance opening into the .1)6. — Uronie pivot. women's reception-room shows that in spite of its breadth — one metre sixty centimetres — the door was single {Fig. 194). Although narrower, the same arrangement, as might have been foreseen, occurs in the next entrance {Fig. 195). The main difference between the two doors resides in the way in which the wing is applied. Whilst in the door of the women's megaron the wing from without strikes against the posts, in the next the upright was provided with a special rebate, against which the wing leant when the door was shut. When open, the door leant against the inner side of the jamb. It turned on a bronze pivot, which was found in its socket, and is represented on plan {Fig. 194). The pivot was a hollow cylinder, of 118 millimetres diameter inside, and closed below into a ball-like shape. It formed, therefore, a sheath for the strong wooden