Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/154

The House and the Palace. 119 the whole Mycenian period, other parts of Hellas were provided with fortified enclosures and princely habitations, whose points of difference from the typical specimens resided in less massive and lofty ramparts, and a simpler decorative scheme. The House and the Palace, The houses that fill our views of Tiryns and Mycenee are for the most part covered with flat roofs. Our arrangement, however, by no means implies that primitive Greece was unac- quainted with the use of a double or fourfold inclined covering. A sloping roof is the natural shelter of a clay or a timbered hut, which latter we find in hilly districts where wood is plentiful. Between the roof and the joisted ceiling of the room there is left an empty space which is utilized as granary for stowing away winter forage, firewood, and family provisions. The Swiss cottage shows us the type in its full-grown stage ; but it is represented in every country where favourable conditions unite to bring it into existence. Hence we cannot doubt but that certain Greek cantons had ridged roofs like those of Magna- Phrygia and Lycia, where climatic conditions, and consequently building materials, were practically the same as those of Hellas.^ If these rustic dwellings disappeared along with the wood-cutters and shepherds who built them, their remembrance was preserved in Greece and elsewhere in more abiding structures. Thus, the chamber at Spata, and that of several rock-cut tombs at Mycenae, is provided with a double sloped roof like that of a house.^ The only moulding in either locality is a groove sunk towards the top of the wall, at the point of junction between it and the inclined plane of the roof, as well as at the sides of the chamber, where it recalls the angle made by the meeting of the oblique joists and the vertical plane of the hut. We recognize this primitive hovel in a terra-cotta ossuary which forms one of a class yielded by certain tombs in Crete (Fig. 296).^ The roof ^ On the wooden huts of Phrygia, see History of Art; on the stones of Lycia, ibid. The Phrygian graves in the vicinity of Midas' Tomb are all copies in stone of wooden houses with double sloping roof. ^ gee ante, Vol. I. p. 364, Fig. 126. ^ G. Orsi, Urne funebri Cretesi, See ante. Vol. I. p. 437.