Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/25

Primitivp: Gkekce : Mvcknian Art. had apparently been partially embalmed, to preserve them until they were buried out of sight, as well as by the grave furniture extant at the time of discovery.^ Interment is made even more manifest in sepultures be- longing to this same epoch, but which are regarded as later in time than the pit-graves on the Mycenian acropolis : we refer to the domed-tombs scattered over the land stretching from Laconia to Thessaly, and the rock-cut graves designed for persons of lower estate, which have been more especially studied in Argolis. Among those who have excavated the necropoles under consideration, Stamakis is the only one who noticed — as he thought — traces of partial cremation apparently carried out in the vault or pit itself, after the fashion imagined by Schliemann. He was present at the opening of the pit-graves at Mycenae, and his testimony relative to one of them fully bears out Schliemann's own statement ; whilst on the existing portion of the old pavement of the tomb near the Heraeum he picked up ashes, along with human bones which showed marks of having passed through fire. He concluded from the fact that as fire has left traces on the stones of the pavement, and smoke has blackened the lower face of the lintel, the body had been consumed on the spot.- Finally, MM. Kouma- noudis and Kastorchis, in their report drawn up from notes left by the late Stamakis, mention having found calcined bones in the principal tomb, which was filled with undisturbed earth. But whether the said relics are human or animal bones is a secret which they have kept to themselves. To the above conjecture we would oppose a prejudicial observation. We know by recent experience that intense heat of some hours' duration is required to consume the fleshy portion of the body. If the ancients succeeded but imperfectly by means of a great pyre set up in the open, which was fanned by the passing breeze, how much less could the operation be carried out in an unventilated chamber, or at the bottom of a pit ? At most they might perhaps have roasted the body ; but to have reduced it to the condition of a mere bag of bones had been ^ Schliemann, Mycence, See also Helbig, Das Homerische Epos^ and Tsoundas (EffjfiepiQ, 1 888). The state of most of the bones collected in these graves proves that they were never thoroughly mummified. - Athenische Mitiheiiungen, 1878.