Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/30

Funereal Rites. been inverted, it would never have gained so complete a mastery over the mind.^ The furniture and arrangement of the Mycenian necropoles — taking the term in its broadest sense — are in perfect accord with prepossessions relating to a life prolonged in sepulchral gloom. Their logical outcome is the embalming process. If the Mycenians were very timid in their attempts at mummify- ing, it is because they lacked the necessary ingredients, nitre, aromatic substances, and the like. But although their means were much simpler, they neglected nothing, as far as we can see, of what seemed to secure the preservation of the body for a considerable time. We have laid stress on the mode of con- struction and closing of the shaft-graves.^ Dwarf walls were built between the body and the native rock, and in the chamber was laid a solid thick pavement (Fig. 109). The entrance to all subsequent domed- or rock-cut graves was closed either by a cumbersome unvvieldy door, or a wall of dry stones. This was demolished and rebuilt after each burial, when the passage leading to the vault was also filled up with earth ; with this difference, however, that in the bee-hive tombs of the lower city the body has been allotted more space than in the pit- graves, whether, as in the Treasury of Atreus, he has a chamber all to himself, or, as is usually the case, he rests under the cupola itself. Let the dimensions and arrangement of the tombs be what they may, the horns and bones of bulls, of sheep, goats, and fallow deer, which have been picked up among the ashes and charcoal lying above and within the graves, bear witness to the ideas and sentiments which the mystery of death suggested to the men of that period. These remains can be no other than those of victims, whose flesh was consumed on braziers that stood either in the vault or the vestibule. That shell-fish formed no inconsiderable item in the diet of the inhabitants of Argolis, is ^ This has been well grasped by Erwin Rohde, in his fine work. Psyche^ one of the most suggestive books that has appeared for a long time in Germany. The author is equally at home in modem and ancient research ; his interpretation of old texts by the light of the recent excavations is instinct^ with rare insight ; he shows how wide was the difference between the conception inferred to above, as revealed by the discoveries of Schliemann and his compeers, ahd those that were prevalent in Homer's time. ^ History of Art,