Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/59

38 Primitive Greece : Mycenian Art. the two chambers were put. As already remarked, M. Tsoundas noticed that when a grave was full to overflowing, old bones were gathered into heaps in the corners of the room. Buildings as important and spacious as the two treasuries must have been planned to receive all the members of a princely house ; the constructor was bound to foresee and provide for future con- tingencies. Accordingly, the remains of the chief were deposited in the circular chamber which had been prepared for him, along with such members of his family as died soon after him. The side apartment, on the other hand, served as an ossuary, where in the course of time the remains of the earliest occupiers were transferred, to clear the main hall. The smallness of the vault favours somewhat the hypothesis in question, for it would have been difficult to find in it room for all the nearest relations of the chief along with himself; on the other hand, there is nothing to prevent libations having been made here, as in the pit-graves, some metres above the bodies. The question which has been raised in regard to these two buildings cannot be decided, in the absence of the deposits which they once contained. We have stated at full length, in another chapter, why domed -tombs were fated to be plundered at an early date. They attracted the attention much more than graves of the same era excavated in the flanks of a rocky hill, for which no great effort was required to completely obliterate the gap they formed on the mountain-side. Built in the plain, they were a conspicuous feature in the landscape ; the smooth, regular slopes of the mound could not possibly be mistaken for natural undulations or broken ground ; they seemed to be placed there for the very purpose of inviting cupidity; at the Heraeum for instance, and Tomb II. at Mycenee before the excavations. For although they were protected from intrusion by a thick covering of imported earth, and had their passage similarly blocked up, the ** conical head"^ of the dome, as Pausanias has it, was suffered almost in every instance to protrude above the surface. As if this were not enough, now and again the cupola carried a sign (<rejita) which served the twofold purpose of proclaiming to the people the site where its kings lay, and of exciting their reverence. In the rubbish filling the circular chamber at the Heraeum, Stamakis found two slabs, with dowel-holes for the reception of clamps, ^ Pausanias.