Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/167

 T46 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. chambers (i) (c, d), six metres by two metres fifty centimetres ; (2) the next section is subdivided by a partition-wall into two smaller chambers (e, f). On clearing these apartments, they traced the circuit- wall, which on the north formed the outer wall of the building, eight metres long. The only means of egress was on the south-west, where the rampart sweeps round and suddenly breaks off to within eighteen metres of the north corner. At the north-east angle of this fortification is a circular block of masonry (g), raised one metre above the ground. The chambers having been cleared of the accumulated earth, they next dug a deep ditch in front of the north face of the erection and the wall stretching out beyond it, when they discovered that the founda- tions rested directly on the old lava, which the builder had easily reached through the thin bed of vegetable earth which here formed the soil, ere pumice began to accumulate over it. The pumice stratum spread everywhere ; it filled the chambers, and was heaped up high outside the building. On removing it from the massive circuit-wall, they uncovered a skylight in each of the chambers c, d, e, and a larger window about one yard from the floor.^ A number of huge vases, differently shaped and orna- mented, were discovered full of grain ; the largest of these are* one hundred litres in capacity. Barley and other cereals were also found piled up in the middle of the chambers or along the foot of the partition-walls. Then too, lying about, were troughs, grindstones, weights of lava, and other lithic instruments, besides a saw, also of stone, and an arrow-head of obsidian (tail-piece, chap, ii.) ; whilst from chamber a, near the entrance to recess b, comes a human skeleton, which did not impress the excavators as having been laid reverently by friendly hands in its last abode, but that, as at Pompeii, it had been crushed with the falling in of the roof. Given the circumstances of the case, we cannot be surprised to find a skeleton among the ruins of a village buried under masses of eruptive matter. Had the inhabitants timely warning of the impending danger, and was the vast majority able to make good its escape ? Who shall say ? An answer to this question could only be given by sounding the depths of the abyss which separates Thera from Therasia, or at any rate by raising the thick sheet of ashes and lava which overlays such portions of the island as have been spared by the volcano. Yet, ^ These windows are sixty centimetres by fifty centimetres.