Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/168

 Thera and its Prehistoric Ruins. 147 even had the inhabitants been provided with a sufficient number of boats to enable them to rush from the scene of the disaster, there must have been, as in Campania, many a wavering indi- vidual, many a loiterer, who perished because unable to make up his mind in time. From the fact that these dwellings have been found in a disordered condition, it has been conjectured that the eruption occurred immediately after the harvest, before time was had to stow the grain away. In the tombs of Egypt and other countries have been found vases and food, but their arrangement leaves scarcely any doubt as to their funereal purpose. Nothing of the sort is seen here. Pottery and cereals are scattered everywhere ; on the floor of chambers, in courtyards, and above all in small apartments which seem to have been places for the storage of provisions. Besides, whoever heard of tombs with wood ceilings, and windows almost pierced on the ground plane, doomed beforehand to rapid destruction, and largely exposed to prying eyes ? Has not every nation, with due regard for its graves, always striven to conceal the body in a dwelling which carried with it the air of having been erected for all ages ; either in a rocky side, or behind blind massive walls, vaults within vhich no indiscreet eye should penetrate to disturb the dead ? It is self-evident therefore that the erection exhumed by M. Fouqu6 was a human abode, built before the emission of the pumice. The bays in the main apartments open on the hill. This would be a remarkable situation had the structure, as at first surmised, been raised long after the eruption on a ledge thrown out towards the foot of a lofty tufaceous wall, which had fallen from above, between the bluff and the sea ; surely in that case we should find the windows towards the latter, and not so close to the rocky ridge as to have no outlook on this side. Then, too, we may assume that the pumice stones which fill the chambers, and under whose weight the roof gave in, were not rolled there by the waters, since their edges are as sharp as on the day of their fall. This also applies to the pumice heaped up in the immediate vicinity of the building, where the stratifications are mainly horizontal, or at most present a slight incline answering to the slope of the ground whereon are deposited the volcanic ejections. These stratifications, which the eye can follow along the cliff in a long unbroken line above the construction, show that the pumice mass was formed by