Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/271

 248 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. as soon as man began to take some sort of care of those that had been dear to him, his first thought, doubtless, was to entrust them to the earth, providing for them a rock-cut chamber, or bury- ing their ashes, as in Homeric times, under a mound of sand, and overlaying it with stones to prevent the dissolving action of the rain. In order to have the right of comparing the mound of Hissarlik with Chaldaean necropoles, the former should have something to show approaching those terra-cotta vats which in the latter form, as it were, the cells of its huge funereal hives ; nothing of the sort, however, has come from the depths of the fortress-hill. No matter at what point of the mound trenches are sunk, they never fail to bring out those great jars (^idoi), which not unfrequently are over two metres in height (Fig. 57). Such vast recipients as these were clearly not fashioned for the lodgment of a pinch of ashes. In one and only one of them was there found a skull ; ^ probably the result of some accident, but of what nature it would be hard to say. Hundreds of these pithoi were broken during these excavations. I saw several in the act of breaking just as they emerged into the open from the bowels of the earth ; some were empty ; others half filled with earth, owing to the lid having moved ; some had still grain in them ; but in no instance were they lying on their side, as earthen sarcophagi are invariably found, whether in Chaldsea or in any other quarter of the globe ; and none contained human bones or ashes. At Ben Kioi, a hamlet close to Hissarlik, were uncovered sepultures for which very similar jars had been employed, evidently because of their cheapness ; but they lay horizontally, and were carefully sealed with a stone slab. The bodies they enclosed, however, had not passed through fire, but had been placed intact in these common biers.* At Hissarlik, on the other hand, pithoi are all found standing, their point below thrust into the ground ; and all are furnished with large orifices, into which both hands could dip at once and bring out of or stow provisions in them. They were silos or cellars. True, Schliemann unearthed a female and two male skeletons in the burnt city ; but they were found, not in pithoi, but among the ruins of domestic abodes. By the side of the male skulls were spears and perhaps fragments of helmets. ^ Hissarlik'Ilion^ Protokoll der Verhandlungen zivischen Dr. Schliemann und Hauptmann Boeiticher, 2 R. ViRCHOW, Alttrojaniche Graeber und Schaedely 1882.