Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/311

 286 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. tub in question had a broad rim above and stout handles at the sides ; the inner decoration consisted of spirals dear to Mycenian art. A whole series of passages skirt the bath-room, and with many- bends wind round the megaron, leading to a small court with colonnades and adjoining chambers, which latter have no direct connection with the main court. This block is doubtless the women's dwelling, or gynaceum. As in the men s quarter, here also the principal apartment or female megaron was on the north side of the court (o). On account of its smaller dimensions, five metres sixty-four centimetres by seven metres sixty centimetres, there are no columns between the antae or in the hall around the hearth. The existence of the latter is inferred from the fact that the central portion of the chamber has no floor. The manifest simplicity in the ground-plan of the women's apartment does not extend to the decorative scheme, which to all appearance seems to have been as carefully thought out and executed as in the other parts of the building. On the floors are scraps of coloured patterns, and the walls retain traces of painting. In the other divisions of the unit, fragments of painted plaster have fallen from the walls which they formerly adorned, and are found mixed with the potsherds strewing the floor. A corridor surrounds the women's hall, where they sat together busy with needle and distaff". Parallel to the women's apartment, on the right hand of the corridor, are several apartments, and at the back of these a second passage, and other smaller rooms. They constitute the sleeping apartments of the household, and occupy the whole of the north-east corner. The larger were the bed-chambers of the masters, in the others slept attendants of either sex. The plan of this building can be fairly read on the ground ; but this is not the case with the space intervening between the northern circuit-wall of the citadel and the farther end of the two megarons. Here a maze of walls has been discovered, crossing each other in many directions ; but it is impo.ssible to reconstruct their plan. We may assume that they served as kitchens, stores, and perhaps rooms for domestic servants. There is the same uncertainty, the same confusion in respect to pieces of older walls south-east of the women's megaron. The women's quarter was connected with the outside world by a long passage debouching at the back of the great propylaeum.