Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/313

 288 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. is to say, a siliceous conglomerate, has given thresholds and the massive jambs of the gateway leading to the upper citadel ; its hardness and the fact that it is less easily cut than limestone accounts for its having been seldom employed. It is the same with sandstone, which only appears once, in the first step mount- ing to the men's apartment. As a rule, the stones with which the walls are made are set in clay mortar, mixed with straw or hay. The interstices left by the irregular blocks are filled in with smaller units. It is owing to the colossal size of the blocks and the thickness of these fortification walls that they have lasted until our day, and are likely to endure centuries longer. This does not apply to the inner and external walls of the domestic dwellings, whose insignificant mass could not.be relied on to support them. Here stability was assured and damp kept out by a foundation of unsquared stones, rising to the height of one metre above the ground. Above this kind of plinth the wall was continued with crude brick mixed with straw, which has crumbled into dust. If these bricks have been found in a fragmental condition in the chambers, and entire in the women's megaron (o) and the courtyard north-east of court n, it is because during the conflagration which destroyed Tiryns they became red, and were baked so hard as to have been taken for bricks that had passed through the kiln. Closer scrutiny, and above all comparison with very similar finds at Mycenae, Troy, and elsewhere, has dispelled the error. It was discovered that the squares are imperfectly and irregularly baked ; the portions next to the woodwork are almost vitrified, whilst the rest of the mass is of a pale pink, and presents a feeble cohesion. Here and there the clay mortar with which the stones are bonded is found calcined, as I satisfied myself on the spot.^ Hence the conclusion becomes irresistible that the bricks were already set up in the wall when overtaken by the fire. To account for the clay having been so deeply modified, we must assume that wood held a large place in the building. The massive roof framing which carried the ceilings of the two vast megarons was made of it ; so too were the door-cases and ^ Some were incredulous as to the composition of these walls, and the traces of fire upon the bricks. At the request of M. Nicolaidis, a new analysis was made before a committee appointed for the purpose, when Dorpfeld's view was unani- mously recognized as correct (Athenische Mitiheilungen^ 1891).