Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/337

 312 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. which he singled out for himself.^ Then, too, hunters after anti- quities owe their most brilliant discoveries to a kind of intuition, or **open sesame," in which their competitors are deficient; they are quick to detect some point of coincidence between this or that historical or geographical piece of information, between certain physical features, certain traces of a distant past. To cite but an example : a flash of genius alone could have made Mariette guess that, buried in the depths of sandy mounds, lay the Sphinx avenue leading to the Serapaeum. From the western point of the citadel wall, to within a few steps of the Lions Gate, extends a circular space whose uneven surface was due to masses of ruin and silt, where soundings revealed the presence >9' ^in. Fig. ioo. — Vertical and horizontal slabs of circle. The measurement is in English feet and inches. of broken pottery of the most rudimentary description (Fig. 90, c), along with limestone slabs, either plain or decorated with curvilinear, animal, and human forms ; ^ some were lying on the ground, but most were still erect, the lower portion thrust in between stones which served to keep them in position. With much ado they succeeded in removing them, so as to allow no interruption with the work in hand. Judging from their tabular shape, their being dressed quite fair, and the nature of ^ ScHLiEMANN, MycencT, 2 Schliemann mentions water-conduits, built with uncemented stones, and a dozen reservoirs or so, which were said to stand at the entrance of the circle. Stcffen's map bears no trace of either cisterns or channels. Belger justly remarks that at this part Schliemann's account betrays the hesitation he felt in regard to the nature of the buildings he had just uncovered. What he took for a duct were paving-slabs of the passage leading to the circle, whilst his cisterns were no more than the space intervening between the two rows of upright slabs.