Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/352

 Mycen.^:. 327 so that they should not come in contact with the rubbish filling up the space above the corpses. The thin layer of clay which Schliemann noticed on the bodies, and which he thought had been spread as a kind of preservative, is more naturally ex- plained on the supposition that, however careful they may have been in fitting the covering stones and beams, a certain quantity of water charged with soil must have percolated the mass, and trickling on the corpses have formed the layer in question. For a long time no great mischief was caused by these in- filtrations ; but a day came for each of these graves, when the beams, having got rotten, gave way, and with them the superincumbent slabs and earth as well. The pieces of wood which Schliemann supposed to have served to cremate the bodies are no more than the remains of these decayed joists. The slate slabs found either erect against the walls of the pits or lying flat in them would naturally assume either position, according as the beams collapsed at one or both ends together. As to the *' natural earth," as Schliemann calls it, largely pervaded with wood and pebbles, we know now that it slipped down when the graves were filled, and that the bones of animals beheld among them came from the sacrificial altar, whereon victims, whose blood and fat had gone to nourish the dead reposing in the depths below, had been slaughtered. Dorpfeld's assumption in regard to the mode of closing of the shaft-graves at Mycenae was established as a fact by Schuchardt's discovery a little later. Among the objects pre- served in the Central Museum at Athens^ from these tombs, are four stout bronze casings, the side plates of which are not soldered but hammered together (Fig. no). Each is filled with wood in pretty good preservation, which was fastened all round by a number of strong copper nails. These casings sorely puzzled Schliemann. Boxes they could not be, for they are without lids ; besides, the pieces of wood and the nails proved that the hollow space had once been filled. Schliemann pro- posed to recognize in these timber blocks, shod with copper, to those wood, or alabaster, or ivory pillows found in Egyptian tombs ; ^ he is careful to add, however, that no such casing was ^ ScHUCHARDT, SchUemanti's Ausgrabungen,
 * head-pillows for the dead, and perhaps also for the living," akin
 * History of Art