Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/471

 444 * Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. Argolic and Attic graves. The results of the excavations carried on at lalysos by A. Biliotti, the British consul at Rhodes, between 1868 and 1870, have naturally found their way to the British Museum. The objects at the time of their discovery were deemed unclassable, and accordingly relegated to the base- ment. The significance of these pieces was not understood until the opening of the shaft -graves at Mycenae. Sir C. Newton, with his usual sagacity, at once perceived the resemblance between the two sets of funereal furniture.^ By his care the lalysos finds were immediately set in a case where the student can examine them. His views regarding them were accepted and enlarged upon by the vast majority of archaeologists interested in the Mycenian question.' But until the publication of MM. Furt- wangler's and Loeschke's great work on Mycenian pottery (1886), in which is reproduced whatever is of special interest in the Biliotti collection, the public had very few pieces for comparison, Lenormant and Dumont having contented themselves with the figuration of two or three specimens. No less than eleven plates of Furtwangler's and Loeschke's atlas are filled with the vases in question ; whilst stone implements and weapons, glass, whorls, swords, arrow-heads of bronze, and engraved stones make up five supplementary plates. These are accompanied with explanatory notes from Biliotti's journal ; we thus get for the first time precise information of the situation and arrangement of the graves.^ Unfortunately, Biliotti made no plan or section of the lalysos vaults ; hence our notion upon these points are more or less conjectural. The citadel of lalysos was planted on the narrow plateau crowning a height with precipitous sides, now called Phileremos. referred to, reproduced from the Edinburgh Review^ entitled, ** Dr. Schliemann's Discoveries at Mycenae." At a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries in 1877, he also pointed out the import of the discoveries in question. [The pottery we are considering was from the first placed in the case which it still occupies. It was known to be old from the gems found with it, which Sir Charles had acquired for the Museum. Although Mr. Murray, then assistant- keeper, showed them to everybody who visited the Museum, especially Germans, not one cared to express an opinion about these strange pieces. — Trans.] - It will be enough to recall the names of Milchofer, Helbig, F. I^enormant, and Dumont. The latter devotes the whole of the third chapter of his great work, Ckramiques de la Grece propre^ to lalysos. ^ Mykenische Vasen,
 * In Essays on Art and Arclucology will be found a reprint of the article just