Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/478

 The Islands of the ^Egean. 451 horizontal roof and floor are formed by stouter slabs. The lid has been weighted by huge stones to prevent displacement, and overlaid with a thin stratum of earth ; their situation is indicated by broken pottery strewn round about. In plan, these graves form a square of cir. one metre at the side, and half a metre deep. The bones collected here have almost dwindled to nothing, but there are no traces of either ashes or fire. Owing to the length of these vaults, or rather the want of it, the dead cannot have lain full length, but must have had a recumbent or sitting posture, the upper part of the body bent forward. The funereal furniture is found partly in the pit itself^ partly above the lid. The dimensions and arrangement of the sepul- tures situated at Oliaros and Melos, a division of the cemetery of Philacopi, are practically identical. Another section in this same necropolis shows small vaults excavated in masses of per- pendicular rocks. They have no entrance passage ; the hollow of the chamber, about a cubic metre, is entered by a rectangular door. Some of the graves are somewhat larger, and one is actually found with two chambers of nearly two metres in height. It was rifled, they say, during the War of Independence, and relieved of its bronze weapons, its gold and painted vases, with representations of human figures interspersed with birds. Was this a chieftain's tomb, and a fellow, in time, of the Mycenian shaft-graves ? Who shall say ? What admits of no doubt is that almost all the graves of these islands are characterized by rude small vaults, a species of rectangular shaft dug in the ground, or a small chamber cut in the rock, and that all have yielded very similar objects ; consisting, now of very common pottery, recalling the earthenware of Hissarlik, now of pieces upon which more care has been bestowed, some of which are decorated in Mycenian style. Next come stone vases without number, with horizontal or vertical holes for suspension, silver ornaments, idols of marble, arrow and dagger heads, but no swords. The objects themselves evince considerable advance from one tomb to another. One and all are the relics of an industry whose separate pieces offer enough variety to enable us to afiirm that its season of activity covered a long series of years, yet sufficiently alike to admit of our attributing them to a single people. In the Cyclades, as in Cyprus, we guess a civilization as yet very rudimentary, whose beginnings are inti-