Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/505

 478 Primitive Greece: Mvcenian Art. core remained standing (Fig. 84). These cubical masses are found both at Mycena; and Tiryns.' The predilection of the Mycenian workman for a wood cuirass at the heads of his walls extended to door-cases. Three or four timbers could be more easily put up than stone blocks of great size, which moreover had to be dressed fair. Now and again, in the case of a citadel gate or the entrance to a royal tomb, they did not recoil before the operation. That no such trouble was taken with regard to the bays and sills of the habitation, is proved from the fact that stone jambs have not been traced in the doorways of the Tirynthian palace, that the walls near them are calcined, and the carbonized fragments collected here can be nothing else but the remains of timbered posts.- At Mycena;, the thresholds of the vestibule and the adjoining hall still preserve rectangular cavities, into which the door-posts fitted.' If from settled habits and other causes, wood still held so large a place in the construction of these palaces, we should wrong the workman in attributing his reluctance to attack the stone to any embarrassment he may have felt in successfully shaping it any way he pleased. Besides the pick and cognate tools, he had a sharp-pointed hammer, a chisel, ' Dorpfeld counted twenty-six stone bases in the Tirynthian [talace; I'soundas likewise noticed them in the ])alace of Mycena; ; here, however, they are sandstone, and the holes seen on them are all square. =* SCHLiEMAXN, Tiryns. ^ Tsoundas, Ilpawiic™.