Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/513

 486 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. greatly resembles the simplest timbered cases which we have conjecturally attributed to the earliest doorways of the habitation (Fig. 189). The choice of so awkward a shape as this cannot be explained on the basis of the Cyclopaean construction in which it appears ; we are inclined rather to view it as an abiding reminiscence of a traditional type. It is a long cry between this rudimentary, thick-set door to the well-proportioned and richly-decorated entrance which gives access to the two great Mycenian domed-tombs, and which may be considered as one of the most distinctive works of Mycenian art (Pis. IV.-VL). Its main features are the following : the portal is flanked by semi-columns, the case is slightly grooved and rounded ofif at the angles, and a stone or bronze beam is placed over it in pent-house fashion. These several points, em- bedded pillars, double fasciae, pent-house and rounded-off corners, are never seen again in the later doorways of classical archi- tecture. But their tale is complete in a small terra-cotta model from Cyprus, wherein we recognized a copy of a temple of the Phoenician Ashtoreth.^ The same arrangement is seen on a monolith door-frame which De Saulcy picked up in Palestine ; where, too, the moulding stands out in bold relief, and the angle formed by the junction between door-post and lintel has been masked by a floweret.* Similarly, the maabed at Amrith, the sole existing example of the Semitic temple in Phoenicia, is provided with a wide, projecting pent-house.^ Are we to infer, from the manifest analogies observable between what may be termed the Phoenician entrance and that to the domed-building, that the Mycenian architect turned for his inspirations to the Phoenician models surrounding him, whether in the shrines erected by Sidonian mariners to Melkarth and Ashtoreth, all over the iEgean, or terra-cotta and metal reproduc- 1 History of Art, The depth of the doon^'ay is indicated by a couple of lines drawn from right to left above the lintel. The notion they convey is that of a door-frame akin to that which surrounds the portal to the Treasury of Atreus. If the modeller did not carry the lines down the sides, it must have been for economical reasons. ^ History of Art, ^ The remark is due to M. Daux, who has studied the remains of a great number of buildings of the Carthaginian epoch in Africa. '* Phoenician architects," he writes, "show a marked tendency to rounded angles" {Rechercfies sur Vorigiru ct sur V emplacement des emporia pheniciens^ &^c.