Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/517

 490 Primitive Greece : Mvcenian Art. pivot of the door, to which it was secured by three stout nails. The rectangular cut in the cylinder was designed to receive the lower frame of the door, which was mortised into the side beam used as the turning-post (Fig. 196). Where the doors had wooden sills, the arrangement was probably the same.^ The excavations at Tiryns and Mycenae give us no inform- ation as regards the mode of closing domestic abodes : no keys have been found. But in the sills and jambs of many of these doorways are cavities clearly intended to receive the vertical and horizontal bars that served to bolt the doors inside.^ Column and Anta, There has been found nothing at Troy — base, shaft, or capital — to remind us of a column. To judge from the prominent place held by wood, whether unsquared or wrought, in the build- ing, we may safely infer that all the supports were timber. If these have left no mark, it is because stone bases had not as yet come into existence. At Thera, on the other hand, M. Fouque discovered a very rudimentary stone base in situ in the principal room of one of the houses,^ and elsewhere two well-cut fragmental pillars of prismatic lava, square in section, still two metres in height.* Hence it would appear that in some respects the art of building was more advanced in the island than at Troy. Unfortunately, the excavations at Thera, unlike those carried on at Mycenae and Tiryns, have uncovered nothing but private dwellings. In the royal edifices of the latter, the column has assumed sufficient importance to have led the architect to invest it with proportions and shapes calculated to enhance the effect and fairness of the units. Stone columns appear in the faqade of two Mycenian domed-graves, but only as semi-columns, albeit ^ Remains of a very similar bronze hinge were discovered in one of the doors of the Mycenian palace. A bronze, horn-shaped hinge, which greatly resembles the Tirynthian example, was found at Balawat, in Assyria {History of Art), The diiference consists in its having no square cut for the lodgment of the lower part of the door. This was differently fixed to the pivot. 2 ScHLiEMANN, Ttryns ; Thiersch, Die Tholos des Atreus zu Myketue. ^ History of Art. * FouQu£, Santorin,