Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/160

 The House and the Palace. 12 upper rooms/ The more important abodes, whose number was necessarily small, must have had a second storey. Most of the houses which have been uncovered and examined during the excavations of 1890^ belonged to a very simple type; they have no openings on any of their faces, and their foundations — the only existing portion — are built with small stones in Cyclopaean style. The chamber or chambers occupied by the family were enclosed by clay or rubble walls, probably overlaid with plaster. The apartment, some two metres above ground, was approached by an external flight of steps, in all likelihood sheltered then as now by a pent-house (Fig. 117). Below these apartments were dark chambers or cellars that served as stores ; they were entered by an inner trap and some descending steps.* Such houses were for the masses. They consisted of but one or two rooms, and must often have been made of wood ; no trace whatever of decoration has been found in them. Edifices with all the principal apartments on the ground-floor are the only type presenting any interest. Their first outline occurs in the chief building of the burnt city at Troy (PL I. a, and Fig. 48), as well as in a structure of the third settlement (Fig. 59). We also find it in a somewhat more elaborate form in a house which M. Tsoundas excavated in 1886 at Mycenae, close to the south-west wall of the acropolis (Fig. 90, e, and Fig. 114), and again in the remains of two buildings where the type has assumed its full development, the one occupies the whole area of the upper Tirynthian citadel, and the other crowns the summit of the Mycenian rock. Who doubts but that these edifices served as abodes to the tribal chiefs whose political centre and refuge in troublous times were at Tiryns and Mycenai ; they are the early representatives of the modern konak or seraglio. For conveni- ence/ sake we have given the name of palace to these buildings ; the title, if somewhat ambitious and scarcely correct, has the merit of being understood by all. We must begin our work by closely examining the ground- plan. When it happens to be as clearly indicated on the soil as we find it here, we get many an interesting data in regard to 1 See ante. Vol. I. p. 335, Figs. 114-116. 2 gee ante, Vol. I. pp. 337, 338. ^ Something akin to it must have obtained in Homer's time; for whenever mention is made in the Odyssey of a person going into the apartment where pro- visions of all sorts were kept, the word Karafiaivttv is employed.