Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/22

 PRIMITIVE GREECE: MYCENIAN ART. CHAPTER V. SEPULCHRAL ARCHITECTURE. Funereal Rites. « TiiERA and Troy are unlike Mycenae in one respect ; tombs there have not made good the silence or lacunae of tradition. No graves have been discovered at Thera, and no data have come to confirm the hypothesis of an incineration necropolis at Troy. The enormous pithoi found in such vast numbers in all the strata, have been recognized by all competent authorities to be cellars.^ As regards the vases with rude representations of the human face, which Schliemann at first identified with cinerary urns {aschenurnen), they were quite innocent of ashes (Fig. 244).^ Human remains have indeed been collected in half-a-dozen pots or so ; but nothing about them shows their mounting back to high antiquity. There are reasons which tend to prove that the sepultures in question (see Fig. 66) date from the period which succeeded the fall of Ilium, when the hill, almost desert, was used as a burial-ground by the surround- ing peasantry. The remains of the dead found a more secure resting-place in a soil composed of ruin, than in the adjoining 2 Schliemann, Bericht. VOL. II. B
 * Schliemann, Bericht; History of Art,