Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/24

 FuNERfeAL Rites. mode of disposing of the body known to Homer was by cremation, Schliemann fully expected to find traces of fire in the 'several tumuli still visible on the Rhaetheum and Sigeum headlands, as well as on the many eminences which dot the plain ; the more so that throughout antiquity down to our own day, local tradition associated the '* tells" in question with the names of Ajax, of Achylles, and other Homeric heroes. To Schliemann's intense amazement, however, the sixteen tumuli which he laid open^ were without result. Vases and imple- ments, very similar to those of the two first settlements at Hissarlik, have only come from" the Kara-Gatshe-peh, or Tomb of Protesilas, on the European side of the Hellespont ; but no human remains were found therein. The mounds of the Troad have furnished Hellenic pottery in abundance ; but potsherds of undoubted antiquity were exceedingly rare. If these researches have failed of their purpose, they have yet proved that tumuli never ceased to be raised in the Trojan plain, down to the end of the Roman empire, in imitation of those which apparently belonged'^ to the heroic age ; but although their situation is in perfect accord with the Homeric information, they have kept their secret.^ If there is a mode of burial which has been established for the period under consideration, it is inhumation in its most simple form, such as we find it in the lowest stratum of Hanai* Tepeh. Similarly, we find inhumation, but this time with a tomb built and prepared to receive the dead, on the western shores of the -^gean, the scene of Achsean civilization, whether in Argolis, Peloponnesus, or Central Greece. The tombs of the princes who built the mighty walls of Tiryns are as yet unknown ; the oldest sepultures which have been exhumed in this district are the shaft-graves enclosed by a ring of slabs, which Schliemann discovered in 1876.^ As is well known, he at that time believed in partial cremation.* But the fallacy of his theory has been demonstrated both from his own narrative and the condition of the bodies, some of which » Schliemann, Ilios. Upon these tumuli, see also Virchow, Berliner Gesellschaft fiir Anthropologie, 2 ScHUCHARDT, SchliemanrCs Ausgrabungen. ^ History of Art, of front — ^Trans.
 * Schliemann gave up the cremation theory, and stated in writing his change