Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/293

 240 Primitive Greece : Mvcenian Art. at the time of the inhumation. The burial practice is not mentioned in the Epos ; and no data could be adduced in favour of its existence among the nations of antiquity. This fact, coupled with the exhuming of the instances of an art which was not even suspected, fairly threw scholars off their balance. In their con- fusion they at first ascribed the shaft-graves to German or Slavish barbarous tribes. But when soon afterwards M. Otto Benndorf showed that inhumation had been practised from the earliest days down to the Roman period by most nations of the ancient world,^ the attribution in question had perforce to be abandoned, and it fell into well-merited contempt. Apart from Egypt, he went on to say, where every mummy has an artificial face, masks, whether gold or silver, bronze or terra-cotta, have been discovered in countries wide apart from each other, in Meso- potamia and Phc3enicia, in Crimea and Italy, on the Danube, in Gaul and Great Britain. From the nature of the objects found in some of the graves, It has been determined that men alone had masks. Women appear to have been lowered into the pits with uncovered faces, though decked out in diadems and other ornaments suitable to their sex. Two children, perhaps the sons of chieftains, had masks with holes for the eyes. But in their case they were no more than gold leaves, which not only covered their faces but their hands and feet as well ; as the impress of finger and toe amply testifies. The gold plates out of which the five remaining masks were made were much too thick to have been moulded over the face of the dead. The image was obtained either by beating out the form on a wooden mould, or by the processes of repousse work, which these artisans knew so well. The edges of the gold sheets were cut with the chisel. The difference of execution from one mask to another, even when discovered in the same grave, is quite amazing. This is so great that we are irresistibly led to the conclusion that they were wrought by separate hands ; and that a long period intervenes between the rudest mask and those exhibiting a freer and surer handling. If allowed, this view of the case would strengthen the hypothesis that the graves of this cemetery cover a period of perhaps one or two centuries, and that each of them was re-opened after a longer or shorter space of time. Perhaps the most primitive 1 O. Benndorf, Antike Gesichtshelme und Sepulchralmasken,