Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/66

 General Characteristics of the Domed-Tombs. 45 ivory handles had women's figures carved on them. That this pit is coeval with the main chamber, is proved by the style of these figures, for M. Tsoundas, a little later, found the handle of a mirror, which is almost a fac-simile of those from the rock-cut graves. The wealth of the furniture, like the dimensions and quality of the work, must have been widely different from one tomb to another. Thus, the diameter of the chamber of the Mycenian tomb (Fig. 88, No. 7, the door of which is reproduced in Fig. 119) is but eight metres twenty centimetres, and its dromos is a trifle over thirteen metres. The circular chamber of the Treasury of Atreus has a diameter of cir. thirteen metres, whilst its dromos reaches thirty-five metres. We know of what enormous size were the materials employed here, and how perfect was the work- manship. In the small Mycenae tomb (Fig. 88, No. 7), the doorway of which is reproduced in Fig. 119, the diameter of the circular chamber is only eight metres twenty centimetres, whilst at the Treasury of Atreus we have a diameter of fifteen metres ; here the dromos is thirty-five metres long, there it hardly exceeds seven metres. We remember the enormous dimensions of the materials used in Tomb I., whenever they were required for architectonic reasons, and what care was bestowed on the masonry ; in other graves, on the contrary (No. 6), the vault is constructed with small, ill-jointed stones, like that at Menidi. Three or four blocks, juxtaposed to form the lintel, are invariably of great size, but they have no imitators ; if tombs of good style exhibit stones cut with the utmost precision, what is seen elsewhere are no more than heavy masses of breccia left almost in the rough. There are no reasons why we should classify these tombs in chronological order, or that the worst built are necessarily the oldest. Good, excellent work, then, must rather have depended on the resources which the architect had to hand ; thus, traces of metallic facings are only seen in the two treasuries. We incline to view those specimens as show slovenly and negligent construction as inferior copies of a type brought into fashion by the great domed-buildings of Mycenae. Hence it is that, despite many difficulties resulting from insufficiency of ground-plans and drawings, as well as the dispersion of some of the fragments, we have undertaken to restore Tomb I., the so-called Treasury of Atreus, so as to enable the reader to grasp the massiveness and noble grandeur which the Mycenian architect