Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/76

 Description and Restoration of Tomh 1. 5;^ yet another detail in the aspect of the fagade to which atten- tion should be directed ; namely, the small holes on the surface of the lintel, designed to receive nails (PI. IV. x), and those bored in the upper corner of the second fascia enframing the bay (PI. IV. y). They are very thickly set on the lintel, where they describe five elliptical segments ; though more sparingly distributed around the portal, they served the same end. Let us enter the circular chamber. The work-frame of the door, the siomion of Greek archaeologists, is five metres ten centimetres deep. The shape and dimensions of the doorway, the weight of the two stone beams, the masonry, and the processes employed in the construction of these cupolas, whose finest example is found here, have previously been dealt with.^ It only remains to point out such peculiarities in the inner Fig. 261. — Tomb I. Top of cupola. building, from which a plausible hypothesis may be formed as to its primordial decoration, of which we are bold enough to present a restoration. Its lowest diameter and its height are generally computed each at fifteen metres.'- Thiersch, however, reckons its diameter at cir. fourteen metres twenty centimetres, and thirteen metres sixty centimetres in height or thereabouts. None of the dome's images, in section, which have hitherto been published, are strictly accurate (PI. III.). The cupola does not form a broken arc, as might be supposed from the reduced drawings which have often been made of it. It describes a continuous, or rather three distinct curves, closed at the top by a single slab. The dome has always been examined in semi- darkness ; that is why the real character of this part of the edifice has escaped so attentive an observer as Thiersch himself (Fig. 261). Figs. 262 and 263 are from drawings made purposely for us by Dr. Dorpfeld ; they very distinctly show how the ^ See ante, Vol. I. p. 480. '^ See ante, p. 35.