DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7476#0019
RITUAL FUMIGATION OF GRAVES—NOT CREMATION 3
Charcoal in Shaft Graves due to Fumigation, not Cremation.
The question itself is essential to the main thesis here put forward,
since, if true cremation of the dead bodies had been practised on the occasion
of their deposition within the Shaft Graves, it would follow that these were
really primary interments and not merely due to the transference of bones
or of embalmed remains from elsewhere.
But a sufficient explanation of such evidence of burning as is to be
seen in the graves is supplied by a Minoan and Mycenaean practice of
which we have now repeated evidences.
It is certain that fires were lit in Minoan tombs for the purpose of
fumigation, and that ritual purification by means of a kind of resinous
incense was also practised.1 That this in certain cases has given the appearance
of partial cremation is natural enough. This practice of fumigating the
tomb, however, seems of its nature rather to have been taken over from
spacious vaults fike those of the neighbouring bee-hive tombs, and is itself
less in place in pit burials. It goes back in fact to the earliest tholos
burials of which we have any evidence in Greece, the primitive ossuaries of
Earl)- Minoan Crete, where considerable traces of charring and smoke stains
are visible on the skeleton remains. From the marks of burning that also
occur on the walls of these great vaults—many of which in their original
dimensions could compare with those of Mycenae—they must at intervals
have been the scene of what might be described as great house-warmings of
the dead.'-
It is quite possible that some such ritual fumigation may have taken
place in the great grave-pits at Mycenae, and this may account for Schlie-
mann's very emphatic statements as to the traces of fire and smoke on the
bodies and the sides of the tombs. Thus, in describing the Second Tomb,
which contained three bodies of females, he writes ::i ' The bodies were only
separated from the surface of the levelled rock by another layer of small
stones on which they were lying, and they had evidently been burned
simultaneously in the very same place where they lay. The masses of ashes
of the clothes that covered them and of the wood which had partially or
entirely consumed their flesh, as well as the colour of the lower layer of
' e. g. in Tomb 1, at lsopata near Knossos, Vaulted Tombs of Messara, pp.6, 26, &c,
lumps of resinous material were found to- and p. 129, and compare my remarks in the
gether with bits of charcoal in a clay chafing- Preface, p. xi. See, too, G. Karo, Phil.
pan (A. E., Tomb 0/ the Double Axes, 6v., Wochenschrift, 1925, nos. 24, 25 (Sonderab-
P- r3 ; Archaeologia,\-o\. lxv). druck, p. 2).
t
See especially Stephanos Xanthudides, 3 Mycenae, p. 155.
U 2
Charcoal in Shaft Graves due to Fumigation, not Cremation.
The question itself is essential to the main thesis here put forward,
since, if true cremation of the dead bodies had been practised on the occasion
of their deposition within the Shaft Graves, it would follow that these were
really primary interments and not merely due to the transference of bones
or of embalmed remains from elsewhere.
But a sufficient explanation of such evidence of burning as is to be
seen in the graves is supplied by a Minoan and Mycenaean practice of
which we have now repeated evidences.
It is certain that fires were lit in Minoan tombs for the purpose of
fumigation, and that ritual purification by means of a kind of resinous
incense was also practised.1 That this in certain cases has given the appearance
of partial cremation is natural enough. This practice of fumigating the
tomb, however, seems of its nature rather to have been taken over from
spacious vaults fike those of the neighbouring bee-hive tombs, and is itself
less in place in pit burials. It goes back in fact to the earliest tholos
burials of which we have any evidence in Greece, the primitive ossuaries of
Earl)- Minoan Crete, where considerable traces of charring and smoke stains
are visible on the skeleton remains. From the marks of burning that also
occur on the walls of these great vaults—many of which in their original
dimensions could compare with those of Mycenae—they must at intervals
have been the scene of what might be described as great house-warmings of
the dead.'-
It is quite possible that some such ritual fumigation may have taken
place in the great grave-pits at Mycenae, and this may account for Schlie-
mann's very emphatic statements as to the traces of fire and smoke on the
bodies and the sides of the tombs. Thus, in describing the Second Tomb,
which contained three bodies of females, he writes ::i ' The bodies were only
separated from the surface of the levelled rock by another layer of small
stones on which they were lying, and they had evidently been burned
simultaneously in the very same place where they lay. The masses of ashes
of the clothes that covered them and of the wood which had partially or
entirely consumed their flesh, as well as the colour of the lower layer of
' e. g. in Tomb 1, at lsopata near Knossos, Vaulted Tombs of Messara, pp.6, 26, &c,
lumps of resinous material were found to- and p. 129, and compare my remarks in the
gether with bits of charcoal in a clay chafing- Preface, p. xi. See, too, G. Karo, Phil.
pan (A. E., Tomb 0/ the Double Axes, 6v., Wochenschrift, 1925, nos. 24, 25 (Sonderab-
P- r3 ; Archaeologia,\-o\. lxv). druck, p. 2).
t
See especially Stephanos Xanthudides, 3 Mycenae, p. 155.
U 2