DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9188#0071
Architecture
53
have preceded them, but Minoan and Mycenaean art, at any
rate in regard to architecture, was rather the last word of
a decaying civilization than the first herald of the glorious art
of Greece in the sixth and fifth centuries b.c. We are still
far back in remote ages, remote that is so far as Greek art is
concerned, anywhere between 2000 and 1000 b.c. or even
earlier,1 back in the Minoan age of Crete with its rudimentary
architecture, and its relatively high excellence in the crafts,
and in the age of Mycenae and Tiryns, the age that produced
the Lion Gate at Mycenae, and that strange half-barbaric
work, if I may be pardoned the term, the Treasury of Atreus.
It is worth pausing to consider these archaic buildings, not
so much to show a relationship to later work (which scarcely
existed), as to call attention to the fact that the Minoan and
Mycenaean builders were moving unconsciously in a direction
that would never have led to the column and lintel architecture
of the seventh and sixth centuries b.c. It might have led to
some form of dome construction, it could never have led to
the Doric of the Sicilian temples. No stronger evidence of
the genius of the Dorian invaders could be produced than
that, with this unpromising art in possession, they were yet
able in the course of three or four centuries to create Greek
architecture. The design of the Lion Gate is a strange jumble
of ill-adjusted motives. It is set in a wall of great stones
roughly squared and laid dry. Two monolith jambs support
a huge lintel, cambered in the middle like the tie-beams of
our sixteenth-century roofs. Above the lintel the courses are
gathered over, leaving between their lower faces and the top
1 Sir Arthur Evans has drawn up an ingenious chronology of Early Minoan
(2800-2200 b. a), Middle Minoan (2200-1700 b. c), and Late Minoan (1700-
1200 b. c). The evidence is almost entirely that of pottery discovered on
the site. The whole question of the relations of Minoan to Mycenaean art,
and of this archaic art to the earlier civilizations of Egypt and Chaldea, is
very obscure and uncertain.
e 2
53
have preceded them, but Minoan and Mycenaean art, at any
rate in regard to architecture, was rather the last word of
a decaying civilization than the first herald of the glorious art
of Greece in the sixth and fifth centuries b.c. We are still
far back in remote ages, remote that is so far as Greek art is
concerned, anywhere between 2000 and 1000 b.c. or even
earlier,1 back in the Minoan age of Crete with its rudimentary
architecture, and its relatively high excellence in the crafts,
and in the age of Mycenae and Tiryns, the age that produced
the Lion Gate at Mycenae, and that strange half-barbaric
work, if I may be pardoned the term, the Treasury of Atreus.
It is worth pausing to consider these archaic buildings, not
so much to show a relationship to later work (which scarcely
existed), as to call attention to the fact that the Minoan and
Mycenaean builders were moving unconsciously in a direction
that would never have led to the column and lintel architecture
of the seventh and sixth centuries b.c. It might have led to
some form of dome construction, it could never have led to
the Doric of the Sicilian temples. No stronger evidence of
the genius of the Dorian invaders could be produced than
that, with this unpromising art in possession, they were yet
able in the course of three or four centuries to create Greek
architecture. The design of the Lion Gate is a strange jumble
of ill-adjusted motives. It is set in a wall of great stones
roughly squared and laid dry. Two monolith jambs support
a huge lintel, cambered in the middle like the tie-beams of
our sixteenth-century roofs. Above the lintel the courses are
gathered over, leaving between their lower faces and the top
1 Sir Arthur Evans has drawn up an ingenious chronology of Early Minoan
(2800-2200 b. a), Middle Minoan (2200-1700 b. c), and Late Minoan (1700-
1200 b. c). The evidence is almost entirely that of pottery discovered on
the site. The whole question of the relations of Minoan to Mycenaean art,
and of this archaic art to the earlier civilizations of Egypt and Chaldea, is
very obscure and uncertain.
e 2