Tsuntas, Chrestos: The Mycenaean age: a study of the monuments and culture of pre-homeric Greece (London, 1897)

264 THE MYCENAEAN AGE

stretched at full length. But this proves nothing, for,
as we have seen, this very posture was not unusual in the
Mycenaean tombs. We do not claim that the body was
deliberately buried in the chamber — only that the contrary
cannot be proven. And, granting that one person actually
perished in the catastrophe, this is far from proving that
the people generally failed to escape.

If, however, the inhabitants had time to save themselves,
they would certainly carry away with them their more port-
able and precious effects, which would of course include
arms, tools and ornaments, while they would leave behind
them their heavier ware of clay and stone. So, in the
palaces at Tiryns and Mycenae we have found hardly any
metallic objects, obviously because everything of the kind
in reach was carried off before these palaces were burned.

In further proof that metals were very rare at Thera, is
adduced the absence of bronze nails. As the nails would
scarcely be drawn out of the timbers and carried away, it is
argued that none were used in building the Theraean houses.
But exactly the same observation would apply to Tiryns
and Mycenae as well; in neither palaces nor private houses
there have bronze nails been found at all, or but "rarely ;
whereas many such nails still remain fixed in the walls of
the Treasury of Atreus. What does this prove ? Simply
that the Mycenaean carpenter continued to join his wood-
work in the primitive fashion inherited from an age that
knew no metals or made little use of them. The ancient
Italians kept up the same practice centuries afterward.1
Much more would the Theraeans, standing as they did at a
less remove than the Mycenaeans from the Stone Age.

From the remains of Thera, then, we are not to infer
an actual scarcity of metals among the contemporary

1 Helbig, Die Italiker in der Poebene, p. 79.