DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1021#0426
THE MYCENAEAN TROY 371
The gateway is 3.20 m. wide and flanked on the left by a mighty tower.
This tower, as we know from the appearance of the scarped wall within
it, was built on after the erection of the wall. It contains a room com-
municating by a door (also of later construction) with the interior of the
fortress. The remains are not sufficient to determine whether this was
a closed gate, or whether (as at Tiryns) the real castle gate lay further
in. A second and still larger tower was discovered between this and the
eastern gate, whose approach it commanded. It is 10.90 metres broad
and advances 8.35 metres beyond the line of the wall; in the scarped
foundation it lias a lower chamber (accessible only from above) measur-
ing 6.80 by 4.50 m., and over this a tower room projecting some yards
beyond the upper wall. The third tower rises near the northeast corner
of the citadel. It measures 18 by 9 m. and encloses the great well of
Troy — a shaft (lined with strong walls 4.50 m. square) driven down to
the native rock and some 8 m. deeper still until it reached living water.
Though there were other wells within the citadel, this was undoubtedly
the most important, and the tower was built expressly to protect it.
Within these walls were laid bare sixteen buildings — one of them,
at least, shown to be a dwelling by a layer of ashes in the place where
the hearth would naturally be. Unlike the great palace-piles we have
already studied, they are usually simple separate constructions with a
strong likeness to the Mycenaean megaron or the simple Greek temple.
That is to say, they consist of one large chamber with a single anteroom
like the simpler Mycenaean houses, though their dimensions exceed those
of the great megara at Tiryns and Mycenae. "While at Tiryns there is-
but one great hall measuring 116 sq. m., we have three at Troy measur-
ing respectively 105,129, and 175 sq. m.; and that, though the stateliest
dwellings must have disappeared with the removal of the upper terrace.
The construction also is notably superior to what we find in the Argive
palaces. Instead of rubble work and crude brick we find at Troy nothing
but stone, not only in the foundations, hut in the walls which are regularly
built of dressed "blocks. Tn some instances the stones are so carefully
hewn and joined with such precision that Dr. Dbrpfeld compares the
masonry with the walls of the great beehive tombs at Mycenae and
Orchomenos. On the other hand, none of these buildings, with a single
exception, has either pilasters or columns. That exception — possibly a
temple — we have already discussed (page 306).
Whether the houses were covered in with flat or pitched roofs, we can-
not determine. For the building with the columns, at least, the indica-
tions point to the gable form; the columns would seem to have been
intended for the purpose of carrying the ridge-pole to support the rafters.1
This roof-tree must have been in sections, as the length is over 15 m.;
1 Homer's ct/xeiBovres : Iliad, xxiii. 712.
The gateway is 3.20 m. wide and flanked on the left by a mighty tower.
This tower, as we know from the appearance of the scarped wall within
it, was built on after the erection of the wall. It contains a room com-
municating by a door (also of later construction) with the interior of the
fortress. The remains are not sufficient to determine whether this was
a closed gate, or whether (as at Tiryns) the real castle gate lay further
in. A second and still larger tower was discovered between this and the
eastern gate, whose approach it commanded. It is 10.90 metres broad
and advances 8.35 metres beyond the line of the wall; in the scarped
foundation it lias a lower chamber (accessible only from above) measur-
ing 6.80 by 4.50 m., and over this a tower room projecting some yards
beyond the upper wall. The third tower rises near the northeast corner
of the citadel. It measures 18 by 9 m. and encloses the great well of
Troy — a shaft (lined with strong walls 4.50 m. square) driven down to
the native rock and some 8 m. deeper still until it reached living water.
Though there were other wells within the citadel, this was undoubtedly
the most important, and the tower was built expressly to protect it.
Within these walls were laid bare sixteen buildings — one of them,
at least, shown to be a dwelling by a layer of ashes in the place where
the hearth would naturally be. Unlike the great palace-piles we have
already studied, they are usually simple separate constructions with a
strong likeness to the Mycenaean megaron or the simple Greek temple.
That is to say, they consist of one large chamber with a single anteroom
like the simpler Mycenaean houses, though their dimensions exceed those
of the great megara at Tiryns and Mycenae. "While at Tiryns there is-
but one great hall measuring 116 sq. m., we have three at Troy measur-
ing respectively 105,129, and 175 sq. m.; and that, though the stateliest
dwellings must have disappeared with the removal of the upper terrace.
The construction also is notably superior to what we find in the Argive
palaces. Instead of rubble work and crude brick we find at Troy nothing
but stone, not only in the foundations, hut in the walls which are regularly
built of dressed "blocks. Tn some instances the stones are so carefully
hewn and joined with such precision that Dr. Dbrpfeld compares the
masonry with the walls of the great beehive tombs at Mycenae and
Orchomenos. On the other hand, none of these buildings, with a single
exception, has either pilasters or columns. That exception — possibly a
temple — we have already discussed (page 306).
Whether the houses were covered in with flat or pitched roofs, we can-
not determine. For the building with the columns, at least, the indica-
tions point to the gable form; the columns would seem to have been
intended for the purpose of carrying the ridge-pole to support the rafters.1
This roof-tree must have been in sections, as the length is over 15 m.;
1 Homer's ct/xeiBovres : Iliad, xxiii. 712.