DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1021#0427
372 THE MYCENAEAN AGE
and it would require supporting pillars for this reason, as well as because
it had the whole weight of the roof to sustain. Had the roof been a flat
one, its weight would have been distributed to a number of cross-beams
and there would not have been the same need of columns.
In addition to the primary task of establishing the character of the
sixth stratum, which was fully accomplished, Dr. Dorpfeld made trial ex-
cavations on the plateau east and south of the walls with a view to deter-
mine, first, whether there had been a prehistoric lower city, and, secondly,
to find, if possible, the burying-grounds of the prehistoric inhabitants.
The first object was, in part, attained. Sure proofs were forthcoming
that the plateau of the Roman lower town had been partly occupied in
the lifetime of the Sixth City, though no town wall of that age was
found. The second quest was less successful; for, with all the finds of
Hellenic, Roman and Byzantine graves, but two urns were found which
could be regarded as contemporaneous with the Sixth City. In one of
these, which lay at no great depth, wei'e remains of a burned body with
some trifling articles apparently belonging to a woman ; in the other,
bones which Virchow pronounced to be those of two well-developed em-
bryos.
Of the other finds there is little to say. They consist mainly of the
local monochrome pottery, vessels of Mycenaean type being relatively
rare. For while the Sixth City belongs to the same period and is in close
contact with Mycenaean culture, it follows in many respects a course of
development peculiar to itself and whose origin must be sought in local
elements of a remote antiquity. The houses resemble, indeed, the megara
of the Mycenaean age in Greece, but their true prototype is the palace of
the Second City, which has no columns, whereas the column is a conspicu-
ous feature in the Argive palaces. True, Mycenaean pottery is imported,
but the Trojan ware is exported as well — even to Greece. At Troy the
home-made ware held its own so well that in all the digging from 1890 to
1893, not more than two or three hundred fragments of the Mycenaean
type turned up, and Bruckner concludes that " by far the most of the
pottery used at Troy was always monochrome." *
"While it would seem from this that Mycenaean art exerted no great
influence on the art of Troy, the fact does not diminish the vast impor-
tance of Dr. Dorpfeld's discovery. That discovery puts a new face on
the Homeric question. To the Second City, long the sole claimant to
Homeric honors, there were two serious objections: it was too insignifi-
cant and it was obviously too old. For that insignificant and primitive
Lehmhurg, we now have the strong and stately Steinhurg, which we can
confidently assign to the very epoch of the Mycenaean bloom in Greece.
And in its rtiins we find the actual proofs of its intercourse with the
1 Troja, 1893, p. 100.
and it would require supporting pillars for this reason, as well as because
it had the whole weight of the roof to sustain. Had the roof been a flat
one, its weight would have been distributed to a number of cross-beams
and there would not have been the same need of columns.
In addition to the primary task of establishing the character of the
sixth stratum, which was fully accomplished, Dr. Dorpfeld made trial ex-
cavations on the plateau east and south of the walls with a view to deter-
mine, first, whether there had been a prehistoric lower city, and, secondly,
to find, if possible, the burying-grounds of the prehistoric inhabitants.
The first object was, in part, attained. Sure proofs were forthcoming
that the plateau of the Roman lower town had been partly occupied in
the lifetime of the Sixth City, though no town wall of that age was
found. The second quest was less successful; for, with all the finds of
Hellenic, Roman and Byzantine graves, but two urns were found which
could be regarded as contemporaneous with the Sixth City. In one of
these, which lay at no great depth, wei'e remains of a burned body with
some trifling articles apparently belonging to a woman ; in the other,
bones which Virchow pronounced to be those of two well-developed em-
bryos.
Of the other finds there is little to say. They consist mainly of the
local monochrome pottery, vessels of Mycenaean type being relatively
rare. For while the Sixth City belongs to the same period and is in close
contact with Mycenaean culture, it follows in many respects a course of
development peculiar to itself and whose origin must be sought in local
elements of a remote antiquity. The houses resemble, indeed, the megara
of the Mycenaean age in Greece, but their true prototype is the palace of
the Second City, which has no columns, whereas the column is a conspicu-
ous feature in the Argive palaces. True, Mycenaean pottery is imported,
but the Trojan ware is exported as well — even to Greece. At Troy the
home-made ware held its own so well that in all the digging from 1890 to
1893, not more than two or three hundred fragments of the Mycenaean
type turned up, and Bruckner concludes that " by far the most of the
pottery used at Troy was always monochrome." *
"While it would seem from this that Mycenaean art exerted no great
influence on the art of Troy, the fact does not diminish the vast impor-
tance of Dr. Dorpfeld's discovery. That discovery puts a new face on
the Homeric question. To the Second City, long the sole claimant to
Homeric honors, there were two serious objections: it was too insignifi-
cant and it was obviously too old. For that insignificant and primitive
Lehmhurg, we now have the strong and stately Steinhurg, which we can
confidently assign to the very epoch of the Mycenaean bloom in Greece.
And in its rtiins we find the actual proofs of its intercourse with the
1 Troja, 1893, p. 100.