The only other example extant of walls which had once this kind of decoration is presented by the Treasury of Minyas in Orchomenus, which is built of beautiful white marble, but shows in other respects the very greatest resemblance to the Treasury of Atreus. It is constructed on the same principle, and appears to be of the same age and to have been erected for the same purpose. Each stone of this treasury likewise shows two or more holes, with frequent remnants of the bronze nails which once retained the brazen plates that decorated the inner walls of the edifice.[137] Thus it is certain that in a remote antiquity, before sculpture or painting came into use for wall decoration, polished metal plates were employed to give both splendour and dignity to the houses of the rich.
In the Treasury of Atreus, the exterior of the door-lintel is decorated with two parallel mouldings, which are also carried down the jambs of the door. Above the lintel numerous holes can be discerned, to which bronze ornaments must have been attached. There are more such holes in the flat wall above the entrance, and all testify to the elaborate exterior ornamentation of the edifice. Above the entrance is an equilateral triangular niche, each side of which measures 10 feet. It is constructed like the triangular niche over the Lions' Gate; namely, the courses of masonry are shaped to the form of the niche, and it can have had no other purpose than to bear up the weight which would otherwise have pressed on the lintel.
On the outside, before each door-post, there stood formerly a semi-column, having a base and capital with fantastical sculptures in the Persepolitan style. In the middle of the doorway can be seen the holes for the bolts and hinges of the doors, and in the same line are a number of round holes, 2 inches in diameter and half an inch deep; in these are two small holes for bronze nails, of which fragments still exist, to fasten on ornaments of a circular form.
To the right of the great circular hall, a doorway, 9½ ft. high and 4 ft. 7 in. broad, leads to a second dark chamber, which is nearly square, being 27 feet long and broad, and 19 feet high. It is entirely cut out in the rock. Over the door is a triangular niche, which is likewise intended to bear up the weight of the masonry from the lintel. In this chamber is an accumulation of rubbish, from 3½ to 4 feet deep, mostly consisting of the detritus of bats' dung. By means of the two trenches, which I dug three years ago in this chamber, I found in the centre a circular depression, in the form of a large wash-bowl, 1 ft. 9 in. deep, and 3 ft. 4 in. in diameter. Near this I found some large wrought calcareous stones, which seem to indicate that some monument once existed in this chamber, for otherwise their presence is inexplicable.
This Treasury is the most important and the only complete monument of prehistoric times in Greece, and the interest attached to it is so much the greater, as tradition assigns it to Atreus, the father of Agamemnon, king of men.
PURPOSE OF THE TREASURY.
Dodwell,[138] in speaking of this treasury and the smaller ones, says:—"There is moreover complete evidence that these structures were called θησαυροί, and belong to ages prior to the origin of that architecture of which the Doric temple in Europe and the Ionic in Asia are the crowning invention. As this latter architecture advanced, temples served for treasuries, or, when buildings were erected solely for treasuries, they had the ordinary forms of that later style of architecture, as we learn from the description which Pausanias has given of the treasuries at Olympia and Delphi.[139] Nevertheless subterranean buildings, similar in construction to the treasuries of the heroic ages, continued to serve for containing oil or corn or water, and when attached to private houses might often be employed for depositing property of any kind. These are very numerous in Greece, but in no instance are they entered at the side. The largest I know of is in the Acropolis of Pharsala. But the strongest reason for designating the constructions at Mycenæ as treasuries is the evidence of Pausanias,[140] unless it be denied that he intended those buildings by the words ὑπόγαια οἰκοδομήματα, which can hardly be alleged, as the ruins agree too well with his words to render such a supposition reasonable. Seventeen hundred years ago, therefore, those buildings were believed to be the Treasuries of Atreus and his sons. Nothing had then occurred to interfere with the course of the mythology or history of Greece, as transmitted to the Greeks by their ancestors: and although on many occasions the reports received by Pausanias from the ἐξηγηταί may have been inventions of a date comparatively recent, no such suspicion can well attach to the principal traditions of Mycenæ, which accord with all that has reached us concerning that city in poetry or prose. The extant edifice was the largest of the treasuries, and bears proofs of having been a costly building, highly decorated at the entrance and lined within with metallic plates. To Atreus himself, therefore, the most opulent and powerful of the kings of the πολύχρυσος Μυκήνη, and not to either of his sons, this greatest of extant treasuries may, with a high degree of probability, be attributed. Agamemnon dissipated the wealth of Atreus in the expedition to Asia, passed the greater part of his reign abroad, and returned home poor and powerless, leaving Μυκῆναι to be, after his time, no more than a secondary town of Argolis. Nor is it likely, under these circumstances, that the sepulchre of Agamemnon was a monument of any great magnificence. Pausanias, who saw it, does not mention it as such, but gives us clearly to understand that the Treasury and the Gate of the Citadel were the most remarkable antiquities at Mycenæ."
I think that nothing could better prove the remote antiquity of this majestic underground Treasury and its companions, than their very singularity and dissimilarity to other ancient buildings in Greece and Asia Minor; besides, the barbarian method of securing treasures by burying them argues a very early state of society.
As a further proof of these underground buildings having been used as treasuries, I may mention that Mycenæ and Orchomenus are the only cities which can boast of such edifices, and also the only cities to which Homer gives the epithet πολύχρυσος, or to which he attributes great wealth.