COLUMNS OF PORPHYRY.
I have also been fortunate enough to discover, only 3 ft. below the surface, a piece of a quadrangular column of red porphyry, 12⅔ in. long, 10⅔ in. broad, and 8 in. thick, ornamented with a splendid low relief of palmettos lying horizontally (No. 151). Two of these stand opposite to each other, and are united by a rectangular middle piece, which, within an upper and a lower horizontal border, is divided on both sides, to the right and left, by three vertical band-like cuts into seven upright rectangular fields, of which the middle one is as broad as the three on either side. This middle piece reminds one of the Doric triglyphs. To the right and left of the palmettos we see the fragments of other ornaments of a similar kind, and it seems that the whole column has been decorated in this way. Above the palmettos there is a row of denticles, and there has no doubt been a similar row below. The two middle palmettos resemble a saloon furnished with seats all round. I further found at a depth of about 11 ft. 6 in. the fragment of another column or frieze of red porphyry, 8¾ in. long, 10 in. broad, and 4¼ in. thick, carved with a beautiful spiral (see No. 152).
No. 151. Piece of a quadrangular Column of Red Porphyry. (1 M.) Size 1:4, about.
STYLE OF THE SCULPTURES.
Although, as Dr. Fr. Schlie thinks, the technical treatment of the low-relief of all these stêlæ may not be vastly different from a whole series of archaic reliefs of ancient Greek art, yet such figures and such an ornamentation have never been found yet on Greek sculptures. The stêlæ of Mycenæ are, therefore, unique in their kind. It is true that the manner of filling up with manifold beautiful spiral ornaments the space not covered by the forms of men and animals reminds us of the principles of the painting on the so-called orientalizing vases. But nowhere do we see on the sculptures of Mycenæ the ornamentation of plants, which is so characteristic of this class of ancient Greek representations. The whole style is rather a linear ornamentation with forms in powerful low-relief, and herein we obtain an interesting guide to that epoch in the development of Greek art, which preceded the so-called Græco-Phœnician period, that is the time when its course was determined by oriental influences. The beginning of this latter period Mr. Newton fixes with certainty not later than B.C. 800. But these Mycenean representations, which are decorated exclusively with linear ornamentation in relief, are again remarkable because we see in them living beings such as man, the horse, the dog, and the deer, which are not reduced to a more or less linear design, such as those on the Trojan whorls,[204] but which are given, though rudely, and in a puerile way, in full bodily form, precisely as the nature of the relief requires.
Nos. 151, 153, 154. Fragments of Friezes. Size 1:5, about.[203]
These reflections lead us to the conviction that the Mycenean reliefs must be brought into relation with the ancient architecture of Mycenæ. Let us compare with them only the preserved remnants of the ornamentation of the gateway of the "Treasury of Atreus" and its semi-column, as restored by Professor Donaldson.[205] Therefore it cannot appear an unfounded assumption, if we claim for these ancient monuments the middle of the second millennium B.C., and if we insert them for the future as an important link into the history of art. As Mr. A. S. Murray, of the British Museum, justly observed to me, the spiral ornamentation is no proof whatever of an orientalizing influence, because every wire must have given to the early artist the idea of the spiral ornamentation; nay, we find the spiral ornamentation even on the ancient Mexican and Peruvian monuments.