The Treasury excavated by Mrs. Schliemann—Older and less sumptuous than that of Atreus—The entrance, its ornaments—Archaic pottery found in the passage—Necklace beads—Fragment of a marble frieze—Threshold of the Lions' Gate—The great double row of parallel slabs, probably not of a remote antiquity—The Acropolis only partly accessible to chariots—The gateway double, like the Scæan Gate at Troy—Corridors of Cyclopean house-walls—Hera-idols and arrow-heads of bronze and iron—Door-keeper's lodge—Retaining walls—Tower of the Acropolis resting on a massive wall—The double circle of slabs formed the enclosure of the royal tombs and the Agora—Arguments in proof of this view—Objects of interest found there—A vast Cyclopean house with cisterns and water conduit, probably the ancient Royal Palace—The spring Perseia—No windows in the house—Objects of art and luxury found there—An onyx seal-ring—Vase-paintings of mail-clad warriors—Hand-made pottery in the Acropolis.
Mycenæ, Sept. 30, 1876.
Since the 9th inst. I have continued the excavations with the greatest energy, employing constantly 125 workmen and five horse-carts, and the weather being beautiful I have made excellent progress. In the Treasury, in which Mrs. Schliemann is excavating, we work with thirty labourers and two horse-carts, and find the very greatest difficulty in removing the hundreds of huge wrought stones which have fallen from the vault.
MRS. SCHLIEMANN'S TREASURY.
The interior walls of this Treasury have never been covered with brazen plates like the Treasury of Atreus here and the Treasury of Minyas in Orchomenus; at least, I see nowhere in the stones the holes of the bronze nails by which the metal plates were fastened; but I cannot avoid mentioning that on the inner east side of the Treasury, there protrudes from between the stones the fragment of a bronze plate, which sticks so fast that it cannot be drawn out; I therefore suppose that it was fastened there when the Treasury was built. It appears hardly possible that this could have happened merely by accident, but on the other hand I find it difficult to believe that this bronze plate could be a remnant of an ancient wall-coating of bronze plates, which were not fastened to the stones with nails but were attached in the joints between them, because in this case, I presume, we ought to find remnants of those plates in many places.
This Treasury is less sumptuous, and appears to be more ancient, than the Treasury of Atreus here, or the Treasury of Minyas at Orchomenus.
The entrance, which is 13 ft. long and 8 ft. broad, is roofed with four slabs 18½ ft. in length; the holes for the upper door-hinges are 5 in. deep. From certain traces in the walls it appears that the entrance has been ornamented on the right and left with two semi-columns, which we hope to find by digging deeper. A remnant of an ornamentation with semicircles is visible on the slab above the entrance, and the same can easily be distinguished in the engraving of the Treasury.[227] After having been buried for ages in the damp débris, the large wrought stones of the walls of the approach (dromos) and of the façade of this Treasury have contracted by exposure to the sun, and, as may be seen from the engraving, a great number of them have crevices.
As in the Treasury of Atreus and in the Lions' Gate, the triangular space above the entrance is formed by an oblique approximation of the ends of the courses of stone. On all three sides of this triangle can be seen cuttings, which make it highly probable that it has once been filled up by a triangular piece of sculpture similar to that above the Lions' Gate.[228]
Among the archaic pottery found in the "dromos" before the Treasury, the very rudely modelled men on horseback holding the horse's neck with both hands, of which also several were found in the tomb at Ialysus, deserve particular attention; further, the fragments of large painted vases profusely covered with an ornamentation of key patterns, zigzag lines, stripes of ornaments like fish-spines, bands with very primitive representations of cranes or swans, or circles with flowers, and occasionally with the sign 卍.[229] Vases with such geometrical patterns are sometimes found in Athens, and have hitherto been universally considered to be the most ancient pottery of Attica, but I perfectly share my learned friend Mr. Chas. T. Newton's opinion, that the vases with geometrical patterns are later than all the different sorts of terra-cottas found in the five Royal tombs, and hereafter to be described. Of vases with other patterns I have found but very few fragments. Together with these fragments of pottery there was found part of a necklace with a large bead of white glass (No. 205), two beads of fluor-spar of a transparent bluish, and three of a red-bluish colour, all perforated and strung on a thin copper wire (Nos. 206, 207, 208, 209); also the fragment of a white marble frieze with an ornamentation.[230] Just above the lower part of the "dromos" are the foundations of an Hellenic house, apparently of the Macedonian period.