I will not attempt to pursue further an enumeration which, growing more and more minute, would be wearisome. If porcelain and glass have been found, I should at once assign them to foreign importation. The art of casting and tooling in the precious metals, of which the examples would appear, both from our author and from Mr. Newton, to be few, are probably to be referred to a like source. The hammer and the pincers are the only instruments for metallic manipulation, of which Homer appears to be aware (Il. XVIII. 477, Od. III. 434-5). As regards the pottery mentioned by our author, if some of the goblets were of light green (p. [285]), we have a colour developed in their manufacture of which Homer had certainly no distinct conception, though it may still be true that, as in nature, so in human art, objects bearing that colour may have met his eye. Of the scales in the third sepulchre there seems no reason to doubt that we may find the interpretation, by referring them to the Egyptian scheme of doctrine with regard to a future life (pp. [197], 8). In the Books of the Dead, we have an elaborate representation of the judgment-hall, to which the departed soul is summoned. Here the scales form a very prominent object;[12] and it seems very possible that the Poet, who was Greek and not Egyptian in his ideas of the future state, may have borrowed and transposed, from this quarter, the image of the balances displayed on high, which he employs with such fine effect in some critical passages of the Iliad. As regards the emblem of the double-headed or full-formed axe, I venture to dispense with the cautious reserve of Schliemann. As the usual form of a weapon familiar to the age, it seems to require no special explanation (p. [252]). But where we find it conjoined with the ox-head (p. [218]), or on the great signet ring in conjunction with a figure evidently representing Deity, I cannot hesitate to regard it as a sacrificial symbol. We have only to remember the passage in the third Odyssey, where the apparatus of sacrifice is detailed, and Thrasumedes, who was to strike the blow, brought the axe (III. 442):—
πέλεκυν δὲ μενεπτόλεμος Θρασυμήδης
ὀξὺν ἔχων ἐν χερσὶι παρίστατο, βοῦν ἐπικέψων.
The boar's teeth (p. [273]) supply a minor, perhaps, but a clear and significant point of correspondence to be added to our list (Il. X. 263-264). Another is to be noticed in the manner of attaching, by wire, lids and covers. On these subjects, I refer to the text of the volume.
By the foregoing detail I have sought to show that there is no preliminary bar to our entertaining the capital question whether the tombs now unearthed, and the remains exposed to view, under masks for the faces, and plates of gold covering one or more of the trunks, are the tombs and remains of the great Agamemnon and his compeers, who have enjoyed, through the agency of Homer, such a protracted longevity of renown. For the general character of the Mycenean treasures, I take my stand provisionally on the declaration of Mr. Newton (supported by Mr. Gardner), that, in his judgment, they belong to the prehistoric or heroic age, the age antecedent to his Greco-Phœnician period; and in important outlines of detail I have endeavoured to show that they have many points of contact with the Homeric Poems, and with the discoveries at Hissarlik. But this Preface makes no pretension whatever to exhibit a complete catalogue of the objects, or to supply for each of them its interpretation. We encounter, indeed, a certain number of puzzling phenomena, such as the appearance of something like visors, for which I could desire some other explanation, but which Schliemann cites as auxiliaries to the masks of the tombs, and even thinks to prove that such articles were used by the living, as well as for the dead (p. [359]).
Undoubtedly, in my view, these masks constitute a great difficulty, when we come to handle the question who were the occupants of the now opened sepulchres? It may be, that as Mr. Newton says, we must in the main rest content with the "reasonable presumption" that the four tombs contained Royal personages, and must leave in abeyance the further question, whether they are the tombs indicated to Pausanias by the local tradition; at any rate, until the ruins of Mycenæ shall have been further explored, according to the intention which the government of Greece is said to have conceived.
At the same time this is a case where the question before us, if hazardous to prosecute, is not easy to let alone.
It is obviously difficult to find any simple, clear, consistent interpretation of the extraordinary inhumation disclosed to us by these researches. Such an interpretation may be found hereafter: it does not seem to be forthcoming at the present moment. But the way towards it can only be opened up by a painstaking exhibition of the facts, and by instituting a cautious comparison between them and any indications, drawn from other times or places, which may appear to throw light upon them. For my own part, having approached the question with no predisposition to believe, I need not scruple to say I am brought or driven by the evidence to certain conclusions; and also led on to certain conjectures suggested by those conclusions. The first conclusion is that we cannot refer the five entombments in the Agora at Mycenæ to any period within the historic age. The second is that they are entombments of great, and almost certainly in part of royal, personages. The third, that they bear indisputable marks of having been effected, not normally throughout, but in connection with circumstances, which impressed upon them an irregular and unusual character. The conjecture is, that these may very well be the tombs of Agamemnon and his company. It is supported in part by a number of presumptions, but in great part also by the difficulty, not to say the impossibility, of offering any other suggestion which could be deemed so much as colourable.
The principal facts which we have to notice appear to be as follows:—
1. The situation chosen for the interments.
2. The numbers of persons simultaneously interred.
3. The dimensions and character of the graves.
4. The partial application of fire to the remains.
5. The use of masks, and likewise of metallic plates, to adorn or shelter them, or both.
6. The copious deposit both of characteristic and of valuable objects in conjunction with the bodies.