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Dr. Schliemann's attention; for it is rich in wrecks which appear to date from the classical Greek period, before the Argive conquest. The best preserved of these are the painted vases of terra cotta, much like those which have been found in the tombs of Rhodes and Cyprus. Nos. 25 and 80 are specimens of them, and No. 83 is a terra cotta goblet-all found in the acropolis, at a depth of nearly ten feet below the surface.

Among the objects found here, however, those which seem to have impressed the discoverer most deeply are certain images. On August 19, 1876, he writes: "Since the 7th inst. I have been able to gather here more than 200 terra cotta idols of Hera, more or less broken, in the form of a woman or in that of a cow. Most of the former have ornaments painted in bright red on a dead ground of light red, two breasts in relief, below which protrudes on each side a long horn, so that both horns together form a half-circle; and, as I have said regarding the idols in Tiryns, they must be either intended to represent cowhorns, or the symbolic horns of the crescent moon, or both at once" (page 72). Elsewhere he speaks particularly of No. 118 as an instance of "very archaic cow-idols with painted red and black ornamentations" (page 105).

The reader will doubtless be much puzzled to understand how the liveliest fancy could find anything like a cow in any of these images. The uninitiated observer, who should find upon a mutilated female figure, stumps, opposite the breasts, would think of arms, as more likely to be found there than horns, even in an idol; and in studying the series of small figures, he might imagine to himself a leopard, a cat, a deer, a sheep, a dog and a pig, as the several originals before the rude artist's mind; but who would think of a cow? The problem is solved, however, by a study, not of the objects, but of the mind of the observer. The word boopis, ox-eyed, is the constant epithet in Homer of the goddess Hera; just as glaukōpis, she of the dazzling eyes, is the epithet of Athene. Misled by a fanciful suggestion of Mr. Gladstone, as to the origin of the word boopis, Dr. Schliemann some years ago built up a whole theory of mythology upon it. Finding that glaukopis might

be explained as made up of the words glaux an owl, and ops, the eye, look or face, he compared the two words, and finding a bird in one and an animal in the other, he concluded that all readers of Homer for thou

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NO. 239.

PLATE OF GOLD. SEPULCHER III.

sands of years had mistaken his meaning; the former word must mean cow-headed, the latter owl-headed. Accordingly, every object found at Hissarlik, which appears to have eyes and mouth, assumed, to his mind, the form of an owl's head; and became an idol of the owl-headed Athene, the patron goddess of Ilium. Other observers, failing to discover the semblance of the bird, can see in these objects only rude representations of the human face. But the doubts of other men only confirm Dr. Schliemann's convictions; and as Hera Boopis was the guardian deity of Mycena and Tiryns, all readers of his book on Troy confidently expected that, whatever else he might find or fail to find in these cities, cow-headed idols would prove to be abundant. He found many hundreds of them; nearly all as exactly like cows as those pictured above. In short, both his cow-headed Hera and his owl-headed Athene seem to belong to the class described by Bacon as idols of the den.

Under the strata already mentioned were made the great discoveries which crown Dr. Schliemann's work. The extreme western part of the acropolis, south of the lions' gate, forms an inclosure, of about twothirds of an acre, with a massive Cyclopean

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NO. 140.

THE SECOND TOMB-STONE, FOUND ABOVE THE SEPULCHERS IN THE ACROPOLIS. (4 M.) ABOUT ONE-TWELFTH

OF THE ACTUAL SIZE.

outer walls themselves. The south corner contains the walls of a much larger house, which seems to have been full sixty feet

the wooden palace of the rulers of Mycena. The middle of the inclosure was occupied by a curious double circle of large stone

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solid that it has endured through
the decay and ruin of uncounted
centuries, confirms all that Homer
teaches us concerning these assem-
blies as the center of public life,
the place and the means for the
exercise of their sway by the rulers
of men.
Out of the agora and its
customs grew by natural develop-
ment the fierce democracy of
Athens.

Within this venerable circle were found covered three sculptured slabs, each marking the exact site of a large tomb, excavated in the solid rock, to a depth of from twenty to thirty feet below it. Dr. Schliemann remarks upon these slabs: "On carefully examining the sculpture of the tomb-stones, I find such a marvelous accuracy and symmetry in all the spiral ornamentation, that I feel almost tempted to think such work can only have been produced by a school of sculptors which had worked for ages in a similar style. On the other hand, the men and the animals are made as rudely and in as puerile a manner as if they were the

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NO. 243. PLATE OF GOLD: A BUTTERFLY. SEPULCHER III.

slabs, leaning inward; the two rows joined by cross slabs at the top, forming a bench (No. 210 a.) This seems, in all probability, to have been the agora of the Mycenaeans. Professor Paley, a high authority on such a question, is cited by Dr. Schliemann as unhesitatingly identifying it with the agora referred to by Euripides in his Electra. "The assembled people sat in a circle, and the orator stood in the center, as we see in Homer and in Sophocles; and just in the center of this inclosure at Mycenæ I found a rock forming a slight elevation, which might well have served as the platform (bēma) from which the speakers addressed those sitting on the circular bench" (pages 125, 126). The general purpose of this remarkable structure, at least, cannot be mistaken. It is the best concrete illustration ever yet discovered of the numerous passages in the early Greek poets which refer to the organization of society in the prehistoric days. That the Greeks of these times bestowed such vast labor in preparing a beautiful and permanent place for their public assembly, on the most conspicuous and honorable site in their city, and making it so

Oed. Tyr. v. 161. 66 Artemis who sits on the agora's glorious circular seat."

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No. 246. A PLATE OF GOLD. SEPULCHER III.

primitive artists' first essay to represent living beings. But still there is a great resemblance between the bodies of the animals and those of the two lions on the gate; there is the same style of art, and

much of the coarseness in the animals on the tomb-stones may be due to the inferiority of the calcareous stone: probably the prim

ally, with a vast treasure of the most precious objects around it or upon the funeral pyre. Most of these objects are of pure gold;

Nos. 253, 254, 255. PERFORATED ORNAMENTS

SEPULCHER III.

itive sculptor who chiseled them would have produced something better if he had had to work on the beautiful hard breccia of which the sculpture above the lions' gate consists. I have therefore not the slightest objection to admit that the sculptured sepulchral slabs may be of nearly the same epoch as the lions over the gate" (page 85). Many fragments of tomb-stones, carved in a similar style, were also found; every one of which will be studied with intense interest as illustrating an early stage in the history of art, hitherto unexplored. Another tomb,

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OF GOLD, WITH ENGRAVINGS IN INTAGLIO.
ACTUAL SIZE.

others of silver; many are elaborate and
beautiful works of primitive art; and they
form a collection which Dr. Schliemann, in
tendering them to the king of Greece, as a
gift to the nation, was justified in declaring
unparalleled in the world. They have yet to
be examined by the men who are competent
to assign to each its true place in the history
of art; and they are likely to afford a long
and important chapter in that history, if, as
we may reasonably suspect, these tombs.
were the burial-places of successive genera-
tions of some rich and powerful dynasty,
during an age prior to
all our
records. Dr. Schliemann, indeed,
assuming the historical character of
the Odyssey and of Eschylus, be-
lieves that these are the sepulchers
of Agamemnon and his companions,
who were murdered by Ægisthus and
Clytemnestra on his return from
Troy; and assuming that they are
all, therefore, of the same date, makes
no inquiry into the comparative de-
velopment of the arts, as indicated by the
works found in each several tomb. Yet
even a casual glance at the engravings of
these works suggests a marked difference in
the character of the deposits, and a suspicion
that the treasures in the second, fifth, third,
first, and fourth tombs may prove to repre-
sent a progressive and rapid development
of the arts, nearly in the order named. But

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ACTUAL SIZE.

similar in its elaborate construction to the others, but marked by no stone above it, was found within the agora; and yet another, just south of the agora, between it and the walls of the palace. Each of the first three tombs had contained three human bodies; the fourth had five, and the fifth one. The bodies had been laid each upon a funeral pyre, built on a bed of gravel, and then burned; but none were entirely consumed, and one of those in the first tomb was so well preserved that its shriveled form, hardened by the skillful application of alcohol and gum, will be exhibited in the Archæological Museum of Athens. Naturally enough, "the news that the tolerably well preserved body of a man of the mythical heroic age had been found, covered with golden ornaments, spread like wild-fire through the Argolis, and people came by thousands from Argos, Nauplia and the villages to see the wonder" (page 297).

Each of the bodies had been buried roy

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Landerer

thinks they laid the gold plate on a block of lead, and hammered and pressed the orna

NO. 281. THE SPLENDID CROWN OF GOLD FOUND ON THE HEAD OF ONE OF THE THREE PERSONS INTERRED IN THE THIRD SEPULCHER. SIZE, RATHER MORE THAN 1:4.

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