Mycenæ: a narrative of researches and discoveries at Mycenæ and TirynsSchliemann, Heinrich
History
Mycenæ: a narrative of researches and discoveries at Mycenæ and Tiryns
Schliemann, Heinrich
Mycenae (Extinct city); Tiryns (Extinct city)
(3.) Masks have been found in tombs, not in Greece, but in the
Crimea, Campania, and Mesopotamia. Our latest information on the
subject is, I believe, the account mentioned in Dr. Schliemann's
last report from Athens (pp xlvii, xlviii), of a gold mask found
on the Phœnician coast over against Aradus, which is of the size
suited for an infant only. It is to be remembered that heroic
Greece is full of the marks of what I may term Phœnicianism, most
of which passed into the usages of the country, and contributed
to form the base of Hellenic life. Nor does it seem improbable,
that this use of the metallic mask may have been a Phœnician
adaptation from the Egyptian custom of printing the likeness of
the dead on the mummy case. And, again, we are to bear in mind
that Mycenæ had been the seat of repeated foreign immigrations.
(4.) We have not to deal in this case _only_ with masks, but with
the case of a breastplate in gold, which, however, could not
have been intended for use in war; together with other leaves
or plates of gold, found on, or apparently intended for, other
portions of the person.
6. Lastly, with regard to the deposit of objects which, besides being
characteristic, have unchangeable value, the only point on which I have
here to remark is, their extraordinary amount. It is such, I conceive,
as to give to these objects, and particularly to those of the First
Tomb, an exceptional place among the sepulchral deposits of antiquity. I
understand that their weight is about one hundred pounds troy, or nearly
that of five thousand British sovereigns. It is difficult to suppose that
this deposit could have been usual, even with the remains of a King;
and it is at this point that I, for one, am compelled to break finally
and altogether with the supposition, that this great entombment, in the
condition in which Dr. Schliemann found it, was simply an entombment of
Agamemnon and his company effected by Ægisthus and Clytemnestra, their
murderers.
So far, with little argument, I have endeavoured fairly to set out the
facts. Let me now endeavour to draw to a point the several threads of
the subject, in order to deal with the main question, namely, whether
these half-wasted, half-burned remains are the ashes of Agamemnon and his
company? And truly this is a case, where it may be said to the inquirer,
in figure as well as in fact,
"et incedis per ignes
Suppositos cineri doloso."[16]
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