Part 11 (2/2)

”With great joy I announce to your majesty that I have discovered the tombs which old stories say are the graves of Agamemnon and his followers. I have found in them great treasures in the shape of ancient things in pure gold. These treasures, alone, are enough to fill a great museum. It will be the most wonderful collection in the world. During the centuries to come it will draw visitors from all over the earth to Greece. I am working for the joy of the work, not for money. So I give this treasure, with much happiness, to Greece. May it be the corner stone of great good fortune for her.”

The work went on, and soon they found another grave, even more wonderful. Here lay five people--two of them women, three of them warriors. Golden masks covered the faces of the men. Two wore golden breastplates. The gold clasp of the greave was still around one knee.

Near one man lay a golden crown and a sceptre, and a sword belt of gold.

There was a heap of stone arrowheads, and a pile of twenty bronze swords and daggers. One had a picture of a lion hunt inlaid in gold. The wooden handles of the swords and daggers were rotted away, but the gold nails that had fastened them lay there, and the gold dust that had gilded them. Near the warriors' hands were drinking cups of heavy gold. There were seal rings with carved stones. There was the silver mask of an ox head with golden horns, and the golden mask of a lion's head. And scattered over everything were b.u.t.tons, and ribbons, and leaves, and flowers of gold.

Schliemann gazed at the swords with burning eyes.

”The heroes of Troy have used these swords,” he said to his wife, ”Perhaps Achilles himself has handled them.” He looked long at the golden masks of kingly faces.

”I believe that one of these masks covered the face of Agamemnon. I believe I am kneeling at the side of the king of men,” he said in a hushed voice.

Why were all these things there? Thousands of years before, when their king had died, the people had grieved.

”He is going to the land of the dead,” they had thought. ”It is a dull place. We will send gifts with him to cheer his heart. He must have lions to hunt and swords to kill them. He must have cattle to eat. He must have his golden cup for wine.”

So they had put these things into the grave, thinking that the king could take them with him. They even had put in food, for Schliemann found oyster sh.e.l.ls buried there. And they had thought that a king, even in the land of the dead, must have servants to work for him. So they had sacrificed slaves, and had sent them with their lord. Schliemann found their bones above the grave. And besides the silver mask of the ox head they had sent real cattle. After the king had been laid in his grave, they had killed oxen before the altar. Part they had burned in the sacred fire for the dead king, and part the people had eaten for the funeral feast. These bones and ashes, too, Schliemann found. For a long, long time the people had not forgotten their dead chiefs. Every year they had sacrificed oxen to them. They had set up gravestones for them, and after a while they had heaped great mounds over their graves.

That was a wonderful old world at Mycenae. The king's palace sat on a hill. It was not one building, but many--a great hall where the warriors ate, the women's large room where they worked, two houses of many bedrooms, treasure vaults, a bath, storehouses. Narrow pa.s.sages led from room to room. Flat roofs of thatch and clay covered all. And there were open courts with porches about the sides. The floors of the court were of tinted concrete. Sometimes they were inlaid with colored stones. The walls of the great hall had a painted frieze running about them. And around the whole palace went a thick stone wall.

One such old palace has been uncovered at Tiryns near Mycenae. To-day a visitor can walk there through the house of an ancient king. The watchman is not there, so the stranger goes through the strong old gateway. He stands in the courtyard, where the young men used to play games. He steps on the very floor they trod. He sees the stone bases of columns about him. The wooden pillars have rotted away, but he imagines them holding a porch roof, and he sees the men resting in the shade. He walks into the great room where the warriors feasted. He sees the hearth in the middle and imagines the fire blazing there. He looks into the bathroom with its sloping stone floor and its holes to drain off the water. He imagines Greek maidens coming to the door with vases of water on their heads. He walks through the long, winding pa.s.sages and into room after room. ”The children of those old days must have had trouble finding their way about in this big palace,” he thinks.

Such was the palace of the king. Below it lay many poorer houses, inside the walls and out. We can imagine men and women walking about this city.

We raise the warriors from their graves. They carry their golden cups in their hands. Their rings glisten on their fingers, and their bracelets on their arms. Perhaps, instead of the golden armor, they wear breastplates of bronze of the same shape, but these same swords hang at their sides. We look at their golden masks and see their straight noses and their short beards. We study the carving on their gravestones, and we see their two-wheeled chariots and their prancing horses. We look at the carved gems of their seal rings and see them fighting or killing lions. We look at their embossed drinking cups, and we see them catching the wild bulls in nets. We gaze at the great walls of Mycenae, and wonder what machines they had for lifting such heavy stones. We look at a certain silver vase, and see warriors fighting before this very wall.

We see all the beautiful work in gold and silver and gems and ivory, and we think, ”Those men of old Mycenae were artists.”

PICTURES OF MYCENAE

THE CIRCLE OF ROYAL TOMBS.

Digging within this circle, Dr. Schliemann found the famous treasure of golden gifts to the dead, which he gave to Greece. In the Museum at Athens you can see these wonderful things. (From a photograph in the Metropolitan Museum.)

DR. AND MRS. SCHLIEMANN AT WORK.

This picture is taken from Dr. Schliemann's own book on his work.

THE GATE OF LIONS.

The stone over the gateway is immensely strong. But the wall builders were afraid to pile too great a weight upon it. So they left a triangular s.p.a.ce above it. You can see how they cut the big stones with slanting ends to do this. This triangle they filled with a thinner stone carved with two lions. The lions' heads are gone. They were made separately, perhaps of bronze, and stood away from the stone looking out at people approaching the gate.

INSIDE THE TREASURY OF ATREUS.

No wonder the untaught modern Greeks thought that this was a giants'

oven, where the giants baked their bread. But learned men have shown that it was connected with a tomb, and that in this room the men of Mycenae wors.h.i.+pped their dead. It was very wonderfully made and beautifully ornamented. The big stone over the doorway was nearly thirty feet long, and weighs a hundred and twenty tons. Men came to this beehive tomb in the old days of Mycenae, down a long pa.s.sage with a high stone wall on either side. The doorway was decorated with many-colored marbles and beautiful bronze plates. The inside was ornamented, too, and there was an altar in there.

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