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A Carved Block from the Megaron of Mycenae
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 October 2013
Extract
The piece that I am publishing was first noticed by the late Dr. Ioannis Papadimitriou, then Ephor of Antiquities for the Argolid, early in 1948. I measured and photographed it in situ before he removed it to the Nauplia Museum, and a few days later I drew it as assembled on the floor of the Museum. For various reasons, I had to do this rather hastily; and I give the fragments the numbers used by Papadimitriou.
Fourteen years ago I had just drawn out the block and was ready to publish it when, hearing that Papadimitriou was in London for a few days, I was persuaded to send him my work for corrections and comments. I never saw it again. Some years later, not long before his death, he published the block in Πρακτικά for 1955, illustrating it with no drawings and with only one photograph (Plate 79a), of one face only. At that time the block, remaining in the Nauplia Museum, was already set in plaster, as it still was in March 1964. The place at Mycenae where it turned up, in the prodomos of the Megaron, is now covered with the unattractive chippings of an artificial floor in gypsum. As the block was of some interest and beauty, I set down what I learnt about about it soon after its discovery.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1965
References
1 See Wace, A. J. B., Mycenae (Princeton 1949), 137 (Stone no. 12)Google Scholar: BM Catalogue of Sculpture I. 1 (1928) 14 ff. Even the block with ‘triglyphs’ and half-rosettes, B.M. Catalogue A55, which Lethaby assigned to the Treasury of Atreus, but which seems softer to the touch than the other more certainly attested fragments, is considerably harder than our abacus.
2 Wace, ibid.
3 Cf. BSA xxv. 239 ff.
4 One cannot, of course, rule out a projection of some sort from the face that is less well preserved.
5 For my treatment, compare the famous ceiling at Orchomenos. On the other hand the eyes are hollowed in the Treasury of Atreus. I prefer the flatter, simpler treatment for my small block of soft stone.
6 Evans, , PM III, pl. xvi.Google Scholar In the older rendering of this fresco, Dinsmoor, The Architecture of Ancient Greece (1950), pl. ixGoogle Scholar, the forms of the abaci are no different.
7 Lamb, W. in BSA xxv. 192.Google Scholar
8 Wace, , Mycenae, 76.Google Scholar Lamb is inclined to believe (loc.cit.) that there were two fires.