Читать книгу Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion: A Study in Survivals онлайн

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Again, the actual shape of the buildings is important. Ethnologists tell us that it is ultimately derived from a type of dwelling commonly occupied by primitive man, a circular wattle-hut with conical top; or even more directly, as some would have it, from a similarly shaped abode which the ancient Phrygians used to excavate in the ground, constructing the top of withies laced over beams converging to the apex and covered over with earth, while they tunnelled out an approach from one side where the ground sloped conveniently away[169]. From this it is argued that the domed chambers of Mycenae must be tombs, on the ground that ‘men in all ages have fashioned the dwellings of the dead in accordance with those of the living; but the dead are conservative, and long after a new generation has sought a new home and a new pattern for its houses, the habitations of the dead are still constructed in ancestral fashion[170].’ I readily admit conservatism in all religious matters; but how does the argument touch Mycenae? Archaeologists, and among them Schuchhardt himself[171], are agreed that the shaft-graves in the citadel are earlier in date than the bee-hive structures of the lower town. There was therefore a breach in the continuity of the ancestral fashion. Reversion to a disused fashion is a very different thing from conservatism in upholding an unbroken usage.