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Chapter 2 (part 6)
The 3rd period of Layer II: buildings (p.93).
Another
building from the 3rd period of the II layer we have to discuss is
building II B, the ruins of which we got to know east of II A during
our tour through the II castle. Its floor plan is generally secured by
the surviving walls and shows an open vestibule, a middle room and a
large back room (see fig.23). Only the left wall of the vestibule with
its pillars has not yet been excavated; they are still stuck in the
high cone of earth that has been left standing. The rear end of the
building is almost completely destroyed and can therefore no longer be
determined; you can still see that the side walls go beyond the end
wall of the back room, and that a back hall can be added here based on
the model of building II E. It is not known how long walls u and v were
and how deep the back hall was accordingly. The walls are therefore
only dotted in the drawing.
Fig.23: The main interior buildings of the 3rd period of the 2nd layer.
The
porch has an average width of 4.55m and a depth of 6.10m, or 6.30m if
we add the wooden parastades to be added. It is deeper than it is wide,
and so has an unusual proportion in a porch. Through a door about 2 m
wide (fig.23), which was bordered on both sides by wooden posts, one
enters the middle room, which is 4.55 m wide and 6.35 m long. The
latter dimension was accidentally given in the plan (Troy 1882, p. 86) by l m too large: instead of 7.33m, 6.33m or even better 6.35m (rounded) should have been written.
In
reality, the room is exactly the same size as the vestibule. We have
not been able to determine anything about its interior design, we
searched in vain for the remains of a hearth. Through a door at the
left end of the back wall, only about 1.30 m wide, one enters a (p.94)
third room, which is the same width as the others but is longer (8.95
m). Nothing remarkable was found in this back room either. Since only
the foundation of the wall and much more has been preserved, it was no
longer possible to determine whether there was a connecting door to the
back hall.
The location of our building, in the main courtyard
directly next to the large, middle Megaron A, and also its ground plan
form entitle us to recognize in it a similar, only smaller Megaron. Its
tripartite division has already been emphasized in the book Troy
1882 (p. 93) and compared with Homer's statement about the house of
Paris (Iliad VI, 316). Since this consisted of the three parts Thalamos, Doma, and Aule,
so there is indeed a certain agreement.The large back room, which is
only accessible by a side door, is eminently suitable as a thalamos, as
a bedroom or family room; the middle room, with its wide door to the
porch, may be called the doma as the living room and reception room,
and the open vestibule corresponds at least to some extent to the hall.
Of course, this comparison is not intended to say that building II B
could be the house of Paris itself, rather we can only infer from
Homer's statement that the apartments at that time mainly had 3 rooms
or departments, and may further conclude that our building II B was an
apartment.
The construction and materials of construction of the
II B need not be described in detail, as they differ only slightly from
those of the Megaron II A. They can best be examined on the western
side wall, which is relatively well preserved. In fact, in the narrow
space separating it from Building II A, such intense heat developed
during the destruction of the castle that most of its mudbricks burned
through and almost became bricks. The wall is still 1.50 m high, while
the other side wall, like the short transverse walls, is more destroyed
and only has well-fired bricks near the crossbars that are also present
here.
The substructure of the walls, made of small quarry
stones, is only 0.20 - 0.30 m deep and supports the superstructure made
of unfired clay bricks, which contained wooden longitudinal and
transverse beams and was covered with clay plaster on the outside.
Slightly different from the wall of the neighboring building are the
wall thickness, the connection of the bricks and the arrangement of the
wooden beams. The wall thickness is namely, corresponding to the
significantly smaller width of the whole building, only 1.22 to 1.26 m
and in the case of the transverse walls only 1.10 m. The bricks have
similar dimensions to those of II A, their length varies between 0.69
and 0.70 m, their width between 0.46 and 0.48 m, the height is usually
0.11 m, the joint thickness is 0.01 to 0 .03m There are also half
bricks which have the full length but only half the width (p.95), they
are even a bit narrower than half of 0.48m, because I have bricks of
0.20m and some of 0.19m measured.
The bricks do not lie in any
layer with their longitudinal direction transverse to the wall, but
always parallel to the direction of the wall. How the bond was at the
corners and in the transverse walls can no longer be seen. The
longitudinal timbers were only attached in the 1st and 7th layers and
seem to have been 0.20 m wide and almost as high. In order to match the
layer heights of the bricks, the latter are partly cut off in half. The
crossbars were distributed in the side walls so that they were
installed in each corner and in the middle of each room. In fig.23 they
are indicated by two transverse lines each. I have not been able to
determine with certainty whether there were so many crosspieces on top
of each other that the space between the first and second longitudinal
piece was filled. But it seemed so to me.
As the foundation of
the whole building is not very solid, the wooden parastades, which were
attached to the south-eastern end of the longitudinal walls, did not
have large base stones as bases, but only simple foundations made of
small rubble stones. The shape and dimensions of the wooden posts of
the Parastaden will have been similar to that of Building II A (see
fig.26). The first crosspieces of the wall most probably lay directly
next to them, because the second ones are secured in the middle and the
third at the end of the vestibule. A firm connection of the posts with
the crossbars was therefore possible.
Photo 12: Brick walls of the IInd layer Megaron, and house walls of later layers.
Photo 12 shows
us the current condition of the brick walls of II B and partly also of
II A. In the very foreground, the north-east side wall of II B is
visible from the outside (aa). Individual rows of bricks stand out due
to different coloring. The place where the crossbars corresponding to
the inner wall were arranged can be clearly recognized by the holes and
the dark color of the wall (at b) caused by the stronger fire. More in
the middle of the picture at c and e we see the inside of the other
side wall. Here, the individual brick layers stand out even better from
each other because they are fired more intensely. A piece (d) of the
brick wall of II A can be seen between the two parts of this wall. The
earth cone in the left half of the picture with the younger walls f
(III layer), g (IV layer), h (V layer) and i (IX layer) will have to be
mentioned later.
In addition to buildings II A and II B, the
other inner buildings of layer II deserve a brief look at the
structures uncovered in the north-east. Immediately next to II B,
separated from it only by a short transverse wall with a gate, is
building II H, whose ground plan is supplemented in fig.23. Only the
foundation, built from small stones, and above it very small remains of
the brick walls, which once formed its superstructure, have been
preserved. The floor plan consists of a hall (p.96) 6.60 m wide and
10.10 m long and an open, roughly square vestibule, so it corresponds
to the plan of II A. Other rooms may have adjoined the hall to the
north-west and north-east, but the poor condition of the walls does not
permit a definite judgement.
Building II K had a similar
simple floor plan, whose vestibule and door to the hall can still be
clearly seen from the foundations made of small stones, despite the
destruction of the upper walls. Its porch was 4.65 m wide and 5 m deep
and had walls only 0.75 m thick. The depth of the adjoining hall cannot
be determined because its rear part has been completely destroyed.
Characteristic of II K is the shallow depth of the foundations, which
we have already seen in building II B, in buildings II M and II N to
the east, and also in the eastern castle wall. We may see in this a new
proof of the simultaneity of all these buildings, which originate from
the last period of the second stratum.
Below the foundations of
II H and II K, walls of various ages have been uncovered, which are
shown on Plans III and IV, as well as on Photo 3. They all belong to
the 1st and 2nd period of the 2nd stratum, but cannot be supplemented
to form comprehensible ground plans. Only one building (II R), which
consists of particularly large stones, should not go unmentioned
because of its dimensions. It lies below buildings II K and II M, but
is still separated from them by a younger building in between. The
latter must be the 2nd period, II K and II M the 3rd, and II R itself
the 1st period of the 2nd stratum. It consists of two parallel side
walls, 8.25 m apart and 1.45 m thick, which are connected by a
transverse wall that is almost as thick.
In the south-western
part of the castle, the remains of II E, II D and II F buildings have
been uncovered. During the excavations of 1890 we only found a single
corner of the wall in C4, all the rest unfortunately perished when the
large north-south ditch was dug. The corner is very important from
the surviving base stone of a Parastas (a in fig.23) because it gives
us the right to add the small remains of the building with some
probability as the back hall of a structure similar to Megaron II B and
corresponding to this on the other side of II A was presumably arranged
in the manner indicated in fig.23. In order to make the low certainty
of this addition obvious, the walls, insofar as they have not been
preserved, are not hatched in fig.23 and are only dotted.
In a
similar way, an entire building can also be added from the remainder of
the building II F in D 6. Only a small back hall with a parastaden
stone (on the southern corner) and a piece of the longitudinal wall
have been preserved. (p.97) The width of the rear hall is 5.15m and its
depth is 0.95m. There can hardly be any doubt that a hall and a
vestibule facing the main courtyard must be added for this purpose. The
linear dimensions of these spaces are of course indeterminable. An
attempt at a supplement is made in fig.23.
Despite their great
destruction, the two buildings II E and II F are of outstanding
importance for the buildings of the II level, because they alone prove
the existence of back halls. Given their shallow depth, these halls can
hardly have been used for storing objects, but seem rather to have had
the sole purpose of supporting a roof intended to protect the rear wall
of the building from rain and sun. The side walls of each building
could easily be protected by having the transversal deck beams protrude
a little over the walls, forming a cornice to keep out the sun and
rain. This was not possible on the rear wall because of the direction
of the deck beams. However, a wide cornice could very easily be made by
erecting two buttresses on the back wall, in a manner similar to that
which we have seen in the case of the courtyard wall (p. 84), and using
them to support one or more deck beams parallel to the wall. These
beams and the roof supported by them then formed an excellent
protection for the wall. The inconvenience that the corners of the
pillars themselves were not protected and could be damaged so easily
was remedied by the addition of wooden parastays.
In my opinion,
this is the best way to explain the layout of the rear halls and also
the narrow vestibules, which we will still find in the younger strata.
These back halls are probably, as may be pointed out, the forerunners
of the opisthodomes of later Greek temples. The back halls, which are
not connected to the cella of the temple, were probably built initially
not for reasons of worship or art, but merely for practical reasons.
A
buttressed wall has been found between Building II F and the Gate FM,
which may have formed a boundary wall of the western courtyard. It is
so badly damaged that there are reasonable doubts about its importance
and extent. I have therefore omitted them from fig.23 and only drawn
them on Plans III and IV. The buttresses were about 5m center to
center, 1m thick and their projection appears to have been 1.25m on one
side, but on the other its depth is unknown.
Not much can be
said about the HD building (see Tables III and IV) because of its poor
state of preservation. Only remains of its foundations are below a
house of the III layer, the so-called "House of the head of the
city" (Ilios, p. 367)
preserved and uncovered. According to them, the building seems to have
consisted of a large number of rooms (p.98) lying next to and behind
one another. How these rooms were connected among themselves and
whether they had an open connection to the gate FM will probably
forever remain unknown. Behind II D was a small uncovered courtyard
(see Photo 3), which had a special entrance in the gate FL.
Finally,
the older building below II D (shown with cross-hatching on the plans)
must also be mentioned, of which only the foundation walls have
survived. It has a similar multi-room floor plan to Avie the younger
building drawn in all black. Its importance for us lies in the fact
that two of its walls cut diagonally through the back hall of the gate
FM and must therefore come from a different period than this gate.
According to their height, they are undoubtedly older than the Hall of
the Gates, and since this certainly belongs to the 3rd period of the
2nd layer, they, and thus also the whole building, must come from the
2nd period.
If, after this detailed description, we take a brief
look back at the inner buildings of the 2nd level, we have come to know
a large number of buildings from the 3rd period, which were grouped
around a central courtyard and a few side courtyards. Older buildings
were found in several places under its floor. As far as the floor plans
of the individual complexes from the 3rd period were to be
supplemented, they usually showed the plan of the Mycenaean Megaron or
the oldest Greek temple designed in the same way. Since it is out of
the question that all these buildings or even just a few of them were
temples, we were able to declare them to be the dwellings of the lord
of the castle, his relatives and perhaps his entourage. The possibility
that one or the other building was really a temple of the gods cannot
be entirely denied, although judging by the grouping of the buildings
it seems very unlikely. It must also be expressly emphasized that
nothing has been found in the entire second layer that could speak for
the existence of a temple to the gods.
It may be objected that Schliemann found and described an altar (see Ilios
p. 37) which, according to its altitude, must be assigned to the 2nd
stratum. However, its interpretation as an altar is at least very
questionable. Quite apart from the fact that it seems to me doubtful
whether the apparently damaged cover plate, which looks like half the
mouth of a well, belongs at all to the substructure, the latter may
possibly have been the corner of some brick wall, if not caused by the
fact that Schliemann, seduced by the cover plate, unknowingly made the
square substructure himself by removing the adjacent brickwork. In any
case, Schliemann himself later doubted the correctness of his earlier
view, as he told me several times. A gully found below the "altar",
which Schliemann mentions in the same place, no longer exists.
[Continue to Chapter 2, part 7]
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