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Chapter 2 (part 5)
The 3rd period of Layer II: buildings (p.80).
While we have observed a three - or
even four -time renewal and expansion in the castle wall of the IInd
layer, and have gotten to know the walls of each individual period, the
inner buildings are essentially from only one period, namely the third.
In order to find the floor plans of the older houses, the buildings of
the 3rd period should have been destroyed. However, since this was of
course not permitted, we tried to research older walls by excavations
inside some rooms and between the individual buildings. We succeeded in
determining the presence of two older periods of inner buildings.
However, we have not been able to restore their floor plans. We will
therefore primarily deal with the better known buildings from the 3rd
period of the II layer.
Several circumstances have favored and partly made possible
the finding and recognition of all the buildings belonging to the 3rd
period. First of all, their walls are at pretty much the same height
throughout the entire hill and can thus already be recognized by their
height numbers. Then they all consisted of unfired bricks in their
upper parts and of rubble stones in their foundations. Although most of
the brick walls perished in ancient times when the castle was
destroyed, a more or less high layer of burned and unburned rubble has
been preserved as a sure witness of the former presence of brickwork.
Above all, however, it is the stone bases for wooden wall pillars that
recur in all main buildings of the 3rd period and only in these and can
serve as a sure sign of belonging to layer II-3.
With the help
of these characteristics we have identified the buildings of the 3rd
period of layer II and marked them on our plans with a uniform
colouring. On Plates II and IV they are emphasized by a dark tone, in
Figure 23 alongside by cross-hatching. A common photographic image of
all these buildings could not be produced. Only a few of the buildings
are shown on Photos 7, 8, 11, and 12.
A short visit through the interior of the castle will
give us an overview of the surviving buildings and thus facilitate
understanding of the individual descriptions.
If we have entered
the castle through the main gate FO in the south-east, we find
ourselves in a forecourt, the floor of which is easily recognizable by
the partly preserved layer of gravel. It is no longer possible to
determine how the courtyard was bordered on both sides. Straight ahead
is a wall with a small gate building II C, which gives access to the
inner courtyard, the center of the castle. Here, too, there is a layer
of gravel as a fortification, preserved from the floor .
Various
individual buildings are grouped around this courtyard, presumably the
apartments of the lord of the castle and his children or Relatives. All
these buildings seem to have had open porches to the courtyard. The
main building II A is just in front of us, opposite the entrance gate.
Building II B on the right is a little further back. A building II E
seems to have corresponded to it on the left; meanwhile, only a small
piece of it is preserved in C 4, but everything else through the great
north-south. Unfortunately, Schliemann's ditch has been lost forever.
On the left side of the courtyard we may perhaps add a vestibule of
building II F, which unfortunately also fell victim to the large
north-south ditch; only the rear end of this building has remained in D
6.
Fig.23: The main interior buildings of the 3rd period of the 2nd layer.
There
seems to have been a wall on the right side of the courtyard, which may
have supported a second one, also with isolated buildings surrounded
yard. But since part of the wall is still in a cone of earth, a
definite judgment is not yet possible. Of the buildings in this side
courtyard, only the two II H and II K are known. Sites II M and II N
are located on its east side, which we have interpreted as the remains
of a strong castle wall.
To
the west of the main courtyard we may add a second side courtyard in
the western part of the castle, which had a direct exit from the castle
in the gate FM. On its north-western side is the several-roomed
building II D, on the south-eastern probably a pillared wall, part of
which survives between II F and the gate FM. It is not known whether a
third courtyard with buildings could be added to the northern part of
the castle. There are no definite remains there from the 3rd period of
the 2nd layer.
We can start the detailed description of the buildings of the II layer with the facilities located around the main courtyard.
(p.83)
The small Propylon II C is completely secured as a gate building by its
floor plan shown in fig.24. The mighty stone threshold, almost 3 m long
and 1.10" wide, is still preserved from his gate lock; the wooden door
posts and the two wings rested on it, as can still be seen from the
standing tracks. The door opening was 1.82 m wide In the manner of a
classical propylaia, the gate was equipped with a front and rear hall,
the former had a depth of 4.30 m, the latter 2.37 m.
 Columns
are missing, if only because the dimensions of the building were too
small, but the side walls end on both sides in wooden pillars or
parastades, the base stones of which are still there.The shape of the
parastaden will be described in more detail in Building II A.
Fig.24: The gate building 11 C between the forecourt and the inner courtyard of layer II.
At
our gate, the wooden posts each stood on an irregular stone, to which a
square slab 0.06 m high was attached. This formed a low base rising
above the ground, as was known to be the case with Egyptian and partly
also with ancient Greek columns.The stone itself protruded on all sides
over the wooden pillars and was therefore visible as a base, only its
irregular part should disappear completely under the screed.
The
side walls of the gate have been destroyed down to their stone
substructure. From the remains of the fire and the rubble found,
however, it was found that they consisted of mud bricks with horizontal
wooden beams, i.e. the same construction method that we will get to
know in more detail with the other buildings. About the elevation of
the gate it can only be said that the two parastades had a wooden beam
ceiling and a horizontal earthen roof above it.
The existence of
the gate presupposes the existence of a wall separating the inner court
from the forecourt. Such a wall has actually been found, and on the
east side there are actually two different walls, one almost exactly in
line with the threshold of the gate, the other closer to the
south-eastern parastas. If we only judge by the altitude and the
current condition of the walls, then the latter existed at the same
time as the gate and was destroyed with it. However, if we judge from
the ground plan (see Plates III and IV), one would like to think that
the other wall is at the same time as the gate, because then the door
lies almost exactly in line with the courtyard wall. Now, as it is not
possible that both walls could have existed at the same time (the
difference in the buttresses to be discussed presently seems
inexplicable to me), and since the inner wall may be declared on the
spot with certainty to be the older one, I suppose that the inner wall
was built at the same time as the gate, but later demolished in order
to enlarge the main courtyard and replaced by the outer wall. It is not
known whether the older wall gave way to a younger one to the
south-west of the gate.
 Both walls have a very remarkable shape
and are therefore (p.84) particularly shown in fig.25. A is the older,
B the younger system. Both walls, built of unfired bricks on a stone
foundation, have strong buttresses, the older wall on both sides, the
younger only on the inner side.
Fig.25: enclosing walls of the inner courtyard with buttresses.
These transverse walls, as we may also
call the buttresses, have very different depths. At B they jump 2.20m
in front of the wall. That is a little more than the combined depths of
the two buttresses on Wall A. However, the inner pillars of the latter
may have been a little deeper than 1.30 m, as I have drawn, because
they are all damaged on their leading edge.
The pillars of the
two walls were certainly intended to give the free-standing courtyard
wall greater stability. But their purpose cannot have been limited to
this. Rather, I believe that they also served to support a roof
protecting the wall. Without such protection, the unfired bricks would
not have long withstood the effects of rain and sun. At the same time,
the pillars and the roof also created niche-like rooms that surrounded
the courtyard like an inner hall and were excellent for storing a wide
variety of objects. In the younger wall B, the latter purpose was more
perfectly achieved than in the older one, because the niches were of
greater depth. The distance between the wall dividers is around 3.20m,
so it is just big enough for a beam to carry the roof to be easily laid
from one pillar to the other.
It is easy to imagine that these
niche-shaped rooms were the forerunners of the inner porticoes of the
courts, as they appear in the palace of Tiryns and later in the Greek
dwelling-house. Free-standing columns took the place of the short
transverse walls, a process which is also observed in the oldest Doric
temple, in the Heraion of Olympia.
It
may be mentioned here that on the older retaining wall of the old gate
FN north of gate II C there are also similar protruding pillars (p.85),
which are 1.05 m thick and have a projection of 1.00 m at intervals of
only 2.20m are arranged. The niches here were later filled with masonry.
Among
the inner buildings of the castle, House II A, located opposite the
gate, occupies the first place due to its location, dimensions and
construction. It is a stately building with a clear width of about
10.20 m and a wall thickness of 1.40 - 1.45 m. At first we took it for
a temple because its plan resembles that of the simplest Greek temple.
But after the castles of Tiryns and Mykenai had been excavated and a
similarly designed large building was found in them as the center of
the ruler's residence, which undoubtedly formed the main hall of these
castles, or the Megaron, this allowed us to interpret the large
building II A of our castle as the Megaron of the Ruler's
Residence.
Unfortunately, only its front part, a large square
porch, is so well preserved that there is no doubt about its shape. The
rear part is at least half destroyed forever by the large north-south
ditch. We therefore do not know how deep the main hall adjoining the
vestibule was. Its right side wall is still over 20m long, but its rear
part is in such a sad condition that even the foundations can no longer
tell where the north-western wall used to be. The hall may have been
even longer than the side wall now survives.
In our fig.23 and
on Plates III and IV I have given the hall a depth of about 20 m,
because I thought I could see the remains of a transverse wall
foundation there, and because the length of the hall, due to the
arrangement of the crossbars of the side wall to be discussed below,
must have been a multiplum of around 4m. One could also think of a
length of about 16m, especially since the large curve inside, which can
be interpreted as a hearth, would meet almost exactly in the middle of
the room, but at a distance of 16m from the door wall there is no
transverse wall to be seen; nor does it seem possible to me that it has
been completely destroyed. With great probability we can therefore give
the hall a length of about 20 m with a width of 10.20 m, so that it has
the simple ratio 1:2.
We are still less informed about the rear
end of the building. Was there a third room, or is there just an
opisthodome-like hall behind the main hall, or nothing at all? A
definite answer is not possible. However, I don't want to completely
suppress the assumption that the strong wall foundations in C 3 still
belong to our building, because one of them lies in the direction of
the left longitudinal wall of II A. In this case another hall or (p.86)
several smaller rooms could have been located behind the main hall.
Although this would make the building more similar to building II B, I
consider the assumption to be improbable. Our addition of a rear
closure with two projecting piers forming a flat halo is based on an
imitation of Buildings II E and II F of similar design; this
reconstruction is not secure.
Before we discuss the peculiar
construction of the walls of II A, in order to complete the ground
plan, the altar, the door between the porch and the hall, and finally
the parastades (pilasters) of the porch must be described.
During
the excavation in 1882, we noticed a 0.07 m higher rounding in the
floor of the hall, which is formed by a screed of clay, the diameter of
which I measured at the time to be 4 m. Only a small part of the
circle, also made of cement, could be seen, but just enough to
calculate its diameter. This low curve probably formed a step around a
middle, higher round building. By analogy with the same structures in
the palaces of Tiryns and Mycenae, there can be little doubt that this
is a hearth of the type used to be in the Megaron according to Homer.
Unfortunately, nothing more could be determined about his form.
Likewise,
nothing could be determined about the other furnishings of the stately
hall. The screed is too badly damaged to be able to tell us the
location of benches or other equipment by means of any kind of standing
marks. It was not even possible to be certain whether wooden pillars
once stood on either side of the hearth, although such are secured by
preserved bases in Tiryns and Mycenae.
Due to the great width
of the hall, the former presence of inner columns to support the heavy
earthen roof seemed necessary to us during the excavation. But we
searched in vain for column bases or their foundations. However, for a
time we believed that we had found the foundation of an inner row of
columns in the 0.90 m thick wall, which runs parallel to the right side
wall at a distance of 1.60 m (cf. Table IV or Photo 3) , all the more
so since a similar wall later appeared in the vestibule next to the
left side wall. However, it soon turned out that both foundation walls
belonged to older buildings. They do not match in their dimensions, nor
do they show the construction of the side walls (the stones are
significantly smaller), nor do they reach up to the floor of the hall.
On the contrary, as we could see everywhere, it ran over the older
walls without paying any attention to them. The facts therefore do not
entitle us to add internal supports to the hall.
A 4 m wide door
formed the connection of the hall with the vestibule. No stone doorstep
and no base stones for doorposts have been found (p.87); they also
never seem to have existed. A wooden cladding or framing of the door is
secured both by preserved remains of charcoal and by a foundation of
small stones. We do not know whether there was a door lock with wooden
wings. Perforated bricks for the rotating door pivots are missing.
Given the large width of the opening, the closure may also have been
effected by a large carpet.
In the porch, the parastades
are remarkable, with which the two side walls end in front. Not only
their base stones, but also burned remains of their wooden posts were
brought to light during the excavation. On the eastern stones, we could
even see the charcoal showing the former presence of 6 vertical wooden
posts, about 0.24 m thick, standing side by side, which once covered
and protected the face of the 1.44 m thick wall. The form of the base
stone and its dimensions are seen in (p.88) figs.26 and 27, of which
the latter gives a perspective view of the base and the adjoining wall,
the former a completed geometrical elevation of the wall and the
parastades.
 The well-finished surface of the base is 1.66m
long and 0.36m wide, protruding from the walls by about 0.11m on either
side. The base also surpasses the 6 vertical wooden beams by the same
amount, the positions of which are indicated by dots in fig.27.
According to our addition (in fig.26), the upright posts, in order to
gain some support, could only have been connected to the longitudinal
timbers of the brick wall, to be discussed presently.
Fig.26: Elevation of the wall and the wooden parastas, in a restored condition.
 But it is very
probable that, for want of a firm connection with the base, they were
still connected to each other and to the wall by cross-pieces; such
crossbars have actually been found on the wooden parastades of Greek
brick buildings (cf. Olympia, volume 11,
p. 32). Unfortunately, the ends of our brick wall are so badly damaged
that we could not be certain of the existence of crossbars next to the
parastades. If one wants to add crossbars here, they are probably most
correctly assumed in a manner similar to that which we shall soon see
at the inner corners of the building.
Fig.27: View of the base stone and the adjacent wall section.
The
great importance of these wooden pillars of the prehistoric palace for
the history of the development of ancient architecture was already
pointed out in the book Troy
(1882). The parastas of Greek architecture has a form that could not be
explained from stone construction. In the past one sought in vain for a
reason for the difference between the breadths of their various sides.
The Trojan finds teach us why. The parastas or ante of the Doric style
of building is not derived from the stone building, rather it is merely
an imitation of the upright wooden posts of the old brick buildings.
Just as our wooden parastas had a width of 1.44m seen from the front,
but only 0.24m seen from the side, so corresponding differences recur
in many parastads on Greek buildings of the classical period.
Between
the two parastades, free-standing columns are expected as the front end
of the vestibule and to support the ceiling, namely two wooden columns
in the style of the Megaron. One could also think of a single pillar.
But there were no traces of either one or more columns. There are no
base stones, and no masonry foundations have been found either. One may
even claim that both never existed. For otherwise, with the presence of
so many parastade bases, there would have to have been some round
column base in the whole area of the II stratum, even if it was no
longer in its old place. We are therefore bound to believe that there
were no columns at all between the parastades, and that the
ceiling-bearing (p.89) beam, the epistyle, was supported only by the
two parastades. One might perhaps surmise that simple wooden posts,
without a stone base and even without a foundation, might have taken
the place of the columns; but I do not believe in it, for I cannot
imagine that the free-standing columns should not have had foundation
stones, while so many parastades were furnished with carefully worked
stone bases.
However,
the distance between the two parastades is the significant 10.20 m, and
the epistyle beam must therefore have carried itself freely over this
great length. Of course, this has only been possible using a very
strong wooden beam. Also, this front beam must not have supported the
other ceiling beams of the vestibule. Rather, these must all have been
parallel to the front beam and grooved on the two side walls. The same
arrangement is of course to be assumed for the ceiling beams of the
main hall. Because of the lack of internal supports, any other
direction of the beams is excluded here.
According to the
distance between the deck beams, we have to assume thicker or thinner
crossbeams above them for supporting the layer of earth forming the
roof and the associated reeds. If the beams were very close together,
the crosspieces could perhaps be omitted altogether and a layer of
reeds would suffice. The general section (see p. 41) has already shown
that the latter was certainly used in our construction and that a
horizontal earthen roof can be assumed without any hesitation. In
addition to the reeds and the earth of the ceiling, large pieces of
burned wooden beams and several thick copper nails were found in the
liner of the vestibule, which certainly served to connect the former
(see Troy 1882, p. 98). One of these nails weighed more than a kilogram.
A
number of slabs of slate may have been used for the roof, specifically
for the manufacture of the cornice, fragments of which were found in
large numbers, especially in the courtyard between II A and II C. To
explain them as floor slabs (cf. Troy
1882, p. 97) does not seem permissible to me, because then some of them
would have had to be found in their correct place. I have not seen
large masses of such plates, which Schliemann mentions.
 Thick
and strong walls were required to support the strong deck beams and
heavy earthen roof, and indeed our building has such. On deep
foundations of large, up to 10 m long stones, a stone base rises and
above it the approximately 1.44 m thick wall made of mud bricks, which
still contained a full framework of wooden beams for greater strength.
The section in fig.28 shows what has survived from the wall.
Fig.28: Section through the brick wall of II A.
The stone
foundation is 1.70 m wide and 1.30 m deep and made of completely
untreated stones with earth mortar. The stone (p.90) base is narrower,
only the width of the top brick wall. At the beginning of the building
(at the parastades of the vestibule) it is two tiers high (see figs.26
and 27), gradually becoming lower towards the inside, and in the main
hall consists of only one tier (see fig.28).
The
brick wall itself is made of very large bricks, 0.66 to 0.69 m long and
0.44 to 0.46 m wide. Their height is an average of 0.12m. A lot of
crushed straw is mixed into the yellowish clay from which the bricks
were formed. The mortar is made of similar clay and also shows the
clear traces of straw mixed in, but it was finer. The joint thickness
varies between 0.01 and 0.03 m, but sometimes reaches double the
thickness in the case of wooden beams. As already mentioned (p. 39),
the bond is made by laying the bricks lengthwise in one layer and
widthwise in the next. Two bricks of 0.69 m correspond to 3 bricks of
0.46 m and both groups together with the joints and the outer plaster
form the wall thickness of 1.41 - 1.45 m.
In the lowest and
every fourth layer beyond, wooden beams were walled in on the outside,
which had a width of 0.30 - 0.35 m. Their height can no longer be
measured directly, because the upper bricks broke off and sank down
after the beams were burnt; but it can be calculated to be at least
0.15m and seems to have been even higher in some places. The timbers
were not hewn evenly, but irregularly and a little thicker at one end
than at the other. The outer stucco of the wall, made of the same clay
as the mortar and a covering of clay, went over the wooden beams, so
that during the wall's existence these could not be seen either inside
or outside the house.
In addition to the longitudinal beams,
there were also transverse beams in the wall, the arrangement of which
is illustrated by the ground plan and elevation in fig.29. Their
distances from each other, measured from center to center, are about
4.10 m; only where the transverse wall goes off is the distance reduced
to such an extent that it corresponds to the thickness of the wall.
Incidentally, the transverse and longitudinal timbers are not in the
same layers, but alternate with each other. Layer 1 contains the
longitudinal timbers, layers 2 to 4 the transverse timbers, layer 5
again the longitudinal (p.91) timbers and so on.
 Since the
parts of the wall in which the crossbars sat are particularly badly
damaged, we were not able to determine the shape of the crossbars and
their dimensions with absolute certainty. In all probability they had
the dimensions chosen in the drawing, so that two timbers corresponded
to the difference in height of two longitudinal beams. In this way, all
the timbers formed a solid, self-supporting framework, the cavities of
which were filled with bricks. In reality, however, the wooden
framework was not built first and then the gaps between the timbers
were lined with bricks, as is the case with modern partition walls, but
bricks and wood were built in at the same time, and so the wall
gradually grew higher, layer by layer.
Fig.29: Longitudinal wall and transverse wall of building II A. Unfired bricks with wooden beams.
The use of wooden anchors within the masonry made of mud
bricks and also quarry stones was a very popular form of construction
throughout antiquity. We encounter it in the descriptions of ancient
writers, we find it again in Egyptian buildings (e.g. in the palace of
Amenhotep IV), in the castles of the Mycenaean period, in ancient Greek
temples, in ancient and medieval fortress walls and in modern-day
dwellings . It must be a very practical design, since it has been used
for thousands of years. In fact, the timbers serve as excellent (p.92)
anchors for holding the walls together in poor subsoil and inferior
building materials, and protecting them from cracks and sinking. They
are still in use today, especially in areas that are hit by earthquakes. When
the castle fell, the bricks around the beams, especially near the
crossbars and the parastades, were burned to solid bricks by the
many pieces of burning wood. However, so that one does not believe that
the bricks were laid as finished bricks, but were really originally
unfired, I refer to the double fact that near the wood the mortar in
the joints and the clay plaster on the outside of the wall, in the same
way as the bricks, are fired to terracotta, and that in some places
there are still completely unfired mudbricks. How big the embers of the
fire were, we can still see in many cases on the bricks, on the wall
plaster and on the floor screed; their surfaces have melted in places
from the heat and are now covered with a glaze. The smoke from the fire
also penetrated the unburned bricks and the earth under the screed,
turning them black in places.
The height of the side walls and
Parastaden and thus the interior height of the hall and antechamber is
not known. Nor do we have any means of calculating them in any way. In
view of the great width of the hall, we can only assume it to be at
least 4-5 m. Nor are we informed about the ordering of windows and
openings to exhaust the smoke from hearths. If there were openings in
the walls of the hall, they can only have been made in their upper part
below the ceiling, because they must have been above the roofs of the
neighboring buildings. Possibly also, as I think I must assume for the
Megara of Tiryns and Mycenae, there was a hole in the ceiling above the
hearth, which was covered with a small roof higher up; between the two
roofs the smoke could easily escape through window-like openings and
the light could penetrate freely.
 Photo 11: The megaron A of layer II and its surroundings. Photo 11 gives us a good overview of the uncovered remains of
building II A, an image taken from the height of the cone of earth that
remained standing in E 6. In the lower right corner one can see the
base a of the parastas and next to it the stone pedestal b of the
eastern side wall of II A. Small remains of the mudbrick wall above the
pedestal are preserved at c. This is better visible on the other side
of the high cone of earth about in the middle of the picture at k,
brickwork can also be seen in front of the man standing there. At
m and n are the ends of the transverse wall enclosing the vestibule,
and between them lay the main door to the hall. A remnant of the
western (p.93) side wall can still be seen on the left at p. At the
very left edge of the picture one looks into the large north-south
ditch, to which one half of building II A fell victim, and notices
several pieces of the walls of the first layer, which are already known
to us, deep down on its floor. Opposite,
on the right edge of the picture, you can see individual walls made of
small stones belonging to other buildings of the 2nd layer. They are
partially covered by the high cone of earth that has remained standing,
in which one can clearly see the remains of house walls from the
younger strata. At d, earth and fire debris survive about 1m high and
still cover part of the floor of the porch. Above
it are two pieces of wall f of the III layer, even higher such a g of
the IV layer, higher again a small remnant h of the V castle, and at
the very top there is still rubble from the top layer. Finally, if we
take a look at the background of the picture, we see the fertile
meadows of the Simoeis-Thaies with some grazing animals and (far right)
large haystacks. The plain is bounded by the Rhoiteion range of hills,
overgrown with olive trees, and further to the left by the Hellespont,
which unfortunately cannot be seen because of the great distance.
[Continue to Chapter 2, part 6]
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