poured upon their heads, after which they are slaughtered over a vase, and the vessel is then carried up to the top of the pile and the blood poured upon the Akinákes.'1 In the Scythian graves of Russian Cimmeria (the Crimea) and of Tartary, the Swords are mostly bronze. Dr. M'Pherson, however, found one of iron (1839) in the great tomb of Kertch, the old Milesian Panticapæum, so called from its river, Anticapes; it was a short dagger-like thrusting blade, resembling the old Persian, with mid-rib and curved handle. In the days of Attila, a Sword, supposed to be one of the ancient Scythian weapons alluded to by the Greek, was accidentally found, and was made an object of worship.3 Janghíz (Genghis) Khan when raised to the throne repeated this sacrificial observance, which, however, can scarcely be called a 'Mongolic custom.' 4 It seems common to the Sauromatæ (northern Medes and Slavs), the Alans, the Huns, and the tribes that wandered over the Steppes. 'Their oaths,' says The Scythians also swore by the emblem of Mars. Herodotus, are accompanied by the following ceremonies. Into a large earthen bowl (úλ§) pouring wine, they mingle with it blood of the parties to the oath, who wound themselves superficially with a knife or an awl; then they dip into the bowl an Akinákes, and arrows, and a battle-axe (sagaris), and a javelin (akontion), all the while repeating manifold prayers. Lastly, the two contracting parties drink each a draught from the bowl, as do also the most worthy of their followers.' In the 'Anabasis,'' the Greeks swear by dipping a Sword, and the barbarians a lance, into the victim's blood. 6 8 So far these ancient authors: we must now see how they are confirmed by modern authorities. Dr. Schliemann's investigations at Mycena are the more interesting, as the finds are supposed by him to be synchronous with those of Burnt Troy; and they enable us to compare the former in her prosperity with the latter in her exhaustion. The energetic explorer doughtily supports the use of copper for arms and utensils; and, with whole truth, makes it the staple metal of the heroic ages. As he found no tin at Mycena or in the great layer of copper scoriæ at Hisárlik (Troy), while 'Kassiteros' is repeatedly mentioned by Homer, he contends that the bronze of the Greek city was imported, and therefore rare and This word is erroneously translated 'Scymitar,' a weapon which, in its present shape, dates from about the rise of El-Islam. Rawlinson's Herodotus, 60. The learned commentator quotes Müller, Hist. Græc. (iv. 429), Amm. Marcellinus (xxxi. 2), Jornandes (De Reb. Geticis, cap. xxxv.), Niebuhr's Scythia (p. 46, E. Tr.), &c. In vol. iii. 60, he gives a ground-plan of the tomb, whose chief place also yielded a gold shield, a whip, a bow, a bow-case, five statuettes, and an iron Sword. The space by the side contained a woman's bones, with a diadem and ornaments in gold and electrum. Other barrows in Russia and Tartary showed bodies resting upon sheets of pure gold weighing forty pounds, with bronze weapons and ornaments set with rubies expensive. Unfortunately he did not analyse the thin copper wire which carried the necklace-beads. It is a new sensation to descend with Dr. Schliemann into the old Mycenian tombs where sixteen or seventeen corpses had been simultaneously interred (?). Sepulchre No. 1, attributed to Agamemnon and his two heralds,' produced a variety of interesting articles, especially the golden shoulder-belt (TEλaμov) that decorated the mummy. My photograph shows it attached to a fragmentary two-edged Sword. Between the middle and the southern body lay a heap of broken bronze blades, which may have represented sixty whole Swords: some FIG. 241.-GOLD SHOULDER-BELT, WITH FRAGMENT OF Two- 3 bore traces of gilding, and several had gold pins at the handle. Two blades lay to the right of the body, and their ornamentation strikingly resembled the description in the Iliad.' The handle of the larger Sword (No. 460) is of bronze, thickly plated with intaglio'd gold; and a broad plate of the same metal, similarly worked, passes round the shoulders of the Sword. The wooden scabbard must have been adorned with golden studs and a long broad plate (fig. 244), shaped somewhat like a man, with a ring issuing from the neck. The other Sword in a similar style of art seems to have been even richer. Dr. Schliemann considers No. 463 (fig. 245) a remarkable battle-axe, of which fourteen were found in the 'Trojan treasure.' It is evidently a Sword 5 blade, and the same may be said of Nos. 464, 465 (fig. 244). At the distance of hardly more than one foot to the right of the mummy-body were found eleven bronze Swords; two were tolerably preserved, and both were of unusual size-two feet ten inches and three feet two inches. The golden plate of the wooden Sword-handle is given in p. 305. These weapons, also, had gold plates attached to the pommels by twelve pins of the same metal with large globular heads. The body at the south end of Sepulchre I. was provided with fifteen bronze Swords, of which ten had been placed at its feet. As a rule, the wooden sheaths had mouldered away, but the gold studs or bosses, which adorned them like the 1 II. i. 320. 8 ix, 29-31. 2 These illustrations are from photographs bought at Athens. P. 307. 5 Troy, 330-31. binding of a book, lay along the remains of the warriors who had wielded them The whetstone (Sepulchre I.) was of very fine sandstone. The fourth Sepulchre was almost as interesting in its supply of Swords. Excavating from east to west, the explorer came upon a heap a of more than twenty bronze blades, most of them with remnants of wooden scabbards and handles. The flat, round pieces of wood, and the small shield-like or button-like, disks of gold with intaglio-work, seemed to have been glued in unbroken series along both sides of the sheath; and, the largest being at the broad end with a gradual diminishing in size, had been gilt. The smith silver: he first plated the The golden cylinder (No. they determined the width. The wooden hilts bore similar plates of intaglio'd gold; the remaining space had been studded with gold pins, and gold nails were fixed in the large pommels of wood or alabaster. The quantity of fine golddust left no doubt that the handles and scabbards evidently did not possess the knowledge of gilding metal with copper and then the copper with gold. 366), adorned at both ends with a broad border of wave-lines, and the field filled with interwoven spirals, all intaglio-work, probably belonged to a heft of wood. Along the middle runs a row of pin-holes; there are four flat pin-heads, and in the centre is the head of a larger stud by which it is attached. Sepulchre IV. also yielded forty-six bronze Swords, more or less fragmentary. Of these ten were short and single-edged: their solid metal measured when entire from two to two feet three inches in length. The handles are too thick for mounting in wood, and the tangs end in rings for suspension to the 'Telamon' or to the girdle (Savn, Swornp). The chopper-shaped blade( fig. 246), evidently of Egyptian derivation, is broken at the point, which may incline either way, probably inwards. The other (fig. 246) is the normal leaf-shape. Dr. Schliemann believes that they explain the Homeric pάoyavov, which he makes 'perfectly synonymous with b FIG. 246. FIG. 247.-BRONZE FIG. 248.-Two-EDGED BRONZE SWORD LANCEHEAD (?), p. 279. AND DAGGer. (Sepulchre IV. Mycena.) Xiphos and Aor.' Here I venture to differ with him, holding the Phásganon probably to have been the short Egyptian Sword, used like the boomerang-blade for throwing as well as cutting. The double-edged weapon with the long narrow tube (avλós) was judged to be a dagger-knife, the hollow being intended to save weight; to me it appears a lancehead, and the attached ring seems to prove its use (fig. 247). The fragmentary twoedged blade of bronze (a fig. 249) shows a mid-rib broken by serrations intended either for ornament or for jagging the wound: the same toothings appear in another weapon (b fig. 249), which is supposed to be a dagger. No. 446 is a short two-edged 1 P. 279. blade showing at the shoulders, on either side, four large flat head-pins of gold. A gold plate extends all along the middle part of the blade on both sides, and fragments of the wooden sheath are visible in the middle as well as at the end. a We now come to the most startling part of the collection. It proves indubitably, if Dr. Schliemann's conclusions be correct, and if the blades' do not belong, as they may do, to a later date, that the highest form of Sword, which became the fashion during our sixteenth century, was known in B.C. 1200. It is a curious comment upon the fact, how soon perfection was reached in the 'White Arm,' compared with the slow progress of fire-arms, which had to await the invention of the self-igniting cartridge. Plate No. 445 (p. 281) gives a two-edged blade with a midrib, in fact the rapier, which can be used only for the point. It measures two feet seven inches (a fig. 250), and at the top are attached remnants of its wooden scabbard. The lower end of its neighbour (b fig. 250) is adorned with three flat golden pin-heads on either face. No. 448, measuring two feet ten inches long, is very well preserved; by its side lies its alabaster pommel (fig. 249). No. 449 has retained part of its heft, which is gold-plated and attached by gold pins. Vertical lines of intaglio work run along the blade and give it a truly beautiful aspect. Dr. Schliemann (p. 283) notices the length, in some cases exceeding three feet, compared with the narrowness of these grand blades. He adds, 'So far as I know, Swords of this shape have never been found before.' I would refer him to the Villanova (Etruscan) blade described in chapter viii. SWORDS AND ALABASTER KNOB. (Sepulchre IV. Mycena.) The fourth Sepulchre also yielded three shoulderbelts of gold. No. 354 measures four feet one and a half inch long by one and seven-eighths inch in width (fig. 241). On either side of the band is a narrow edging FIG. 249. Two-EDGED BRONZE made by turning down the gold plate: the field is occupied by a row of rosettes, six oval petals surrounding a central disk and the whole encircled by dots or points. At one end are two apertures in the shape of hour-glasses; these served to attach the clasp to the other extremity, as is shown by the small hole and two cuts (p. 308). The second 'Telamon,' a plain band four feet six inches long by two to two and one-third 1 Jähns (pp. 91, 92) cannot but suspect that many of the weapons which show a marked Oriental cast are not Atreidan but Carian. This tribe about the thirteenth century B.C. spread itself, under the mythical king Minos, over the Ægean Archipelago, and colonised even the seaboard of Greece. Such words as Hymettos, Lykabettos, &c. are supposed to be Carian. The symbol of their gods was the doubleaxe, so common in Mycena; and, as Thucydides said, their practice was to bury weapons with the dead, which was not customary in Greece. |