fifth century? Is it one of those ȧva@nμaтa maλaid of which Timaeus spoke, or was it placed subsequently in the temple of the Sirens, being merely a copy of a statue which was in existence there from the fifth and sixth centuries when the Greeks of Sicily colonized Sorrento? 1 This is a question which the archaeologists in art have to solve. For my part I have confined myself to observing that the discovery of this monument justifies us in believing that we have solved the disputed problem of the topography of the temple. The marble fragment was presented by me to the National Museum of Naples, where any one may study at his leisure those characteristics which tend to determine whether it is really an archaic work or an ancient copy of a monument of the archaic period. ETTORE PAIS. 1 Diod. V, 7; Eust. ad Dion. Perieg. vv. 461, 476. Institute THE PALACE AT NIPPUR NOT MYCENAEAN BUT HELLENISTIC IN the December number of this Journal (1904) Mr. Clarence S. Fisher publishes an article entitled "The Mycenaean Palace at Nippur." The building in question was discovered in the University of Pennsylvania excavations of 1889-1894, and published by Dr. John P. Peters in the American Journal of Archaeology [First Series], Vol. X, 1895, pp. 439 ff., and in his Nippur, Second Campaign, 1897, Chapter VI. Dr. Peters for a long time supposed this building to be of late date "not earlier in any event than the Persian period and probably influenced in the use of columns by Greek art." The discovery of some Cassite tablets outside the palace has, however, changed his opinion and has led him, finally, to assign the palace "somewhere between 1450 and 1250 B.C." A very different opinion is held by Professor Hilprecht (Explorations in Bible Lands, 1903, p. 337), who assigns it "without hesitation to the Seleucido-Parthian period, about 250 B.C." When we consider how little is known of Cassite architecture on the one hand or of Parthian on the other, and how scanty are the data furnished by the earlier excavations, it is not strange that two Oriental scholars, without literary or epi graphic evidence, should differ in their judgment of architecture by a thousand years. But now that the excavations have not only enlarged our knowledge of the plan of the building but have furnished us with architectural details of well-defined form and character, we are in a position to judge more securely of the period to American Journal of Archaeology, Second Series. Journal of the 7 which the palace should be assigned. The recent excavations have brought to light some objects apparently Mycenaean, found like the Cassite tablets outside of the palace and on the same level. These appear to have suggested to Mr. Fisher that the palace also is Mycenaean. This hypothesis gained weight with him as he discovered Parthian burials and late Greek objects in the strata above the palace, and he then attempts to prove that the palace is Mycenaean in plan, and that the architectural details must be Mycenaean also. Into the argument based upon strata we cannot enter here. Inferences based upon the levels where objects are found have proved valueless in so many cases that we needs must have evidence of indubitable superposition, as, for example, when walls are built upon old foundations, before we can feel assured of chronological succession. The evidence provided by the plan and details of the building can be more readily discussed by those who have not visited the site. Mr. Fisher compares the plan with that of Tiryns, pointing out a number of resemblances. Most important of these is the setting of the megaron with its prodomos behind a peristyle court. This would indeed seem striking if such a plan were specifically Mycenaean. But Greek houses in general followed essentially this disposition to the end of the Hellenistic period. Even the houses of Pompeii differ but little in type. The plan of the palace at Nippur betrays its late origin in the fully developed square peristyle with compound piers at the angles, and in the elliptical columns of the prothyron. In all the Mycenaean sites thus far excavated, so far as I am aware, no examples have been found of compound piers or of elliptical columns. But in the Hellenistic Agora at Priene the corner piers are provided with engaged columns to adapt them to the rectangular peristyle, and in the Hellenistic Agora at Pergamon elliptical shafts are still standing. The later history of these Hellenistic inventions may be traced in Oriental as well as in Occidental architecture. More startling is it to find Mr. Fisher describing the two pedestals at the entrance of the palace as Mycenaean. These pedestals have convex faces of graceful curves, impossible in Mycenaean times, and difficult to parallel in Greek work of the best period. Moreover, their general form and their base and cap mouldings recall well-established Hellenistic types. Here a Lesbian kyma surmounts an ovolo, and we might expect to find a painted leaf-and-dart above the egg-and-dart, as Hellenistic sculptors were wont to carve them upon similarly formed and related mouldings. Mycenaean architects constructed buildings of crude brick and of wood and made little use of stone except for city walls and for foundations. Mouldings like these have their origin in the decoration of fine stone and marble buildings, and are entirely lacking in Mycenaean architecture. The columns at Nippur also betray by their forms a nonMycenaean character. The shafts are described as cylindrical for the lower third, from which point they taper toward the top. This type of shaft may be found in the Hellenistic temple of Apollo at Didyma near Miletus, and in later examples at Pompeii and elsewhere. It was probably adopted because this form suggested the traditional entasis and, at the same time, avoided the difficulties involved in calculating and executing it. The Mycenaean shaft had no such past history and presents no such form. If we may judge of free-standing columns by relief representations, the Mycenaean shaft tapered uniformly and from the top downward. The capital of the column with its low and slightly projecting echinus has little or no resemblance to the Mycenaean torus capital, and is equally far removed from the early Doric overhanging echinus. Nor has it the strong echinus of the classic Doric capital. To find analogous forms we must descend to the Hellenistic period, when, as in the Agora at Priene, the echinus has often a curved profile, not widely overhanging, nor strong and massive, but crowning the shaft like the kymation of the Ionic capital. We are told that above the palace Dr. Hilprecht has recognized Parthian graves ranging in date from 250 B.C. to 226 A.D. It follows that he must now assign the palace to a date earlier than the earliest of these Parthian graves. But that the palace is, as Mr. Fisher declares, one thousand years earlier than these graves, is refuted by the distinctly Hellenistic forms afforded by the architectural details. PRINCETON, February 9, 1905. ALLAN MARQuand. |