Page 141 - The Art & Architecture of the Ancient Orient_Neat

PART TWO:
THE PERIPHERAL REGIONS
During the better part of the third millennium b.c. Asia Minor produced nothing
that can be included without qualification in a history of art. Works of sculpture were
apparently unknown, excepting at Hissarlik, the site of Troy, on the Hellespont, where
a limestone stele carved with the rough delineation of a human face has been found.2
Architecture was purely utilitarian; it used rough stones, or sun-dried bricks on stone
foundations. Town walls and gates built of these materials assumed impressive dimen­
sions.3 And there is one feature of domestic architecture which cannot be ignored here.
In western Anatolia, houses were designed in a manner which gained great significance
in the second and first millennium b.c. At Hissarlik (Figure 43) and also in the closely
related settlement at Thermi in Lesbos,4 the private houses show a peculiar and very rigid

Figure 43. Gates and palaces in the second city at Hissarlik (Troy)

plan. It consists of two, or at most three, rooms placed one behind the other. The main
chamber had a hearth, generally in the centre; an ante-chamber or portico was placed
between this and the forecourt or street, and another small apartment was sometimes
found at the back of the main room. The house was, therefore, long and narrow, and
the unit was never expanded sideways or connected with other units. If more accommo­
dation was required, a number of units were placed side by side. This very peculiar type
of house is an early version of the Homeric house, the megaron. It is also found in pre­
historic Thessaly5 and possibly farther to the north, in Transvylvania, and it clearly be-
the western elements of north-west Anatolian culture. There would be no
longs to
mention these rough dwellings here, were it not for the splendid megara built
reason to
at Tiryns and Mycenae 1,500 years later. Moreover, the Greek temple in antis is based on
the same plan. But these temples and the Mycenaean palaces adhere striedy to one stan­
dard arrangement. In prehistoric times die megaron was used more tentatively; for in-

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