It is true that in some humbler structures of the same type, such as those at Menídi and Thoricus, clear evidences of inhumation have been found; but I question whether it is permissible to draw from this fact the inference that those magnificent structures also, the so-called Treasuries of Atreus and of Minyas, were in reality tombs. It would seem reasonable to suppose that dwelling-places for the dead beneath the earth and for earth-deities may have been constructed on the same plan, but that the abodes dedicated to immortals were more imposing than those destined for dead men. This hypothesis appears to me more consistent with the evidence of the actual sites at Mycenae and Orchomenos than the commonly accepted view that the inner chamber of the ‘Treasury of Atreus’ was a place of burial. ‘In the centre of the Mycenaean chamber,’ says Schuchhardt[167], ‘there is an almost circular depression three feet in diameter and two feet in depth, cut into the rocky ground. In spite of its unusual shape, we must recognise in it the actual site of the grave.’ Was it a royal posture to lie curled up like a cat? And if so, what of a similar depression in the floor of the ‘Treasury of Minyas’ at Orchomenos? ‘Almost in the centre of the treasure-room’--I again quote Schuchhardt[168]--‘was a long hole in the level rock, nine inches deep, fifteen inches broad and nineteen inches long, which’--must be recognised as the sepulchre of a royal baby? No, our faith is not to be so severely taxed;--‘which must have served to secure some monument.’ May we not, with more consistency, extend the same explanation to Mycenae? And what then were the monuments? May they not have been images of the deity set up in the most natural place, the centre of the outer or the inner sanctuary?
Again, the actual shape of the buildings is important. Ethnologists tell us that it is ultimately derived from a type of dwelling commonly occupied by primitive man, a circular wattle-hut with conical top; or even more directly, as some would have it, from a similarly shaped abode which the ancient Phrygians used to excavate in the ground, constructing the top of withies laced over beams converging to the apex and covered over with earth, while they tunnelled out an approach from one side where the ground sloped conveniently away[169]. From this it is argued that the domed chambers of Mycenae must be tombs, on the ground that ‘men in all ages have fashioned the dwellings of the dead in accordance with those of the living; but the dead are conservative, and long after a new generation has sought a new home and a new pattern for its houses, the habitations of the dead are still constructed in ancestral fashion[170].’ I readily admit conservatism in all religious matters; but how does the argument touch Mycenae? Archaeologists, and among them Schuchhardt himself[171], are agreed that the shaft-graves in the citadel are earlier in date than the bee-hive structures of the lower town. There was therefore a breach in the continuity of the ancestral fashion. Reversion to a disused fashion is a very different thing from conservatism in upholding an unbroken usage.