At Orchomenus in Boeotia are the ruins of a tomb scarcely inferior in size to the “Treasury of Atreus” and once scarcely less magnificent.  Here too, besides the “bee-hive” construction, there was a lateral, rectangular chamber—­a feature which occurs only in these two cases.  Excavations conducted here by Schliemann in 1880-81 brought to light the broken fragments of a ceiling of greenish schist with which this lateral chamber was once covered.  Fig. 28 shows this ceiling restored.  The beautiful sculptured decoration consists of elements which recur in almost the same combination on a fragment of painted stucco from the palace of Tiryns.  The pattern is derived from Egypt.

The two structures just described were long ago broken into and despoiled.  If they stood alone, we could only guess at their original purpose.  But some other examples of the same class have been left unmolested or less completely ransacked, until in recent years they could be studied by scientific investigators.  Furthermore we have the evidence of numerous rock-cut chambers of analogous shape, many of which have been recently opened in a virgin condition.  Thus it has been put beyond a doubt that these subterranean “beehive” chambers were sepulchral monuments, the bodies having been laid in graves within.  The largest and best built of these tombs, if not all, must have belonged to princely families.

Even the dwelling-houses of the chieftains who ruled at Tiryns and Mycenae are known to us by their remains.  The palace of Tiryns occupied the entire southern end of the citadel, within the massive walls above described.  Its ruins were uncovered in 1884- 85.  The plan and the lower portions of the walls of an extensive complex of gateways, open courts, and closed rooms were thus revealed.  There are remains of a similar building at Mycenae, but less well preserved, while the citadels of Athens and Troy present still more scanty traces of an analogous kind.  The walls of the Tirynthian palace were not built of gigantic blocks of stone, such as were used in the citadel wall.  That would have been a reckless waste of labor.  On the contrary, they were built partly of small irregular pieces of stone, partly of sun-dried bricks.  Clay was used to hold these materials together, and beams of wood ("bond timbers”) were laid lengthwise here and there in the wall to give additional strength.  Where columns were needed, they were in every case of wood, and consequently have long since decomposed and disappeared.  Considerable remains, however, were found of the decorations of the interior.  Thus there are bits of what must once have been a beautiful frieze of alabaster, inlaid with pieces of blue glass.  A restored piece of this, sufficient to give the pattern, is seen in Fig. 29.  Essentially the same design, somewhat simplified, occurs on objects of stone, ivory, and glass found at Mycenae; and in a “bee-hive” tomb of Attica.  Again, there are fragments of painted