Page:Troja by Heinrich Schliemann.djvu/136

and as remains of charcoal still exist there, it is evident that the lateral faces of the doors were dressed with some other material, most probably with wood.

It deserves particular attention that to a height of 0.50 m. above the floor the clay walls of neither temple are vitrified; which we explain by the evident fact that the material of the terraced roof, the clay and the charred wood, fell in the conflagration and covered up the floors to this height. In many places even the upper part of the walls is not vitrified, but only much burnt: this must be attributed to the larger or smaller mass of burning wood which fell at different places. Very remarkable is the mass of small shells found in the bricks, and which must have been contained in the clay of which they were made. These shells are invariably black in the baked bricks, and have retained their natural colour in those which have not been exposed to the great heat. It is uncertain whether there was still a fourth room on the north-west side, for it cannot be proved by the existing fragments of foundations.

Although the division of the temple B into three rooms answers in a striking manner to the division of the house of Paris, according to Homer's description,

"they [the architects of Troy] built him a chamber (thalamos), a dwelling-room (dôma) and a vestibule (aulé)," nevertheless the reasons given above seem to prove, with the greatest probability, that both the edifices, B as well as A, were temples. Both these temples have been destroyed in a fearful catastrophe, together with all the other buildings of the second settlement.

At the north-west end of the temple B, large remains of more ancient house-walls stand out from beneath its floor,