Читать книгу Incised Drawings from Early Phrygian Gordion - Lynn E. Roller - Страница 11

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Excavation of the Incised Stones

In 1956 the excavations conducted by Rodney S. Young on the Citadel Mound at Gordion began to clear an area of individual buildings forming part of a large architectural complex that lay underneath a thick layer of clay several meters deep. This level, marked by extensive signs of burned debris, would later be called the Early Phrygian Destruction Level¹¹ (Fig. 3). Excavation in the Destruction Level during previous seasons (1953–1955) had revealed significant architectural remains of an elaborate gate complex and a small courtyard inside the gate. As Young continued to clear the area inside the gate complex, a series of individual buildings began to emerge. The first to be uncovered was named the Burnt Phrygian Building, and the one next to it was called the West Phrygian House.¹² Each had a roughly similar plan, a long narrow structure with two rectangular rooms, a smaller room in front and a larger room behind it; entrance was through a door in the center of the front room, forming an interior line of sight through the front room into the larger room beyond it that emphasized the long axis of the building. This building type was called a megaron, a term borrowed from the language of the Homeric epics and also used to describe a similar arrangement of rooms forming the throne room complex found in several Mycenaean palaces on mainland Greece. Subsequent excavation of this area revealed that these buildings were only two of a whole series of similar structures that comprised the central architectural complex of the Early Phrygian Citadel. Because they were the first two megarons uncovered by Young’s excavation, the Burnt Phrygian Building was renamed Megaron 1 and the West Phrygian House was called Megaron 2.¹³

In the space between Megarons 1 and 2 were found a number of architectural blocks lying on the ground. Several of these blocks had pictures “scratched” (to use Young’s word) onto them, providing the first examples of stones with incised Phrygian drawings, or “doodle stones,” as they were informally called. Further clearing in the area revealed that other blocks with similar incised pictures were still in situ in the east wall of Megaron 2, the left wall as one faces the building.¹⁴ When the megaron was completely exposed in 1957, further examples of blocks with incised pictures were found in the upper part of the south, or back, wall of the building, and other examples were also noted in the west wall. In addition to these, incised stones were found on the walls of House Y, one of a pair of storage sheds behind Megaron 2, and at least three examples were recovered in the fill above the megaron. Thus, the great majority of the stones with incised drawings were associated with Megaron 2.

While the architecture of the Gordion Destruction Level will receive fuller publication and analysis elsewhere, the construction of Megaron 2 and the circumstances of its destruction have important bearing on our understanding of the incised stones, and so it will be useful to examine the building’s construction and period of use in some detail here. Megaron 2 is a standard megaron, approximately 19 × 13 m¹⁵ (Figs. 5, 6). There are two principal rooms, a smaller front room, approximately 3 m deep, which opened onto the courtyard and an interior room behind this, 10.85 × 9.74 m, clearly the main room because of its larger size. Access to the main room was only through the front room. In the space between the front room and the main room of the building there were two small rooms that were entered through doorways on either side of a short passageway connecting the two principal rooms. These seem too small to be useful living spaces, and may have been used as storage areas, or closets.

Megaron 2 did not have a stone front wall; instead the building’s front foundation was marked by a wooden beam, on which stood the base of a brick wall ca. 0.32 m wide, the width of a single brick. This suggests that the front wall was a light wall, perhaps one made of mud brick, or a wooden screen set into a mud brick base; alternatively the front room of the megaron could have been an open porch. In contrast, the two side walls and the rear wall of the building are quite substantial, over a meter thick, and were constructed from a combination of stone and timber (Figs. 4, 7). The outer and inner surfaces of these three walls were built of cut stone blocks inserted into a timber framework, with a rubble core in between. A soft off-white limestone, also known as poros, was used. The exposed faces of the blocks forming the exterior and interior surfaces of the building were smooth finished; the tops, bottoms, and ends of the blocks, i.e., the surfaces in contact with adjoining stones, were roughly finished; and the inner faces in contact with the rubble core were not finished at all. On many blocks even the exposed exterior surface is very uneven, with chisel marks still visible. Examples of complete or nearly complete blocks found in situ, such as the surviving stone courses in the south wall and southeast corner (Figs. 9, 12), indicate that while the stone blocks were all rectangular in shape, no standard size block was used.¹⁶ Instead, the blocks were of quite uneven dimensions, and many appear to have been cut as needed to fill the space available. The interior wall surfaces of the two main rooms were covered with thick lime plaster, but there is no evidence that the exterior walls were covered with plaster or any other finishing.

In addition to stone, timber was extensively used in the megaron’s construction. Both the outer and inner wall faces were set on horizontal timber beds, and horizontal beams were placed in each wall at varying heights throughout the wall’s elevation; these were joined to vertical timbers placed at irregular intervals along the full length of each wall. The stone blocks were set in vertical piers between the timbers. This technique can be seen in the south/back wall of the megaron, the best preserved wall in the structure (Fig. 12). Here a horizontal wooden timber was set approximately 0.75 m above the building’s timber foundation. Below this, vertical timbers divided the stone wall into vertical piers with three or four stones in one horizontal course of each pier. Above the horizontal timber, the vertical timbers were placed more frequently, and the stone piers in between them are only the width of a single block. The extensive use of timber in the building’s construction contributed substantially to its destruction by fire, as will be discussed in greater detail below.

When Megaron 2 was originally built, it was a free-standing building (Fig. 2). To its east stood Megaron 1 and to its west was a large enclosure wall that separated Megarons 1 and 2 and the courtyard in front of them from the inner section of the Citadel, in which stood Megaron 3 and several other buildings. At some point after the construction of Megaron 2, two small free-standing rectangular structures of timber and mud brick were built behind it (Fig. 11). Called Houses X and Y in the preliminary reports, these evidently served as storage sheds for the megaron.¹⁷ They were cleaned out and dismantled to their foundation level when a major new construction project forming the complex known as the Terrace Buildings to the southwest of Megaron 2 was started (Fig. 3).¹⁸ The units of the Terrace Buildings stood at a higher level than Megarons 1 and 2 and were supported by a large rubble fill that formed the terrace on which they stood (hence the name). The terrace extended up to the south (i.e., back) wall of Megaron 2 and along its west wall; here part of the enclosure wall between Megarons 2 and 3 was demolished to accommodate it, and the south and west walls of Megaron 2 were used as retaining walls for the terrace. At the same time, another wall was constructed extending from the southeast corner of Megaron 2 and running behind Megaron 1 to the southeast; this also served as a retaining wall for the Terrace Buildings. In addition, the space between Megarons 1 and 2 was partitioned into a series of small storage and work rooms, and a stone bench, ca. 0.70 m high and 0.80 m deep, was constructed along the east side of Megaron 2.¹⁹ The effect of these changes was to block off any access to the back of Megaron 2. The extensive changes to the area around Megaron 2 imply that the building remained in use over a period of several years, although the exact chronology of each phase of activity remains unknown.

It is clear that Megaron 2 played some important role in the elite Phrygian community. It was one of the largest freestanding buildings in the pre-Terrace phase of the Gordion Citadel, exceeded in size only by Megaron 3. The exterior walls of rectangular poros blocks would have created an impressive appearance, particularly in comparison with the mud brick and timber construction used in the neighboring Megaron 1. In addition, the building may well have had architectural sculpture: a stone akroterion and two sculpted lion protomes (Figs. 16–18) found in the fill above Megaron 2 were probably attached to the building, and the presence of these and potentially other sculptural ornaments would have added to the building’s imposing appearance.²⁰ The building’s interior had received special treatment also; the floor surfaces of both rooms were covered with mosaics made of brightly colored pebbles.²¹ The mosaic in the outer room was badly damaged, but the floor of the main room was much better preserved. Here the entire floor, apart from a central circular space for a hearth and a small, slightly sunken rectangular space at the southeast corner, was covered with a pebble mosaic consisting of irregularly distributed geometric designs (Figs. 7, 8). Taken together, these features of construction and decoration indicate usage for a special purpose. What that purpose was, however, remains unknown. Little information can be gained from the contents of the building, since it was largely empty at the time of its destruction. A few pottery vessels were found inside: a fragment of a coarse storage jar, a large trefoil jug containing nearly three hundred astragals, and a large storage jar found in the sunken area in the southeast corner.²² Two iron shovels were also found in the hearth in the main room.²³ These circumstances suggest that the building was only in occasional use, perhaps as an audience or reception hall for a ruler, or perhaps for dining and the entertainment that often accompanies a banquet. Some have suggested that Megaron 2 was a temple, but this seems unlikely. The building’s plan and the interior arrangement of its rooms are similar to those of most of the other megara in the Gordion Destruction Level, and no cult installations or objects were found in the building that would support identification as a cult structure.²⁴ The lack of a sturdy front wall to enclose the building clearly implies that Megaron 2 was not used for any purpose in which security was an issue, but beyond that, its role in the Citadel complex is uncertain.

Megaron 2 was destroyed by a major fire that devastated all the buildings on the western side of the Gordion Citadel complex, including Megarons 1 through 4 and the Terrace Building complex. The fire seems not to have crossed the courtyard in front of the megarons, and so the buildings on the east side of the Citadel complex were not damaged. The source of the fire is not clear. At the time of first discovery of the Destruction Level, Young suggested that the destruction was caused by a nomadic group, the Kimmerians, whose activities in central Anatolia are attested by Assyrian sources and by numerous references in Greek literature. According to Strabo, the Kimmerians captured Gordion, whereupon its ruler Midas (of Greek myth fame) committed suicide by drinking bull’s blood.²⁵ The death of Midas was placed by the early Christian chronographers Julius Africanus and Eusebios in 676 or 696 BCE, respectively.²⁶ From this association a date in the early 7th century BCE for the Destruction Level fire became widely accepted, and the cause of the destruction was assumed to be hostile enemy action, namely from the Kimmerians.

This hypothetical sequence of events is problematic for a number of reasons. The hypothesis relies on a literal reading of highly mythologized accounts of the Kimmerian destruction and the suicide of Midas that were written many centuries after the events they describe. Moreover, the character of the damage to the Early Phrygian Citadel is inconsistent with destruction caused by enemy action: no evidence for weapons was found, nor were there any human skeletal remains in the destruction debris. Recent investigations in the Middle Phrygian settlement levels indicate that rebuilding in the Citadel area was begun within the space of one to two years after the Destruction Level fire; the Middle Phrygian Citadel buildings were constructed following a plan extremely similar to that of the Early Phrygian Citadel and were set into the thick layer of clay brought in to cover the debris from the fire.²⁷ This circumstance strongly suggests that no major disruption or political dislocation separated the Early and Middle Phrygian Levels. Taken together, these circumstances indicate that the fire was not the result of hostile outside agency against Gordion, although the actual cause of the destruction still remains unclear.

Young’s proposed early 7th century BCE date for the Early Phrygian destruction is also questionable, since the date was determined by the tenuous link with the Kimmerian invasion and the later accounts of the suicide of Midas. A more accurate date is suggested by the results derived from C14 testing of organic matter (grain and wood) from the Destruction Level; these indicate a chronological range of 830–805 BCE for the destruction.²⁸ Since Megaron 2 was one of the buildings destroyed, this provides a reasonably certain terminus ante quem for the end of the building’s use. The complex history of the building and its surroundings suggests that Megaron 2 may have been in use for 50–80 years, yielding a date in the early to mid 9th century BCE for the building’s construction.²⁹

As noted above, stones with incised drawings were found on the exterior surface of the east, south, and west walls of Megaron 2. A large number of incised stones were found lying on the ground in the space between Megarons 1 and 2; these probably had fallen from the east wall when it collapsed as a result of the fire. Here the relationship of one block to another could not be ascertained. Near the southeast corner, where the east wall was supported by the rubble fill of the Terrace Building construction, the wall remained standing to a height of approximately 1.8 m. The position of the blocks in the standing wall was recorded, demonstrating that this portion of the wall consisted of four horizontal courses in the lower wall, then a horizontal wooden timber, and an unknown number of stone courses above the timber (Figs. 9, 10).³⁰ On this section of the wall, incised drawings can be found on virtually every block. The fill of the Terrace Building complex also preserved the south/back wall of Megaron 2. Here the entire width of the back wall was found standing to a height of ca. 1.5 m. When initially excavated, the wall was partially obscured by the two storage sheds, Houses X and Y, but the removal of the sheds revealed that there were no incised drawings on the stones below the large horizontal timber set into the back wall of the megaron.³¹ Above the horizontal timber, about three or four courses of stone in each of the vertical piers survived, and all of them were covered with incised drawings. Here too the position of the stone courses and the placement of the incised drawings on them were recorded in situ (Figs. 13, 14). This drawing furnishes our best evidence for the appearance of the incised drawings on the standing walls of the building.

The west wall of Megaron 2, in contrast, is the most poorly preserved section of the building; here the wall had been extensively plundered and the surfaces of the surviving blocks were extensively cracked and flaked.³² Several of the blocks found in the courses at ground level had incised drawings on them. Although these were mentioned in the notebooks at the time of excavation, and a few were photographed (Fig. 15 offers an example), none was saved or inventoried. In addition, two blocks with incised drawings were recovered from House Y, one of the storage sheds behind Megaron 2.³³

The circumstances under which the stones of Megaron 2 were incised will receive fuller discussion in Section 4. We can note here, however, that the evidence strongly suggests that the drawings were already present on the exterior surface of the megaron during the earliest phase of its use, before the construction of Houses X and Y. The back wall of the building would have been blocked off by these two storage sheds, and the back and west side walls would have been blocked by the fill of the Terrace Buildings. At the same time we should note that not every part of the megaron’s exterior surface had incised marks; the east wall was extensively covered with incised drawings, while the west wall had fewer, and the south wall had none on the lower part of its surface, although many on the upper part.

Over ninety incised stones from Megaron 2 were lifted from the east and south walls of the building and from House Y, the storage shed, and brought to the Gordion depot for inventory.³⁴ These are the stones whose drawings form the major portion of the catalogue here. The current state of preservation of the incised stones, however, is quite uneven. The collapse of the east wall caused the stones to fall outward, and many incised stones from this wall were found jumbled together in a heap at the base of the wall. Several of these must have fallen with their faces down, since this section includes a number of blocks that are nearly intact with the incised face well preserved. Others, however, suffered markedly in the fire; the blocks were fractured into small pieces and their surfaces were cracked. Often the surface of a block is pitted with holes where salts in the stone exploded as a result of the fire’s heat. The two vertical piers in the southeast corner wall, 50–57 in the catalogue, were in good condition at the time of their excavation, but apart from two examples, 50 and 53, none was saved. The fate of the stones in the upper part of the south wall is also quite uneven. As the drawing of the stone piers illustrates (Fig. 14), many of these blocks had intact surfaces with visible drawings at the time of their discovery and these were recorded. The impact of the fire, however, caused several of the stones in Figure 14 to deteriorate to the point where they disintegrated when they were lifted from the wall; thus several blocks recorded in this drawing either do not survive or are in markedly poorer condition, with much of the incised face now gone. This includes stones 93–98; these were not inventoried at the time of their discovery, but they can be identified from excavation photographs as part of the south wall of the megaron and are included here. None of the incised blocks from the west wall were inventoried and so their fate is unknown. In addition, a number of small fragments of soft white poros stone with incised drawings were brought to the excavation depot but not inventoried. Most of these have no identifying labels; they may come from Megaron 2 but since this is not certain they have not been included in the present study. Thus it should be noted that the material presented here lays no claim to completeness.

In addition to the stones removed to the Gordion depot, the excavators’ daybooks comment on the presence of incised stones that were not removed from Megaron 2, but were left in place in the building. In order to investigate this, during the summer of 2004 I cleared the backfilled earth from the exterior faces of the east and west walls, the two side walls of the megaron, to determine if any incised stones were still visible in situ. The rear, or south wall of the building was not opened, since it was deeply buried by backfilled rubble supporting the Terrace Building; moreover, the excavators’ notebooks and the published excavation reports stated clearly that all incised blocks were removed before the area was backfilled.³⁵ One well preserved example, 48, a block with a drawing of two lions, was found in 2004 in the lowest course of the east wall; this block, which likely was overlooked in the original excavation of Megaron 2, is included in the catalogue. No other incised drawings were found on the surviving in situ blocks of the east or west walls.

Three stones (101, 102, 103) found in the fill above Megaron 2 are also included in the present discussion. All appear to be the same soft poros stone that was used in the construction of Megaron 2, and are likely to be fragments of the stone from the megaron that were churned up in the destruction or subsequent cleaning and rebuilding in the area. Two of them, 101 and 102, bear drawings on the finished outer surface of the block and were probably incised under circumstances very similar to those of the other drawings found on actual building blocks (as discussed in Section 4). The third, 103, is a smaller fragment and its incised surface is quite rough and blackened; this suggests that the drawing was incised on the stone after the destruction of Megaron 2, during the process of clearing out the rubble.

A few remarks are in order about the two incised stones in the Early Phrygian Citadel Gateway. One is located on the interior east wall of the north courtyard room of the Gateway complex, approximately ten courses above current ground level. The drawings on this block include several subjects, among them a bird, a horse, a maze pattern, and random scratches, that are very similar to those found on some of the Megaron 2 blocks, suggesting that these drawings were part of the same effort. The other incised block is located on the third course above present ground level of the south tower of the Early Phrygian Citadel Gateway, facing the ramp that forms the entrance into the Citadel. The drawing on this block, a series of irregular zigzag lines, could have been done during the construction of the gate tower or at some point afterwards, before the destruction of the Early Phrygian Citadel Gateway.

11. The Early Phrygian Destruction Level corresponds to Voigt’s YHSS Level 6A; see Voigt 1994 and Voigt 2005. A good description of the Early Phrygian Destruction Level is given by Sams 1994a:2–7, although Sams’ chronology for the destruction should be revised in light of more recent information on the chronology of the Early Phrygian period.

12. Young 1957:322–23, pls. 88–89, figs. 7–12. The West Phrygian House, later Megaron 2, was also called the Mosaic Building in some preliminary reports, e.g., Young 1963:352–54, because of the well-preserved pebble mosaics found inside it. This should not be confused with another building that was also designated the Mosaic Building, a structure of the 4th century BCE; Young 1953:11–14.

13. The term Megaron 2 (abbreviated M 2) first appears on the plans of the Destruction Level published in DeVries 1990: figs. 4 and 7.

14. As can be seen on the plan of the Destruction Level, Figure 3, Megaron 2, like all the buildings on the east side of the courtyard in the Early Phrygian Citadel, was oriented with its front towards the northeast. Thus the wall that I here call the east wall actually extends from northeast to southwest; similarly, the south, or back, wall of the building extends from southeast to northwest, and the southeast corner is actually oriented to the south. This circumstance, however, creates very cumbersome language in the description of the building, and thus I have simplified the description by calling the left side of the building, as one faces its front, the east side; the back wall then becomes the south side, and the right side becomes the west wall. In doing so, I am following the same system of nomenclature used by R. S. Young in his publications.

15. No complete plan of Megaron 2 was ever made, nor were the full external dimensions of the building recorded. The plan and dimensions of the building can be ascertained from the two site plans of the Destruction Level drawn by J. S. Last in 1956 and 1957, here Figures 5 and 6.

16. The longest extant block, 59, is 0.76 m in length. Other blocks of which the full length is preserved range in size from 0.45 to 0.61 m. The height and thickness of the blocks are similarly variable.

17. Young 1958:143; Young 1969a:270–71.

18. The Terrace Buildings functioned as space for storage and for concentrated activities involving food preparation and textile production; see the discussion in Sams 1994a:2–3, and Burke 2005.

19. Sams 1994a:3.

20. Young 1956a: pl. 92, figs. 42, 43 (lions); Young 1956a: pl. 93, fig. 41; Sams 1994b: fig. 20.2, 20.3.4 (akroterion); Mellink 1983:357.

21. Young 1957:322; Young 1965b:10–12; Salzmann 1982:6-7, nos. 47–48, pls. 2/2, 3/1, 4–5.

22. Sams 1994a:3. The coarseware jar, Sams 1994a: no. 1009; the trefoil jug, Sams 1994a: no. 741; the storage jar, Sams 1994a: no. 987. Two other vessels were found nearby, a spouted jar (Sams 1994a: no. 415) from the pavement in front of the building, and a body sherd of another closed vessel (Sams 1994a: no. 1015), found behind the building. Compared to the large quantities of vessels found in the storage rooms behind Megaron 1, Megarons 3 and 4, and the Terrace and CC Buildings, the contents of Megaron 2 were extremely minimal.

23. Gordion inventory number ILS 235, unpublished. I owe this information to Gareth Darbyshire.

24. Suggested identification as a temple, see Mellink 1983:357–59; Sams 1995:1156–57; Sams 1997:241; Prayon 2004:612. Mellink, Sams, and Prayon all cite the existence of the “doodles,” the incised drawings, as evidence for the temple interpretation, but as the discussion in this volume will make clear, the drawings represent a variety of styles and purposes and cannot by themselves be used to support a cult function.

25. On Midas and the Kimmerian destruction, see Strabo 1.3.21. For a discussion of other ancient sources on Midas, see Roller 1983.

26. The ancient sources on the chronology of Midas are analyzed by Berndt-Ersöz 2008.

27. Voigt 1994:274–75; Voigt 2005:32–35; Voigt 2007.

28. DeVries, Kuniholm, Sams, and Voigt 2003; DeVries, Sams, and Voigt 2005; DeVries 2007.

29. Young (1969a:271–72) estimated two generations or sixty years of use for Megaron 2 and Houses X and Y. Any estimate of the exact length of time when Megaron 2 was in use, however, should be considered a plausible guess.

30. The incised drawings on the stone courses in the southeast corner of Megaron 2 were photographed (see Fig. 9) and then recorded in a drawing by D. H. Cox; see Young 1958: pl. 21, fig. 3; Young 1969a:271; Prayon 1987:172, fig. 27a; Prayon 2004:619, fig. 1; here Figure 10. All but two of the incised blocks in Cox’s drawing, 50 and 53, are no longer extant. There are significant problems with Cox’s drawing: the surviving part of the incised face of 50, the upper left block below the horizontal beam, exhibits significant differences from this drawing, and the photographs of the incised stones taken in 1957 also reveal numerous details that are inconsistent with the Cox drawing. These circumstances indicate that Cox’s reconstruction of this group of incised stones is not fully reliable. This situation is discussed further in the Catalogue in conjunction with entries 50–57, where updated descriptions and drawings based on the excavation photographs are given.

31. For the excavation of the south/back wall of Megaron 2, see Young 1958:142–43; 1962:160. Young (1958:143) reports that the position of this horizontal timber was approximately 0.75 m above ground level.

32. Young 1958:143. More recent investigation has shown that this was true of many of the Destruction Level buildings; in rebuilding the Citadel area, the standard practice seems to have been to leave two stone courses standing and pile the rest of the stone into the center of the building; see Voigt 1994:272.

33. A comment by R. S. Young (1969a:271), “the walls of the sheds themselves became space for more doodles,” implies that several stones on both storage sheds had incised drawings, but apart from 99 and 100, none was recorded or preserved.

34. Most of the incised stones from the east wall were removed at the time of their excavation, in 1956 or 1957. The stones from the south wall of the building were removed in 1961, four years after they were first excavated; see Young 1962:160. The final inventoried stone to be removed was 50, from the southeast corner; this was brought to the Gordion storage depot in 1983. At that point its condition had deteriorated noticeably from the time of its finding.

35. Young 1962:160.