TERRA-COTTA ROOFING-TILES. 3 



siipeni(Uled to this .'ichievetnent the hipphig of sheets of 

 bark, or pahii- leaves, one over the other, as a rain-shield, 

 the first steps were taken which were to lead to the roof- 

 ing-tile. That the roofing-tile has a considerable antiquity 

 is certain. Its appearance in Greece dates back to the 

 earliest dawn of Greek art, and yet before this, in Asia 

 Minor, there was a time when the tile was not. Schlie- 

 mann, in his great work, "//^os, the City and Country of 

 the Trojans,'" in describing the relics found in the ruins of 

 the first prehistoric city of the hill of Hissarlik shows the 

 almost universal use of pottery by the people. Utensils 

 for every-day life, terra-cotta funeral urns, large terra- 

 cotta bowls, weights for their fishing-nets, handles for their 

 brushes, and even hooks to hang their clothes upon were 

 all made of pottery. "Thus we cannot be astonished in 

 finding in the debris of their cities such large masses of 

 broken pottery among which, however, there is no trace 

 of tiles " (p. 214). He infers from this that the flat roof 

 which is found to-day in that region prevailed at that time. 

 Dorpfeld, in a memoir on the origin of the Doric style (a 

 translation of which, by Mr. Edward Robinson, was pub- 

 lished in the Technology Architectural Review, Vol. iii, 

 Nos. 2 and 3), says it was the invention of the terra-cotta 

 roofing-tile that first made the construction of a sloping 

 roof possible. It is probable that the roofing-tile was in- 

 troduced into Greece from the East, fully developed, and 

 with its introduction the roof, which had before been flat, 

 could now be made sloping. The sloping roof must have 

 preceded the roofing-tile by many thousands of years ; at 

 the outset, bark, straw, thatch, rough stones and similar 

 substances were used until better devices were made, which 

 finally culminated in the terra-cotta roofing-tile, the oldest 

 known type of which is, by far, the most common form 

 of roofing-tile in the world to-day. 



