The Historians' History of the World 03

Like the “letting in of water,” light at once poured in from all sides on the prehistoric period of Greece. It was established that the character of both the fabric and the decoration of the Mycenæan objects was not that of any well-known art. A wide range in space was proved by the identification of the inselsteine and the Ialysos vases with the new style, and a wide range in time by collation of the earlier Theræan and Hissarlik discoveries. A relation between objects of art described by Homer and the Mycenæan treasure was generally recognised, and a correct opinion prevailed that, while certainly posterior, the civilisation of the Iliad was reminiscent of the great Mycenæan period. Schliemann got to work again at Hissarlik in 1878, and greatly increased knowledge of the lower strata, but did not recognise the Mycenæan remains in his “Lydian” city of the sixth stratum; but by laying bare in 1884 the upper remains on the rock of Tiryns, he made a contribution to the science of domestic life in the Mycenæan period, which was amplified two years later by Tsountas’ discovery of the Mycenæ palace. From 1886 dates the finding of Mycenæan sepulchres outside the Argolid, from which, and from the continuation of Tsountas’ exploration of the buildings and lesser graves at Mycenæ, a large treasure, independent of Schliemann’s princely gift, has been gathered into the National Museum at Athens. In that year were excavated dome-tombs, most already rifled, in Attica, in Thessaly, in Cephalonia, and Laconia. In 1890 and 1893 Stæs cleared out more homely dome-tombs at Thoricus in Attica; and other graves, either rock-cut “beehives” or chambers, were found at Spata and Aphidnæ in Attica, in Ægina and Salamis, at the Heræum and Nauplia in the Argolid, near Thebes and Delphi, and lastly not far from the Thessalian Larissa.

But discovery was far from being confined to the Greek mainland and its immediate dependencies. The limits of the prehistoric area were pushed out to the central Ægean islands, all of which are singularly rich in evidence of the pre-Mycenæan period. The series of Syran built graves, containing crouching corpses, is the best and most representative that is known in the Ægean. Melos, long marked as containing early objects, but not systematically excavated until taken in hand by the British School at Athens in 1896, shows remains of all the Ægean periods.

Crete has been proved by the tombs of Anoja and Egarnos, by the excavations on the site of Knossos begun in 1878 by M. Minos Kalokairinos and resumed with startling success in 1900 by Messrs. Evans and Hogarth, and by those in the Dictæan cave and at Phæstos, Gournia, Zakro, and Palæokastro, to be prolific of remains of the prehistoric periods out of all proportion to remains of classical Hellenic culture. A map of Cyprus in the later Bronze Age now shows more than five-and-twenty settlements in and about the Mesaorea district alone, of which one, that at Enkomi, near the site of later Salamis, has yielded the richest gold treasure found outside Mycenæ. Half round the outermost circle to which Greek influence attained in the classical period remains of the same prehistoric civilisation have been happened on. M. Chantre, in 1894, picked up lustreless ware, like that of Hissarlik, in central Phrygia, and the English archæological expeditions sent subsequently into northwestern Anatolia have never failed to bring back “Ægean” specimens from the valleys of the Rhyndacus and Sangarius, and even of the Halys.

In Egypt, Mr. Petrie found painted sherds of Cretan style at Kahun in the Fayum in 1887, and farther up the Nile, at Tel-el-Amarna, chanced on bits of not less than eight hundred Ægean vases in 1889. There have now been recognised in the collections at Gizeh, Florence, London, Paris, and Bologna several Egyptian or Phœnician imitations of the Mycenæan style to set off against the many debts which the centres of Mycenæan culture owed to Egypt. Two Mycenæan vases were found at Sidon in 1885, and many fragments of Ægean, and especially Cypriote, pottery have been turned up during the recent excavation of sites in Philistia by the Palestine Fund. Southeastern Sicily has proved, ever since Orsi excavated the Sicel cemetery near Lentini in 1877, a mine of early remains, among which appear in regular succession Ægean fabrics and motives of decoration from the period of the second stratum at Hissarlik down to the latest Mycenæan. Sardinia has Mycenæan sites, e.g., at Abini near Teti, and Spain has yielded objects recognised as Mycenæan from tombs near Cadiz, and from Saragossa.

Arched Passage Way, Mycenæ