The Historians' History of the World 03

When it is remembered that, firstly, knowing not a word of the Mycenæan language, we are quite ignorant of its affinities; secondly, not enough Mycenæan skulls have yet been recovered to establish more than the bare fact that the race was mixed and not wholly Asiatic; and thirdly, since identity of civilisation in no sense necessarily entails identity of race, we may have to do not with one or two, but with many races—it will be conceded that it is more useful at present to attempt to narrow the issue by excluding certain claimants than to pronounce in favour of any one. The facial types represented not only on the Knossian frescoes, but by statuettes and gems, are distinctly non-Asiatic, and recall strongly the high-crowned brachycephalic type of the modern northern Albanians and Cretan hillmen. Of the elder civilised races about the Levantine area the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Babylonians may be dismissed at once. We know their art from beginning to end, and its character is not at any period the same as that of Ægean art. As for the Phœnicians, for whom on the strength of Homeric tradition a strong claim has been put forward, it cannot be said to be impossible that some objects thought to be Mycenæan are of Sidonian origin, since we know little or nothing of Sidonian art. But the presumption against this Semitic people having had any serious share in Mycenæan development is strong, since facial types apart, the only scripts known to have been used in the Mycenæan area and period are in no way affiliated to the Phœnician alphabet, and neither the characteristic forms nor the characteristic style of Phœnician art, as we know it, appear in Mycenæan products. The one thing, of which recent research has assured us in this matter, is this, that the Keftiu, represented in XVIIIth Dynasty tombs at Thebes, were a “Mycenæan” folk, an island people of the northern sea. They came into intimate contact, both peaceful and warlike, with Egypt, and to them no doubt are owed the Ægean styles and products found on Nile sites. Exact parallels to their dress and products, as represented by Egyptian artists, appear in the work of Cretan artists; and it is now generally accepted that the Keftiu were “Mycenæans” of Crete at any rate, whatever other habitat they may have possessed.

As to place of origin, Central Europe or any western or northern part of the continent is out of the question. Mycenæan art is shown by various remains to have moved westwards and northwards, not vice versa. It arose within the Ægean area, in the Argolid as some, e.g., the Heræum excavators, seem to propose, or the Cyclades, or Rhodes; or, if outside, then the issue is narrowed for practical purposes to a region about which we know next to nothing as yet, northern Libya, and to Asia Minor. So far as the Mycenæan objects themselves testify, they point to a progress not from south or west, but from east. In the western localities, notably Crete and Mycenæ, we have more remains of highly developed Mycenæan civilisation, but less of its early stages than elsewhere. Nothing in the Argolid, but much in the Troad, prepares us for the Mycenæan metallurgy. The appearance of Mycenæan forms and patterns is abrupt in Crete, but graduated in other islands, especially Thera and Melos. The Cretan linear script seems to be of “Asianic” family, and to be inscribed in Melos on sherds of earlier date than its appearance at Knossos. Following Mycenæan development backwards in this manner, we seem to tend towards the Anatolian coasts of the Ægean, and especially the rich and little-known areas of Rhodes and Caria.