Mycenaean Greece

“ But this developed anthropomorphism of the early Aegean civilisation is not the whole story. Modern research has accumulated evidence that seems to point to a theriomorphic religion in Crete and in Mycenaean Greece which has been supposed by some to have preceded the former in order of time and in the logical process of evolution, and which at any rate survived by the side of it. Traces of the same phenomenon have been noted in the Hittite area, and more faintly in the valley of the Euphrates. ”

“ Professor Ridgeway, in The Early Age of Greece, has pointed out that the civilization reflected in the Homeric poems differs in many essential points from that which is revealed by the monuments found at Mycenæan sites on the mainland of Greece and in the Ægean islands. Confirmation has since been added to his convincing arguments by the discoveries of Mr Arthur Evans in Crete, which prove that the so-called Mycenæan remains were but the last efforts of a dying civilization which stretched back at least as far as the third millennium before our era. ”

“ It is a civilization, too, which has long been familiar with the art of writing. But it is one that belongs entirely to the Bronze Age. Iron is not found until the very end of the Mycenaean period, and then only in small quantities. Nor is this the only point of contrast between the culture of the earliest age and that of the historical period in Greece. The chief seats of the early culture are to be found either in the island of Crete, or, on the mainland, at Tiryns and Mycenae. In the later history Crete plays no part, and Tiryns and Mycenae are obscure. ”

“ There was in Ionia no disturbing element, such as the Dorian invasion introduced into Europe, between Mycenaean culture and the spread of Oriental influences. The Greek cities in Ionia owe their origin to that upheaval, but their culture was not affected by it; and their founders brought their Mycenaean civilisation with them fresh from Greece to their new homes in Miletos, Ephesos, Phocaea, Chios, and Samos. ”

“ But the excavations that have given us a knowledge of the Mycenaean Age have proved conclusively, not alone that civilization existed in Greece in an early day, but that this civilization was closely linked with the civilization of Egypt. Not only have antiquities been found in Crete that point to Egyptian inspiration, but quite recently Professor Petrie has found at Tel el-Amarna Mycenaean pottery. ”

“ This is the race that gave the world the great civilizations of Egypt, of Crete, of Phœnicia including Carthage, of Etruria, of Mycenæan Greece, of Assyria and much of Babylonia. It gave us, when mixed and invigorated with Nordic elements, which probably predominated in the upper and ruling classes and imposed their guidance upon the masses, the most splendid of all civilizations, that of ancient Hellas, and the most enduring of political organizations, the Roman state. ”

“ Geometrical patterns are indeed the property of all primitive peoples, and are no less spontaneous and universal in their origin than the folk-lore stories which we find adopting the same or similar forms in all parts of the world. In Greece, no doubt, the cultured traditions of Mycenaean art had in course of time their due effect, and both in technique and in ornament left their impress on the inferior fabrics, [934] as we have seen to have been the case, especially in the Greek islands. ”

“ It is not until the seventh century that true history begins in Greece, and in the main only to the sixth that the rudiments of that characteristic Hellenic philosophy, literature, and art can be traced, which were released after the Persian wars early in the fifth century. Yet the half thousand and more years of dark ages between Ægean and classic Greek civilization did not entail a complete interruption. The Greek often enough smote the Mycenæan or Minoan. ”

“ The question whether the ancestors of the Hellenes or the pre-Hellenic peoples with whom they mixed were ever on the lowest plane of theriolatry does not concern us here. What is important is, that the records, both Mycenaean and Hellenic, justify us in believing that the dominant religion in Greece of the second millennium B.C. was the worship of personal divinities humanly conceived who could occasionally incarnate themselves in animal form, and that where animal worship survived it was always linked in this way to the cults of personal polytheism. ”

“ But at that time we were all ignorant of the facts of Minoan-Mycenaean religion, and some of us were deceived concerning the antiquity of the Phoenician settlements in Cyprus and Hellas. The recently discovered evidence points, I think, inevitably to the theory that Sir Arthur Evans supports; that the goddess of Cyprus, the island where the old Minoan culture lived longest, is one form of the great goddess of that gifted Aegean people, who had developed her into various manifestations through long centuries of undisturbed religious life. ”

“ It was with this instinctive assurance that I approached the field of Cretan investigation, and the results of the discoveries in the source and seminary of the Mycenaean culture of Greece have now placed the matter beyond the range of controversy. The clay archives found in the Palace of Knossos and elsewhere have proved that the prehistoric Cretan had already, a thousand years before the appearance of the first written record of Classical Greece, passed through every stage in the evolution of a highly developed system of script. ”

“ This, and some other considerations, have prompted the suggestion that the Ionians really came from Crete. But it seems more in accordance with the evidence to suppose that the main body of them came from Greece proper, where they had learned the “Mycenaean” culture, which was the gift of Crete. The calamitous Dorians wrecked that wonderful heritage, but for some time at least the settlers in their new “Ionian” home would remember how to fashion a pot fairly and chant their traditional lays. ”

“ Frazer aptly remarks that "the existence at this early date of a great maritime power in Crete, which by its central position between Greece and the empires of the East was well fitted to receive and amalgamate the characteristics of both, is just what is needed to explain the rise and wide diffusion of a type of civilisation like the Mycenæan, in which Oriental influences seem to be assimilated and transmuted by a vigorous and independent nationality endowed with a keen sense of its own for art. ”

“ Petrie asserts an Egyptian origin for both Mycenæan and parallel Phrygian designs. The spiral pattern in its [pg 481] various forms, the rosettes, the keyfret, the palmetto, are all used in very early Egyptian decoration. The inlaid daggers of Mycenæ have long been recognized as inspired by Egypt; but we must note that it is native work and not merely an imported article. The attitude of the figures and of the lions, and the form of the cat, are such as no Egyptian would have executed. To make such things in Greece implies a far higher culture than merely to import them. ”

“ The whole basin of the Eastern Mediterranean seems to have been a seething turmoil of migrations, expulsions, wars and piracies, started first by the Mycenaean (Achaian) conquest of Crete, and then intensified by the constant impulse of the Northern iron-users into Greece." Herodotus speaks of the great invasion of the Thesprotian tribes from beyond Pindus, which took place probably in the 13th century B.C. [1290] As a result "an overwhelming Aryan and iron-using population was first brought into Greece. ”

“ Provenance unknown; connexion with Troy suspected.
'Mycenaean.' The Cretan civilization swept over South Greece in the first Late Minoan period. Characterized by exuberance both in shape and ornament (III, Figs. 11, 12, 13, 16, 17) . Bulk of what is likely to be found is of latest period when style has become conventionalized. Compare III, Fig. 11 (Mycenaean) with III, Fig. 7 Late Minoan I. Characteristic shapes high goblet and 'stirrup' vase (III, Figs. 17 and 16) .
Female clay figurines common (III, Fig. 14) , also animals, oxen.
Objects Characteristic of Aegean Civilization
Seal Stones. ”

“ 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.
It does not advance seriously the solution of the racial problem to turn to Greek literary tradition. Now that we are assured of the wide range and the long continuance of the influence of Mycenæan civilisation, overlapping the rise of Hellenic art, we can hardly question that the early peoples whom the Greeks knew as Pelasgi, Minyæ, Leleges, Danai, Carians, and so forth, shared in it. ”

“ No doubt we come prepared to regard them with eyes coloured, and a fancy haunted by the beauties of Grecian literature. Possibly, it is under the spell of Homeric verse that our eyes grow humid with delight at the aspect of Aphrodite, that we behold divinity in Zeus or Phœbos Apollo; but this only proves that the fragments of Hellenic civilisation throw a light upon each other, and are parts of one great whole. Perhaps, too, no man ever enjoyed the sculpture of Greece as he should, unless conversant with her poetry—the right hand of her art. ”

“ She has become, though with some reminiscence of the mystical earth, a very limited human person, wicked, angry, jealous—the lady of Zeus in her castle-sanctuary at Mycenae, in wanton dalliance with the king, coaxing him for cruel purposes in sweet sleep, adding artificial charms to her beauty.
Such are some of the characteristics with which Greek art is discernible in that earliest age. Of themselves, they almost answer the question which next arises—Whence did art come to Greece? or was it a thing of absolutely native growth there? So some have decidedly maintained. ”

“ The inhabitants of ancient Mycenæ, one of the chief centres of prehistoric culture in Greece before the Homeric age. Recent excavations, at Mycenæ itself, at Cnossos in Crete, and other contemporary sites of government, have thrown light on the remarkable civilisation which then existed. The Mycenæans, Cretans, and their kindred peoples were probably a mixed Caucasic race, with affinities to the later Aryan Achæans and to the aboriginal Hamitic Pelasgians ”

“ Rhythm, balance, symmetry are the translation into sculpture of the spirit of discipline and self-control, which the Greeks learned by hard necessity. The civilization of the Ionians in Asia is a brilliant sunrise, an overflowing of the delight in life, in beauty, in the exercise of all the faculties, which for a time dominated Greece itself. And their art was joyous and free. The artists of Ionia invaded Athens in the sixth century, visiting the luxurious court of Peisistratus, and inspiring Peloponnesus, even Sparta, as the excavations of the British School in Athens have abundantly shown. ”

“ Early in the fourteenth century B.C., Mycenae became the cultural and political center of the Aegean world. Trade with Egypt brought to the Mycenaeans the ivory that appears frequently in their tombs. ”

“ For this can no longer be disconnected from inquiries into the status and fortunes of the great confederacy, out of the wreck of which the splendid fabric of Hellenic society arose. The civilisation centred at Mycenæ covered a wide range; how wide we do not yet fully know: the results of future explorations must be awaited before its limits can be fixed. It undoubtedly spread, however, beyond Greece proper through the Sporades to Crete, Rhodes, the coasts of Asia Minor, and even to Egypt. The traces left behind by it in Egypt are of particular importance. ”

“ He did not know that there actually lived a King Minos in Crete, and that his palace, standing on a hill at Knossos, was built, if not of marble, at any rate of stone.
Up to the last half-century the whole story of classical Greece, as taught in the schools and in the Universities, was regarded as something original, as the beginning of things springing suddenly, like the mythical Athene, into life. The sculpture, architecture, philosophy, oratory, and drama of the fifth century B.C., were accepted unquestioningly and with awe as the spontaneous first-fruits of Greek genius. ”

“ It was alleged [44] to be a struggle of many Greek chiefs, at a time when Mycenæ was the richest capital, against the wealth and discipline of the princes about the Troad, of whom the chief of Ilion was the head. This, too, is remarkable, that in spite of the superior wealth and larger population of Asia Minor, the superiority of the Greek peninsula over this greater and richer land is plainly asserted. The whole course of known history has verified the broad fact taught by the legend. Greece has always been the poorer sister, and the superior, of Asia Minor. ”

“ The blended prehistoric civilization, with its epochs checked off in centuries or millennia, and, thanks to the archæologists, to-day rapidly emerging throughout the Greek world in Attica, Bœotia, Asia Minor, the islands and the Peloponnesus, has received not unnaturally, if prematurely, the general name “Mycenæan” from the great royal tombs and smaller graves and the strong walls of Mycenæ and from the rich and amazing treasure recovered from the graves excavated within the Gateway of the Lions. ”

“ We must remember that Agamemnôn—we take the personal name to express the fact of the Mykênaian empire—was lord of the local Argos only in the sense in which he was lord of any other spot in Peloponnêsos. The two neighbouring cities were the heads, as the Catalogue shows us, of two kingdoms of strangely irregular shape, but whose very shape is the sign that the geography is genuine. No inventor could have hit on anything so unlike the arrangements of historic Greece. Argos destroyed Mykênê and took its glories to itself. ”