Mycenaean civilization

“ The Homeric dead are cremated; the Mycenaean are buried. The gods of Homer are the deities of Olympus, of whose cult no traces are to be found in the Mycenaean Age. The novelty of Professor Ridgeway’s theory is that for the accepted equation, Homeric = Achaean = Mycenaean, he proposes to substitute the equations, Homeric = Achaean = post-Mycenaean, and Mycenaean = pre-Achaean = Pelasgian. The Mycenaean civilization he attributes to the Pelasgians, whom he regards as the indigenous population of Greece, the ancestors of the later Greeks, and themselves Greek both in speech and blood. ”

“ The two chief difficulties in the way of attributing either the Minoan or the Mycenaean civilization to an Hellenic people are connected respectively with the script and the religion. The excavations at Cnossus have yielded thousands of tablets written in the linear script. There is evidence that this script was in use among the Mycenaeans as well. If Greek was the language spoken at Cnossus and Mycenae, how is it that all attempts to decipher the script have hitherto failed? The Cretan excavations, again, have taught us a great deal as to the religion of the Minoan age ”

“ Schliemann unearthed the treasures from the royal graves at Mycenae and gave the world the first glimpse of that ancient civilization which has since been shown to have extended over the mainland of Hellas and the isles of the south Aegean—a civilization whose type is the same, however widely distant the localities where remains are found, whether in Crete or Thessaly, in Rhodes or Argolis, in Cyprus or Boeotia. ”

“ 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. ”

“ To Homer, 'golden,' 'broad-wayed' Mycenæ is the seat of the great leader of all the Achæans, the King of men, Agamemnon; it is also the chief seat of the culture which goes by its name. Orchomenos, Pylos, Lacedæmon, Attica, all prominent in the poems, are Page 55 also well-known seats of Mycenæan civilization. Crete, whose prominent position in the Homeric world has been already referred to, we shall shortly see to have been in point of fact the supreme centre of that still greater and richer civilization of which the Mycenæan is a later and comparatively degenerate form. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In Egypt Professor Petrie found deposits of prehistoric Ægean pottery in the Delta, the Fayum, and even in Middle Egypt, proving that this civilization, whatever its origin, had been in contact with the ancient civilization of the Nile Valley, while even in the Western Mediterranean, in Sicily particularly, in Italy, Sardinia, and Spain, finds, less plentiful, but quite unmistakable, bore witness to the wide diffusion of Mycenæan culture. ”

“ The prestige of Mycenae may have followed the decline of Cretan supremacy. At any rate, 2000 B.C. is not too early a date at which to place the most flourishing period of this civilization in Crete, for Mycenaean remains have been found in Thera buried under volcanic débris of an eruption of about 1800 B.C. [39] Legends of a vast Cretan empire are probably reminiscences of that mighty maritime nation, once supreme on Mediterranean waters.
↑ Schliemann, Mycenae and Tiryns; Schuchhardt-Sellers, Schliemann's Excavations; Tsountas and Manatt, The Mycenaean Age; Frazer, Pausanias, III, 97–230 ”

“ The more thorough the study of European prehistory becomes, the more we realize how many advances of culture have been made and then lost. Our parents were accustomed to regard the overthrow of ancient civilization in the Dark Ages as the greatest catastrophe of mankind, but we now know that the classic period of Greece was preceded by similar dark ages caused by the Dorian invasions, that had overthrown the Homeric-Mycenæan culture, which in its turn had flourished after the destruction of its parent, the brilliant Minoan culture of Crete. ”

“ If we assume that the civilization was foreign, then must the Greek hero-tales become unintelligible. When Homer speaks of Tiryns and Mycenae, "rich in gold" (γ, 305) , of Amyclae (Β, 584) , of Boeotian Orchomenos (Β, 511; λ, 284) ; when he mentions the tale of the Argonauts (μ, 79) ; when he brings Crete into touch with the royal house of Mycenae (Γ, 230; τ, 172) ; and when he has the blind bard Demodocus sing of the great events which occurred before the walls of Troy (θ, 44) , the poet undoubtedly refers to Mycenaean times. ”

“ The Mycenaean Age is a bronze age, and in a general way is similar to the bronze ages of Northern Europe. It offers many problems which have not yet been solved. Each year brings numerous and important discoveries. It is not our purpose to give even a superficial presentation of this civilization, but only to discuss its main characteristics, with reference to life as pictured in the Homeric poems. ”

“ Art was still by no means extinct, and its forms and decorative elements are simply later derivatives of the great palace style. Not only the native form of writing, but the household arrangements, sepulchral usages, and religious rites remain substantially the same. The third Late Minoan age corresponds generally with the Late Mycenaean stage in the Aegean world (see Aegean Civilization) . It is an age indeed in which the culture as a whole, though following a lower level, attains the greatest amount of uniformity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As the most numerous examples of such things have been discovered at Mycenae and Tiryns in Argolis, it has been agreed to speak of this stage of civilisation in Greece as the Mycenaean Age. But the recent discoveries in Crete have pushed things still further back, and show that for many centuries before the "Mycenaeans" there were people living in Greek lands who had attained to great skill in building, in the artistic treatment of bronze, stone, and clay, as well as in the art of painting. ”

“ Occasionally one sees traces of the ancient Mycenaean influence, or perhaps rather of the young Ionian art which had now arisen out of the ashes of that of Mycenae. These Phoenician imitative designs are still good imitations. But a century or so later we meet with them again on the silver bowls and dishes from Cyprus, in which the imitations have become bad. The same mixture of subjects was still in vogue, but confusion has been superadded to mixture, and we find kings in Assyrian robes and Egyptian wigs slaying Syrian dragons with Egyptian wings, and so on. ”

“ To the scholars of a generation ago it seemed a thing incredible that the art of the shaft-graves, and the architecture of the beehive-tombs and the palaces, could belong to the age before the Dorian invasion. The most recent discoveries seem to indicate that the art of Mycenae is a decadent art; they certainly prove that an art, hardly inferior in its way to the art of the classical period, and a civilization which implies the command of great material resources, were flourishing in the Aegean perhaps a thousand years before the siege of Troy. ”

“ This was a dark-skinned (or melanochroöus) race which “had dwelt in Greece from a remote antiquity and had at all times, in spite of conquests, remained a chief element in the population of all Greece, whilst in Arcadia and Attica it had never been subjugated.” The Mycenæan civilisation had its origin, he believes, in the mainland of Greece and spread thence outwards to the isles of the Ægean, Crete, Egypt, and north to the Euxine. ”

“ The nomads with their experience of desert wandering promoted trade, and the revival of trade inaugurated new eras of prosperity in ancient centres of culture, and brought them into closer touch than ever before with one another. The rise of Greece was due to the blending of the Achaeans and other pastoral fighting folks with the indigenous Pelasgians. Into the early States which fostered the elements of ancient Mykenaean civilization, poured the cultural influences of the East through Asia Minor and Phoenicia and from the Egyptian coast. ”

“ If we accept the view generally held that the Mycenaean civilisation was Achaean, and that after the Dorian invasion its representatives were driven in an easterly direction and settled on the coast of Asia Minor; and if again we regard this as an historical version of the Greek traditions of the Trojan war and the subsequent migrations of the Achaean heroes [840] ; we may then consider that the stories of Teucer’s foundation of a new Salamis and of an Argive colonisation of Curium find their verification in the Mycenaean settlements recently discovered on those two Cypriote sites. ”

“ Art, good and very bad, exists in many various stages in Mycenaean relics. The drawing of a god, with a typical Mycenaean shield in the form of a figure 8, on a painted sarcophagus from Milato in Crete, is more crude and savage than many productions of the Australian aboriginals, {Footnote: Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In other respects, also, there is absolutely no proof to support the supposition of a migration of peoples upon the Grecian peninsula. The “Mycenæan” civilisation was not, as has been supposed, suddenly destroyed by an incursion of uncivilised tribes, but was gradually merged into the civilisation of the classic period. Even Attica, in connection with which there is no tradition of a migration, had its period of Mycenæan culture. The so-called “Doric” institutions are limited to Crete and Laconia, and in the latter country they are not older than the Spartan conquest in the eighth century ”

“ It would be difficult to imagine a greater contrast than that presented by the rude life of the Dorian communities in Crete when it is compared with the political power, the material resources and the extensive commerce of the earlier period. The same gap between the archaeological age and the historical exists on the mainland also. It is true that the solution of continuity is here less complete. Mycenaean art continues, here and there, in a debased form down to the 9th century, a date to which we can trace back the beginnings of the later Greek art. ”

“ The bearers wear the usual Mycenaean costume, high boots and a gaily ornamented kilt, and little else, just as we see it depicted in the fresco of the Cupbearer at Knossos and in other Greek representations. The coiffure, possibly the most characteristic thing about the Mycenaean Greeks, is faithfully represented by the Egyptians both here and in Rekhmarâ’s tomb. The Mycenaean men allowed their hair to grow to its full natural length, like women, and wore it partly hanging down the back, partly tied up in a knot or plait (the kepas of the dandy Paris in the Iliad) on the crown of the head. ”