76 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



been made from them ; and are themselves in many cases 

 quite explicable as independent loans from Egypt. Here, 

 too, in the present state of the chronological evidence it 

 must be left at least an open question whether the My- 

 kensean is not the prior member of the comparison. 



62. Finally, in discussing certain features in Hellenic 

 religion — one of the most complex religious systems of the 

 world — M. Foucart has collected our fragmentary know- 

 ledge of Egyptian naval enterprise, with the object of 

 showing that native Egyptian enterprise in the /Egean, 

 independent of Phoenician trade, is admissible as a means 

 of communication with the primitive yEgean ; but, between 

 proving too much and proving too little, the attempt cannot 

 be said to have wholly succeeded. 



63. In complete contrast with all the preceding theories, 

 is the alternative view that the /Egean civilisation is in the 

 main indigenous, and that such Anatolian, Phoenician, or 

 Egyptian features as can be recognised are due not to the 

 predominance of Oriental peoples or trade in the yEgean, 

 but to the expansion of /Egean enterprise into the Levant. 

 Even Hellenic tradition, so apt, as we have just seen, to 

 under- estimate the originality of the civilisation of Hellas, 

 bore witness to frequent marauding and trading visits of 

 "Achaean" adventurers to the coasts of Phoenicia, Egypt 

 and Libya : and the repeated occurrence of /Egean imports 

 on Egyptian sites, especially of twelfth and eighteenth 

 Dynasty dates, the contemporary Egyptian record (already 

 referred to) of invasions of Egypt by " peoples of the isles 

 of the sea " from the north-west and often apparently with 

 JEgean names ; and the persistence in early Hellenic times 

 of a trade route from the /Egean via West Crete and the 

 Cyrenaic country to the Nile delta, seem amply to confirm 

 this traditional belief. 



64. It is thus, in particular, possible to admit frequent 

 communication with Egyptian civilisation without assuming^ 

 the existence either of the Phoenician middleman, or of an 

 independent Egyptian trade system : and it will be seen 

 hereafter that an increasing mass of new evidence in regard 

 to the civilisation and the peoples Libya itself has been thus 



