34 o SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



career. The pottery, the personal ornaments, and in fact 

 the whole cycle of the art, were at once recognised as 

 identical with those of Ialysos, while the stone-fenced 

 burial-place discovered just within the " Lion Gate" of the 

 citadel, with its six " shaft graves " and their enormous 

 wealth of gold vessels and ornaments, seemed ample con- 

 firmation of the legendary wealth of " golden Mykenae," 

 and was proclaimed, in the first enthusiasm of the discovery, 

 as the tomb of Agamemnon himself. The further re- 

 searches which have been made almost continuously from 

 1886 onwards by M. Tsountas for the Greek Archaeo- 

 logical Society have confirmed in all essential points the 

 first general impression, but the discovery of later tombs in 

 the lower quarters of the town has made it possible to trace 

 an order of progress and to extend the limits of the period. 

 9. Subsequent excavations at Tiryns and Orchomenos 

 by Dr. Schliemann, and on a number of other sites in 

 Greece and the yEgean Islands by the Greek Archaeo- 

 logical Society and the foreign Institutes in Athens, have 

 demonstrated that this civilisation, which has acquired the 

 provisional name of Mykenaean, is widely represented in 

 the yEgean area and especially in its southern part ; that 

 its influence extended over the Central and Eastern 

 Mediterranean from Sicily to Cyprus; that it penetrated, 

 intermittently at all events, into Egypt, where its appari- 

 tion can be approximately dated, and whence it imported 

 much, and borrowed somewhat, but without losing its own 

 individuality ; and, most striking of all, that, after a long 

 period of apparently continuous maturity, it falls into a 

 sudden decadence ; leaving, to all appearance, just the same 

 gap between itself and the first traces of Hellenic Art, 

 as we have noted already, on the literary side, between 

 the Homeric Age and the beginning of Hellenic His- 

 tory. It should be further noted, however, that in the 

 last few years many facts have come to light, especially in 

 Attica, in Crete, and, most of all, in Cyprus, which seem to 

 indicate how that gap may eventually be filled. It is from 

 the pottery, almost without exception, that the leading 

 indications have been derived. Fragments of baked clay 



