PREHISTORIC MAN, ETC. 353 



in Cyprus, in the latest class of Bronze Age tombs, 

 and give a very distinct character to the necropoleis 

 of Episkopi (Kurion), Enkomi (Salamis), Pyla, Niko- 

 lidhes, and Laksha-tu-Riu. Native imitations increase in 

 frequency, and eventually supersede the importations and 

 fix the leading features of the art of the early Iron 

 Age, e.g., at Kuklia (Paphos), Lapathos and Katydata- 

 Linu. In Egypt again, Mykenaean importations are found 

 in great quantity, associated with the later Cypriote fabrics 

 and stimulating copious native imitation in layers of the 

 eighteenth Dynasty at Illahun, Gurob, Tell-el-Amarna. 

 These last finds confirm the date already inferred from 

 the occurrence of eighteenth Dynasty scarabs and porcelain 

 ornaments at Ialysos and at Mykenae, and fix the general 

 chronology of the Mykenaean Age beyond all question. The 

 contrary opinion, that the Mykenaean civilisation immediately 

 precedes the Orientalising culture of the seventh-sixth 

 centuries, and consequently itself descends as late as the 

 eighth-seventh centuries, has been vigorously urged by a 

 few English students, but has long been abandoned by all 

 who have had first-hand experience of the conditions of 

 discovery. The premature contention that the fortress of 

 Tiryns was Byzantine deserves mention, but is obsolete. 



39. It is in Egypt also, moreover, that the first notice 

 occurs of the actual peoples who transmitted the civilisation 

 in question, and this in a peculiarly suggestive connection. 

 In the fifth year of Merenptah (1225) and under Rameses 

 III. (1 1 80- 1 150) the western frontier of Egypt was seriously 

 threatened by a Mediterranean coalition, of which the 

 Libyans were the principal members, but which included 

 under the general description of " the peoples of the isles 

 of the sea " a number of tribes whose names, though much 

 distorted in the Egyptian hieroglyphic records, strongly 

 resemble those of Achaians, Danaans, Ionians, Teucrians, 

 Tuscans or Tyrrhenians, and perhaps Sicilians and 

 Sardinians. Neither these names, of course, nor yet the 

 apparent resemblance of their arms and furniture, as depicted 

 in Egyptian paintings, can give more than a plausible pre- 

 sumption of identity either with historical /Egean races or 



