354 SCIENCE PROGRESS. 



with the representatives of Mykenaean civilisation. But the 

 analogies are on all sides so close, that the identification is 

 usually accepted, and that as soon as even the outlines of 

 the history and civilisation of Libya during the Bronze Age 

 are ascertained, we shall be in a position to formulate 

 the real relations which then existed between Libya 

 and the /Egean, and probably also to trace more clearly to 

 its source the very remarkable realistic instinct which dis- 

 tinguishes the art of the y^Egean from all contemporary 

 styles. 



40. The sudden collapse of the Mykensean civilisation, 

 which was indicated to begin with, is roughly coincident with 

 the first appearance of Iron in common use in the Levant, and 

 the attempt has been made, though on no direct evidence, 

 to connect the two tendencies. All the facts go to indicate 

 that, so far as the Mediterranean area is concerned at all 

 events, iron makes its appearance first on the Syrian coast, 

 in the period which immediately succeeds the downfall of 

 Egyptian suzerainty in that area under the nineteenth and 

 twentieth Dynasties: e.g., at Tell-el-Hesy iron occurs down to 

 the fourth "City" (= eighteenth Dynasty). The ambiguity 

 of the Egyptian allusions under the eighteenth and previous 

 Dynasties makes any earlier date uncertain, and iron has 

 not been actually found in Egypt before the twenty-sixth 

 Dynasty, 650 B.C. In Cyprus, where the evidence is com- 

 pletest, and where abundant native ores have certainly been 

 worked from an early period, iron suddenly becomes very 

 common just at the point when Mykensean vases are ceasing 

 to be imported, but when, on the other hand, Mykenaean 

 conventions have already begun to influence profoundly the 

 native scheme of ornament. At Mykenae itself iron occurs 

 first as a " precious metal " and in the form of signet rings, at 

 the stage where decadence begins to be rapid, but it is not 

 put to practical uses till the moment where the series breaks 

 off, and the same is the case in other Mykenaean sites in 

 the iEgean ; one iron sword was found in the Vaphio " bee- 

 hive ". 



41. Up the Adriatic again it is with the early fibulae and 

 quite degenerate Mykenaean art, that iron makes its appear- 



