MINOAISr AND MYCENAEAN ELEMENT EVANS. 623 



tainly one of the most interesting features in this composition — 

 thoroughly Minoan in spirit — is the fact that ladies take part in the 

 hunt. They are seen driving to the meet in their chariots, and fol- 

 lowing the quarry with their dogs. Atalanta has her Mycenaean 

 predecessors, and the Kalydonian boar hunt itself may well repre- 

 sent the same tradition as these Tirjaithian wall painting-s. 



But the point to which I desire to call your special attention is 

 this: In spite of slight local divergences in the domestic arrange- 

 ments or costume, the " Mycenaean " is only a provincial variant of 

 the same " Minoan " civilization. The house planning maj^ be 

 slightl}^ different, but the architectural elements down to the smallest 

 details are practically the same, though certain motives of decora- 

 tion may be preferred in one or the other area. The physical types 

 shown in the wall paintings are indistinguishable. The religion is 

 the same. We see the same nature goddess with her doves and pillar 

 shrines; the same baetylic worship of the double axes; the same 

 sacral horns: features which, as we now know, in Crete ma}' be 

 traced to the early Minoan age. The mainland script, of which the 

 painted sherds of Tiryns have now provided a series of new exam- 

 ples, is merely an offshoot of the earlier type of the linear script of 

 Crete and seems to indicate a dialect of the same language. 



In the palace history of Tiryns and Mycenae we have evidence of 

 the same kind of destruction and restoration that we see in the case 

 of those of Minoan Crete. But here, too, there is no break whatever 

 in the continuity of tradition, no trace of the intrusion of any alien 

 element. It is a slow, continuous process of decay, and while at 

 Tiryns the frescoes of the original building were replaced in the sec- 

 ond palace by others in a slightly inferior style, those of the Palace 

 of Mycenae, to a certain extent at least, as Dr. Rodenwaldt has 

 pointed out, survived its later remodeling, and were preserved on 

 its walls to the moment of its destruction. 



The evidence as a whole must be regarded as conclusive for the 

 fact that the original Minoan element, the monuments of which ex- 

 tend from the Argolid to Thebes, Orchomenos, and Volo, held its own 

 in mainland Greece till the close of the period answering to the third 

 late Minoan in Crete. At this period no doubt the center of gravity 

 of the whole civilization had shifted to the mainland side, and was 

 now reacting on Crete and the islands — where, as in Melos, the dis- 

 tinctive " Mycenaean '' megaron makes its appearance. But the re- 

 turn wave of influence can not, in the light of our present knowledge, 

 be taken to mark the course of invading hordes of Greeks. 



Observe, too, that in the late Minoan expansion which takes place 

 about this time on the coasts of Canaan the dominant element still 

 seems to have belonged to the old Aegean stock. The settlement of 

 Gaza is " Minoan." Its later cult was still that of the indigenous 



