October i. 1896] 



NA TURE 



53: 



evidence of dale is seen in the scarabs and porcelain fragments 

 with the cartouches of ijueen Tyi and Amenhotep III., 

 fmind in the Myeena;an deposits. But more than a mere com- 

 mercial connection between the .Kgeanscatof Mycen;van culture 

 anil Egypt seems to be indicated by some of the inlaid daggers 

 from the Acropolis tombs. The subject of that representing the 

 ichneumons hunting ducks amidst the lotos thickets beside a 

 stream that can only be the Nile, as much as the intarsia 

 technique, is so purely of Egypt that it can only have been 

 executed by a Mycenxan artificer resident within its borders. 

 The whole cycle of Egyptian Nile-pieces thoroughly penetrated 

 Mycena'an art — the duck-catcher in his Nile-boat, the water- 

 fowl and butterflies among the river-plants, the spotted cows 

 and calves, supplied fertile motives for the Mycen;ean goldsmiths 

 and ceramic artists. The griffins of Myceniv reproduce an elegant 

 creation of the New Empire, in which an influence from the 

 Asiatic side is also traceable. 



The assimilation of Babylonian elements was equally e.xtensive. 

 It, too, as wehaveseen, had liegun in the earlier -ligean period, and 

 the religious influence from the Semitic side, of which traces are 

 already seen in the assimilation of the more primitive "idols" 

 to Eastern models, now forms a singular blend with the Egyptian, 

 as regards, at least, the externals of cult. We see priests, in 

 long folding robes of Asiatic cut, leading griffins, offering doves, 

 holding axes of a type of Egyptian derivation which seems to 

 have been common to the Syrian coast, the Hittite regions of 

 Anatolia, and Mycena;an Greece. Female votaries in flounced 

 Babylonian dresses stand before seated Goddesses, rays sug- 

 gesting those of Shamas shoot from a Sun-God's shoulders, con- 

 joined figures of moon and star recall the symbols of Sin and Istar, 

 and the worship of a divine pair of male and female divinities is 

 widely traceable, reproducing the relations of a Semitic Bel and 

 Bellis. The cylinder subjects of Chaldiean art continually assert 

 themselves : a Mycenaian hero steps into the place of Ciilgames or 

 Eabani, and renews their struggles with wild beasts and demons 

 in the same conventional attitudes, of which Christian art has 

 pre.served a reminiscence in its early type of Daniel in the lions" 

 den. The peculiar schemes resulting from, or, at least, brought 

 into continual prominence by the special conditions of cylinder 

 engraving, with the constant tendency to which it is liable of the 

 two ends of the design to overlap, deeply influenced the glyptic 

 style of Mycen.-e, Here, too, we see the same animals with crossed 

 bodies, with two bodies and a single head, or simply confronted. 

 These latter affiliations to Babylonian prototypes have a very 

 important bearing on many later offshoots of European culture. 

 The tradition of these heraldic groups preserved by the later 

 Myceniean art, and communicated by it to the so-called 

 '* Oriental " style of Greece, finds in another direction its un- 

 broken continuity in ornamental products of the Hallstatt pro- 

 vince, and that of the late Celtic metal workers. 



'■ But this," exclaims a friendly critic, "is the old heresy — 

 the 'Miraffe Orientak ' over again. Such heraldic combinations 

 have originated independently elsewhere : — why may they not 

 be of indigenous origin in primitive Europe ? " 



They certainly may be. Confronted figures occur already in 

 the Dordogne caves. But, in a variety of instances, the historic 

 and geographical connection of these types with the Mycen;i;an, 

 and those in turn with the Oriental, is clearly made out. That 

 system which leaves the least call on human efforts at inventive- 

 ness seems in anthropology to be the safest. 



Let us then fully acknowledge the indebtedness of early 

 -ICgean culture to the older civilisations of the East. But this 

 indebtedness must not be allowed to obscure the fact that 

 what was borrowed was also assimilated. On the easternmost 

 coast of the Mediterranean, as in Egypt, it is not in a pauper's 

 guise that the Myceniean element makes its appearance. It is 

 rather the invasion of a conquering and superior culture. It 

 has already outstripped its instructors. In Cyprus, which had 

 lagged behind the .Egean peoples in the race of progress, the 

 Mycenoean relics make their appearance as imported objects of 

 far superior fabric, side by side with the rude insular products. 

 The final engrafting on Cypriote soil of what may be called a 

 colonial plantation of MyceniK later reacts on Assyrian art, and 

 justifies the bold theory of Prof Brunn that the sculptures of 

 Nineveh betray Greek handiwork. The concordant Hebrew 

 tradition that the I'hilistines were immigrants from the Islands 

 of the Sea, the name "Cherethim," or Cretans, actually 

 applied to them, anil the religious ties which attached " Minoan " 

 Gaza to the cult of the Cretan Zeus, are so many indications 

 that the .Egean settlements, which in all probability existed in 



the Delta, extended to the neighbouring coast of Cansan, and 

 that amongst other towns the great staple of the Red Sea trade 

 had passed into the hands of these prehistoric Vikings. The 

 influence of the Mycenaians on the later Phoenicians is abundantly 

 illustrated in their eclectic art. The Cretan evidence tends to 

 show that even the origins of their alphabet receive illustration 

 from the earlier .-Egean pictography. It is not the Mycenceans 

 who are Phcenicians. It is the Phcenicians who, in many res|)ects, 

 acted as the depositaries of decadent Mycenxan art. 



If there is one thing more characteristic than another of 

 Phrenician art, it is its borrowed nature, and its incongruous 

 collocation of foreign elements. Dr. Hell)ig himself admits that 

 if Mycenaean art is to be regarded as the older Phoenician, the 

 Phcenician historically known to us must have changed his 

 nature. What the Mycenneans took they made their own. 

 They borrowed from the designs of Babylonian cylinders, but 

 they adapted them to gems and seals of their own fashion, and 

 rejected the cylinders themselves. The influence of Oriental 

 religious types is traceable on their .signet rings, but the liveliness 

 of treatment and the dramatic action introduced into the groups 

 separate them, tola calo, from the conventional schematism of 

 Babylonian cult-scenes. The older element, the sacred trees 

 and pillars which appear as the background of these scenes — on 

 this I hope to say more later on in this Section — there is no 

 reason to regard here as Semitic. It belongs to a religious stage 

 widely represented on primitive European soil, and nowhere 

 more persistent than in the West. 



Mycenfean culture was permeated by Oriental elements, but 

 never subdued by them. This independent quality would alone 

 be sufficient to fix its original birthplace in an area removed from 

 immediate contiguity with that of the older civilisations of Egypt 

 and Babylonia. The .Egean island world answers admirably 

 to the conditions of the case. It is near, yet sufficiently removed, 

 combining maritime access with insular .security. We see the 

 difference if we compare the civilisation of the Hittites of Ana- 

 tolia and Northern Syria, in some respects so closely parallel 

 with that of Mycena;. The native elements were there cramped 

 and trammelled from the beginning by the Oriental contact. 

 No real life and freedom of expression was ever reached ; the 

 art is stiff', conventional, becoming more and more Asiatic, till 

 finally crushed out by Assyrian conquest. It is the same with 

 the Phcenicians. But in prehistoric Greece the indigenous 

 element was able to hold its own, and to recast what it took 

 from others in an original mould. Throughout its handiwork 

 there breathes the European spirit of individuality and freedom. 

 Prof. Petrie's discoveries at Tell-el-Amarna show the contact of 

 this ^^igean element for a moment infusing naturalism and life 

 into the time-honoured conventionalities of Egypt itself. 



A variety of evidence, moreover, tends to show that during 

 the Mycenaean period the earlier .Egean stock was reinforced by 

 new race elements coming from north and west. The appear- 

 ance of the primitive fiddle-bow-shaped fihida or safety-pin 

 brings Mycencean Greece into a suggestive relation with the 

 Danube Valley and the Terremare of Northern Italy. Certain 

 ceramic forms show the same affinities ; and it may be noted that 

 the peculiar " two-storied" structure of the "Villanova" type 

 of urn which characterises the earliest Iron Age deposits of Italy 

 finds already a close counterpart in a vessel from an Akropolis 

 grave at Mycena? — a parallelism which may point to a common 

 illyrian source. The painted pottery of the Jlycenceans itself, 

 with its polychrome designs, betrays Northern and Western 

 affinities of a very early character, though the glaze and ex- 

 quisite technique were doubtless elaborated in the .Egean shores. 

 Examples of spiraliform painted designs on pottery going back 

 to the borders of the Neolithic period have been found in 

 Hungary and Bosnia. In the early rock-tombs of Sicily of the 

 period anterior to that marked by imported products of the fully 

 developed Mycenaean culture are found unglazed painted wares of 

 considerable brilliancy, and allied classes recur in the heel of 

 Italy and in the cave deposits of Liguria of the period transitional 

 between the use of stone and metal. The "household gods," 

 if so we may call them, of the Mycenaeans also break away from the 

 tradition of the marble .Egean forms. We recognise the coming 

 to the fore again of primitive European clay types in a more 

 advanced technique. Here, too, the range of comparison takes 

 us to the same Northern and Western area. Here, too, in Sicily 

 and Liguria, we see the primitive art of ceramic painting already 

 applied to these at the close of the Stone Age. A rude female 

 clay figure found in the Arene Candide cave near Finalmarina, 

 the upper part of the body of which, armless and rounded, is 



NO. 1405, VOL. 54] 



