916 REPORT—1896. 
the soil of prehistoric Greece—can be shown to be rooted in this earlier ASgean 
stratum, The spiral system, still seen in much of its pure original form on the 
gold vessels and ornaments from the earlier shaft-graves of Mycenie, is simply the 
translation into metal of the pre-existing steatite decoration.’ — 
The Mycenzan repoussé work in its most developed stage as applied to human 
and animal subjects has probably the same origin in stone work. Cretan examples, 
indeed, give the actual transition inwhich an intaglio in dark steatite is coated 
with a thin gold plate impressed into the design. On the other hand, the noblest 
ef all creations of the Mycenzean goldsmith’s art, the Vaphio cups, with their bold 
reliefs, illustrating the hunting and capture of wild bulls, find their nearest analogy 
in a fragment of a cup, procured by me from Knésos, of black Cretan steatite, 
with naturalistic reliefs, exhibiting a fig-tree in a sacred enclosure, an altar, and 
men in high action, which in all probability was originally coated, like the intaglio, 
with thin plates of gold. 
In view of some still prevalent theories as to the origin of Mycenean art, it 
is important to bear in mind these analogies and connexions, which show. how 
deeply set its roots are in A%gean soil. The Vaphio cups, especially, from their 
superior art, have been widely regarded as of exotic fabric. That the art of 
an Huropean population in prehistoric times should have risen above that of 
contemporary Hgypt and Babylonia was something beyond the comprehension 
ef the traditional school ‘These most characteristic products of indigenous skill, 
with their spirited representations of a sport the traditional home of which 
in later times was the Thessalian plains, have been, therefore, brought from 
‘Northern Syria’! Yet a whole series of Mycenzan gems exists executed in the 
same bold naturalistic style, and of local materials, such as lapis Lacedeemonius, 
the subjects of which are drawn from the same artistic cycle as those of the cups, 
and not one of these has as yet been found on the Hastern Mediterranean shores. 
Like the other kindred intaglios, they all come from the Peloponnese, from Crete, 
from the shores and islands of the .Mgean, from the area, that is, where their 
materials were procured. Their Jentoid and almond-shaped forms are altogether 
foreign to Semitic usage, which clung to the cylinder and cone. The finer 
products of the Mycenzan glyptic art on harder materials were, in fact, the 
outcome of long apprentice studies of the earlier Ag¢ean population, of which we 
have now the record in the primitive Cretan seals, and the explanation in the vast 
beds of such an easily worked material as steatite. 
But the importation of the most characteristic Mycensean products from 
‘Northern Syria’ has become quite a moderate proposition beside that which we 
have now before us. In a recent communication to the French Academy of 
Inscriptions, Dr. Helbig has re-introduced to us a more familiar figure. Driven 
from his prehistoric haunts on the Atlantic coasts, torn from the Cassiterides, dis- 
lodged even from his Thucididean plantations in pre-Hellenic Sicily, the Phoenician 
has returned, tricked out as the true ‘ Mycenzean.’ 
A great part of Dr. Helbig’s argument has been answered by anticipation. 
Regardless of the existence of a regular succession of intermediate glyptic types, 
such as the ‘ Melian’ gems and the engraved seals of the geometrical deposits of 
the Greek mainland, like those of Olympia and of the Heron at Argos, which 
link the Mycenzean with the classical series, Dr. Helbig takes a verse of Homer 
to hang from it a theory that seals and engraved stones were unknown to 
the early Greeks. On this imaginary fact he builds the astounding statement 
that the engraved gems aud seals found with Mycenw#an remains must be of 
foreign and, as he believes, Phoenician importation, The stray diffusion of one 
er two examples of Myceniean pots to the coast of Palestine, the partial re- 
semblance of some Hittite bronze figures, executed in a more barbarous Syrian 
style, to specimens of quite different fabric found at Tiryns, Mycenz, and, it may 
ke added, in a Cretan cave near Sybrita, the wholly unwarranted attribution to 
Pheenicia of a bronze vase-handle found in Cyprus, exhibiting the typical lion- 
headed demons of the Mycenzeans—these are only a few salient examples of the 
1 See Hellenic Journal, xii. 1892, p. 221. 
