TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 917 
reasoning by which the whole prehistoric civilisation of the Greek world, so. 
instinct with naturalism and individuality, is handed over to the least original 
member of the Semitic race. The absence in historic Greece of such arts as that 
ef intarsia in metal work, of glass-making (if true) and of porcelain-making, is 
used as a conclusive argument against their practice by an /Hgean population, of 
uncertain stocls, a thousand years earlier, as if in the intervening dark ages between. 
the primitive civilisation of the Greek lands and the Classical Renaissance no arts: 
- could have been Jost! 
Finally, the merchants of Kefté depicted on the Eeyptian monuments are once: 
more claimed as Phcenicians, and with them—-though this is by no means a 
necessary conclusion, even from the premise—the precious gifts they bear, in- 
cluding vases of characteristic Mycenrean form and ornament. All this is 
diametrically opposed to the conclusions of the most careful inquirer into the 
origins of this mysterious people, Dr. W. Max Miiller (to be distinguished from 
the eminent Professor), who shows that the list of countries in which Kefté occurs: 
places them beyond the limit of Phcenicia or of any Semitic country, and connects. 
them rather with Cilicia and with Cyprus, the scene, as we now know, of important 
Mycenzan plantations. It is certain that not only do the Keftiu traders bear 
articles of Mycenzean fabric, but their costume, which is wholly un-Semitic, their 
leggings and sandals, and the long double locks of hair streaming down below their 
armpits, identify them with the men of the frescoes of Mycenze, and of the Vaphio 
and Knosian cups. 
The truth is that these Syrian aud Phoenician theories are largely to be traced 
to the inability to understand the extent to which the primitive inhabitants of the 
Agean shores had been able to assimilate exotic arts without losing their own 
individuality. The precocious offspring of our Continent, first come to man’s 
estate in the A‘gean island world, had acquired cosmopolitan tastes, and already 
stretched forth his hands to pluck the fruit of knowledge from Oriental boughs. 
He had adopted foreign fashions of dress and ornament. Tis artists revelled in lion- 
hunts and palm-trees, His very worship was infected by the creations of foreign 
religions. 
The great extent to which the Mycenzans had assimilated exotic arts and 
ideas can only be understood when it is realised that this adaptive process had 
begun at least a thousand years before, in the earlier period of AJgean culture. 
New impulses from Egypt and Chaldza now succeed the old. The connexion 
with Kighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasty Ezypt was of so intimate a kind that it 
can only be explained by actual settlement from the Avgean side. The abundant 
relics of ASgean ceramic manufactures found by Professor Petrie on Egyptian 
sites fully bear out this presumption. The early marks on potsherds discovered 
by that explorer seem to carry the connexion back to the earlier Aigean period, 
but the painted pottery belongs to what may broadly be described as Mycenzean 
times. ‘The earliest relics of this kind found in the rubbish heaps of Kahun, 
though it can hardly be admitted that they go quite so far back as the Twelfth 
Dynasty date assigned to them by Mr. Petrié (c. 2500 B.c.), yet correspond with the 
earliest Mycenzean classes found at Thera and Tiryns, and seem to find their nearest: 
parallels in pottery of the same character from the cave of Kamares on the northern 
steep of the Cretan Ida, recently described by Mr. J. L. Myres and by Dr. Lucio 
Mariani. Vases of the more typical Mycenzean class have been found by Mr. Petrie 
in a series of deposits dated, from the associated Egyptian relics, from the reign 
of Thothmes III. onwards (1450 B.c.), There is nothing Phoenician about these— 
with their seaweeds and marine creatures they are the true products of the 
island world of Greece. The counterpart to these Mycenzan imports in Egypt is 
seen in the purely Egyptian designs which now invade the northern shores of 
the Augean, such as the ceiling of the sepulchral chamber at Orchomenos, or the 
wall-paintings of the palace at Tiryns—almost exact copies of the ceilings of the 
‘Theban tombs—designs distinguished by the later Egyptian combination of the spiral 
and plant ornament which at this period supersedes the pure returning spiral of the 
earlier dynasties. The same contemporary evidence of date is seen in the scarabs 
and porcelain fragments with the cartouches of Queen Tyi and Amenhotep IIL, 
