TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 921 
Italy, and, to take a single instance, the prevailing sword-type of that region is of 
Mycenzan origin. Along the western Adriatic coast the same influence is traceable 
to a very late date in the sepulchral stele of Pesaro and the tympanum relief of 
Bologna, and bronze knives of the prehistoric Greek type find their way into the 
later Terremare. At Orvieto and elsewhere have even been discovered Mycenzean 
lentoid gems. In Sicily the remarkable excavations of Professor Orsi have brought 
to light a whole series of Mycenzan relics in the beehive rock-tombs of the south- 
eastern coast, associated with the later class of Silkel fabrics. 
Sardinia, whose name has with great probability been connected with the 
Shardanas, who, with the Libyan and Algean races, appear as the early invaders of 
Egypt, has already produced a Mycenean geld ornament. An unregarded fact 
points further to the probability that it formed an important outpost of Mycenzan 
culture. In 1853 General Lamarmora first printed a MS. account of Sardinian 
antiquities, written in the latter years of the fifteenth century by a certain Gilj, 
and accompanied by drawings made in 1497 by Johan Virde, of Sassari. Amongst 
these latter (which include, it must be said, some gross falsifications) is a capital 
and part of a shaft of a Mycenzean column in a style approaching that of the 
facade of the ‘Treasury of Atreus.’ It seems to have been found at a place near 
the Sardinian Olbia, and Virde has attached to it the almost prophetic description, 
‘columna Pelasyica. That it is not a fabrication due to some traveller from 
Greece is shown by a curious detail. Between the chevrons that adorn it are seen 
rows of eight-rayed stars, a detail unknown to the Mycenzan architectural decora- 
tion till it occurred on the painted base of the hearth in the megaron of the palace 
at Mycenze excavated by the Greek Archeological Society in 1886. In this 
neglected record, then, we have an indication of the former existence in Sardinia 
of Mycenzean monuments, perhaps of palaces and royal tombs comparable to those 
of Mycene itself. 
More isolated Mycenzan relics have been found still further afield, in Spain, 
and even the Auvergne, where Dr. Montelius has recognised an evidence of an old 
trade connexion between the Rhone valley and the Eastern Mediterranean, in the 
occurrence of two bronze double axes of ASgean form. It is impossible to do more 
than indicate the influence exercised by the Mycenan arts on those of the early 
Tron Age. Here it may be enough to cite the late Mycenzean parallels afforded by 
the gina Treasure to the open-work groups cf bird-holding figures and the 
pendant ornaments of a whole series of characteristic ornaments of the Italo- 
Hallstatt culture. 
In this connexion, what may be called a sub-Mycenzan survival in the North- 
Western corner of the Balkan peninsula has a special interest for the Celtic West. 
Among the relics obtained by the fruitful excavations conducted by the Austrian 
archeologists in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and notably in the great prehistoric 
cemetery of Glasinatz,a whole series of Early Iron Age types betray distinct 
Mycenzan aflinities. The spiral motive and its degeneration—the concentric 
circles grouped together with or without tangential lines of connexion—appear on 
bronze torques, on fibulee of Mycenzan descent, and the typical finger-rings with 
the besil at right angles to the ring. On the plates of other ‘spectacle fibule ’ are 
seen triquetral scrolls singularly recalling the gold plates of the Akropolis graves 
of Mycenz. These, as well as other parallel survivals of the spiral system in the 
Late Bronze Age of the neighbouring Hungarian region, I have elsewhere ' ventured 
to claim as the true source from which the Alpine Celts, together with many Italo- 
Illyric elements from the old Venetian province at the head of the Adriatic, drew 
the most salient features of their later style, known on the Continent as that of La 
Téne. These Mycenzan survivals and Illyrian forms engrafted on the ‘ Hallstatt.’ 
stock were ultimately spread by the conquering Belgic tribes to our own islands, to 
remain the root element of the Late Celtic style in Britain—where the older spiral 
system had long since died a natural death—and in Ireland to live on to supply the 
earliest decorative motives of its Christian art. 
' Rhind Lectures, 1895, ‘On the Origins of Celtic Art,’ summaries of which 
- appeared in the Scotsman. 
1896. 30 
