660 EFUESUS, CYPRUS, AND MYCENM. 



existence of convetiiioiial foi-ms and decorative patterns in art, and to trace 

 them to wliat was uudoubtedly tiieir primal source — Egypt and Assyria. 

 Here another question arises, which the professsiona,! archaeologists do not 

 seem to have adequately considered. At what phase of human civilization 

 does the fictile art make its appearance? From the evidence of our ancient 

 mounds in this country, it is the first step from barbarism to the beginning 

 of civilization, and thus almost the oldest of the rude mechanic arts. 

 Hence, in Phoenicia, its introduction must have speedily followed its inven- 

 tion in Egypt, which was nearer 4000 b. c. than 3000 b. c, while in Assyria 

 its antiquity can hardly be ascribed to a later than the latter date. How 

 long would the neighboring island of Cyprus remain ignorant of so useful 

 an art? and how much more time would be required to carry.it to Jihodes, 

 the Peloponnesus and the Troad ? Evidently, the age granted by certain 

 scholars to the oldest specimens of Cypriote potter}^ — about 800 b. c. — and 

 that allowed to the relics froni Mycense, two or three centuries earlier, 

 does not indicate, even if correct, the period when the art wa.s first brought 

 into practice, in either locality. The term "prehistoric" must not be 

 understood, therefore, simply as designating that cruder form of civiliza- 

 tion which has not yet learned to preserve and transmit its records to the 

 succeeding generations. It indicates, at best, in the Hellenic past, the ages 

 of which the exact records have been lost, when no era had been fixed for 

 the computation of years, and, as a natural consequence, the primitive 

 mythical history had become confounded with later historical facts. 



Dr. Schliemann's discovery at Mycenae has the advantage of whatever 

 probability belongs to this view. All our recent explorations of the past 

 of the human race, all the amazing discoveries of the last thirty years, 

 establish more firmly the fact that a basis of actual historic truth underlies 

 every feature of ancient history which we have been accustomed to con- 

 sider mythical. The opposite views which prevail, it is evident, arise 

 chiefly from the reluctance of scholars to accept any inference which may 

 conflict with the Hebrew chronology. Forgetting that far older and might- 

 ier empires, with far earlier records, existed on both sides of Palestine, and 

 left their stamp on its political and hierarchical organization, even on its 

 supreme faith, they waste much labor in constructing defensive theories, 

 instead of reasoning backward from independent evidence. It is simply im- 

 possible that two such powers as Egyj^t and Assyria should have existed, 

 without stimulating all the neighboring races which possessed the least 

 capacity for development. Wo do not find such phenomena in the world 

 now, and there is no reason for believing that they ever occurred. Speak- 

 ing as a layman, without the shadow of a claim to authority, I find it 

 exceedingly difficult to believe that in the time of Homer, when Egypt had 

 possessed a written language for at least two thousand years, the Greeks, 

 with the development in art and political organization which they then 

 enjoyed, should not have had some form of alphabet. It is equally difficult 

 to believe that the rhapsodes transmitted the " Iliad," orally, for centuries 



