The Historians' History of the World 03

To take the first Mycenæan finds in Egypt. In a tomb of 1100 B.C., or within fifty years of that either way, at Kahun, Flinders Petrie found along with some dozens of bodies, “a great quantity of pottery, Egyptian, Phœnician, Cypriote, and Ægean”—notably an Ægean vase with an ivy leaf and stalk on each side, which he regards as the beginning of natural design. Further, at Gurob and elsewhere, the same untiring explorer has traced the Mycenæan false-necked vase or Bügelkanne through a series of dated stages, “a chain of examples in sequence showing that the earliest geometrical pottery of Mycenæ begins about 1400 B.C., and is succeeded by the beginning of natural designs about 1100 B.C.”

But long before these actual Mycenæan products came to light in Egypt, Egyptian art had told its story of relations with the Ægean folk. On the tomb-frescoes of Thebes we see pictured in four groups the tributaries of Tehutimes III (about 1500 B.C.), bringing their gifts to that great conqueror; among them, as we are told by the hieroglyphic text that runs with the painting, are “the princes of the land of Keftu [or Kefa] (Phœnicia) and of the islands in the great sea.” And the tribute in their hands includes vases of distinct Mycenæan style.

On the other hand, we find datable Egyptian products in Mycenæan deposits in Greece. From Mycenæ itself and from Ialysos in Rhodes we have scarabs bearing the cartouches of Amenhotep III and of his queen Thi; and fragments of Egyptian porcelain, also from Mycenæ, bear the cartouches of the same king, whose reign is dated to the latter half of the fifteenth century.

We have already noted the recurrence at Gurob, Kahun, and Tel-el-Amarna of the characters which were first found on the vase handles of Mycenæ; and this seemed at one time to have an important bearing on Mycenæan chronology. But in the wider view of the subject which has been opened up by Evans’ researches, this can no longer be insisted upon as an independent datum. However, the occurrence of these signs in a town demonstrably occupied by Ægean peoples at a given date has corroborative value.

While it can hardly be claimed that any or all of these facts amount to final proof, they certainly establish a strong probability that at least from the fifteenth century B.C. there was traffic between Egypt and the Mycenæan world. Whatever be said for the tomb-frescoes of Tehutimes’ foreign tribute-bearers and the scarabs from Mycenæ and Rhodes, we cannot explain away Mr. Petrie’s finds in the Fayum. The revelations of Tel-Gurob can leave no doubt that the brief career of the ancient city on that spot—say from 1450 to 1200 B.C.—was contemporaneous with the bloom-time of Mycenæan civilisation.

Now most, if not all, of the “Ægean” pottery from Gurob, like that pictured in the tomb-frescoes, belongs to the later Mycenæan styles as we find them in the chamber-tombs and ruined houses—in the same deposits, in fact, with the scarabs and broken porcelain which carry the cartouches of Amenhotep and Queen Thi. The earlier period of Mycenæan art is thus shown to be anterior to the reign of Tehutimes III; and as that period cannot conceivably be limited to a few short generations, the sixteenth century is none too early for the upper limit of the Mycenæan Age. We should, perhaps, date it at least a century farther back. Thus we approximate the chronology to which M. Fouqué has been led by geological considerations; while, on the other hand, more recent inquirers are inclined to reduce by a century or two the antiquity of the convulsion in which Thera perished, and thus approximate our own datum.

For the lower limit of the Mycenæan Age we have taken the twelfth century, though certain archæologists and historians are inclined to a much more recent date—some even bringing it three or four centuries further down.

This is not only improbable on its face, but at variance with the facts. To take but one test, the Mycenæan Age hardly knew the use of iron; at Mycenæ itself it was so rare that we find it only in an occasional ornament such as a ring. No iron was found in the prehistoric settlements at Hissarlik until 1890, when Dr. Schliemann came across two lumps of the metal, one of which had possibly served as the handle of a staff. “It is therefore certain,” he says, “that iron was already known in the second or ‘burnt city’; but it was probably at that time rarer and more precious than gold.” In Egypt, on the other hand, iron was known as early as the middle of the second millennium B.C., and if the beehive and chamber-tombs at Mycenæ are to be assigned to a period as late as the ninth century, the rare occurrence of iron in them becomes quite inexplicable.

The Testimony of Art