But discovery was far from being confined to the Greek mainland and its immediate dependencies. The limits of the prehistoric area were pushed out to the central Ægean islands, all of which are singularly rich in evidence of the pre-Mycenæan period. The series of Syran built graves, containing crouching corpses, is the best and most representative that is known in the Ægean. Melos, long marked as containing early objects, but not systematically excavated until taken in hand by the British School at Athens in 1896, shows remains of all the Ægean periods.
Crete has been proved by the tombs of Anoja and Egarnos, by the excavations on the site of Knossos begun in 1878 by M. Minos Kalokairinos and resumed with startling success in 1900 by Messrs. Evans and Hogarth, and by those in the Dictæan cave and at Phæstos, Gournia, Zakro, and Palæokastro, to be prolific of remains of the prehistoric periods out of all proportion to remains of classical Hellenic culture. A map of Cyprus in the later Bronze Age now shows more than five-and-twenty settlements in and about the Mesaorea district alone, of which one, that at Enkomi, near the site of later Salamis, has yielded the richest gold treasure found outside Mycenæ. Half round the outermost circle to which Greek influence attained in the classical period remains of the same prehistoric civilisation have been happened on. M. Chantre, in 1894, picked up lustreless ware, like that of Hissarlik, in central Phrygia, and the English archæological expeditions sent subsequently into northwestern Anatolia have never failed to bring back “Ægean” specimens from the valleys of the Rhyndacus and Sangarius, and even of the Halys.
In Egypt, Mr. Petrie found painted sherds of Cretan style at Kahun in the Fayum in 1887, and farther up the Nile, at Tel-el-Amarna, chanced on bits of not less than eight hundred Ægean vases in 1889. There have now been recognised in the collections at Gizeh, Florence, London, Paris, and Bologna several Egyptian or Phœnician imitations of the Mycenæan style to set off against the many debts which the centres of Mycenæan culture owed to Egypt. Two Mycenæan vases were found at Sidon in 1885, and many fragments of Ægean, and especially Cypriote, pottery have been turned up during the recent excavation of sites in Philistia by the Palestine Fund. Southeastern Sicily has proved, ever since Orsi excavated the Sicel cemetery near Lentini in 1877, a mine of early remains, among which appear in regular succession Ægean fabrics and motives of decoration from the period of the second stratum at Hissarlik down to the latest Mycenæan. Sardinia has Mycenæan sites, e.g., at Abini near Teti, and Spain has yielded objects recognised as Mycenæan from tombs near Cadiz, and from Saragossa.
Arched Passage Way, Mycenæ
The results of three excavations will especially serve as rallying points and supply a standard of comparison. After Schliemann’s death, Dörpfeld returned to Hissarlik, and recognised in the huge remains of the sixth stratum, on the southern skirts of the citadel mound, a city of the same period as Mycenæ at its acme. Thus we can study there remains of a later stage, in one process of development superposed on earlier remains, after an intervening period. The links there missing are, however, apparent at Phylakopi in Melos, excavated systematically from 1896 to 1899. Here buildings of three main periods appear one on another. The earliest overlie in one spot a deposit of sherds of the most primitive type known in the Ægean and found in the earliest cist-graves. The second and third cities rise one out of the other without evidence of long interval. A third and more important site than either, Knossos in Crete, awaits fuller publication. Here are ruins of a great palace, mainly of two periods. Originally constructed about 2000 B.C., it was almost entirely rebuilt at the acme of the Mycenæan Age, but substructures and other remains of the earlier palace underlie the later.
Since recent researches, some of whose results are not yet published, have demonstrated that in certain localities, for instance, Cyprus, Crete, and most of the Ægean islands where Mycenæan remains were not long ago supposed to be merely sporadic, they form in fact a stratum to be expected on the site of almost every ancient Ægean settlement, we may safely assume that Mycenæan civilisation was a phase in the history of all the insular and peninsular territories of the east Mediterranean basin. Into the continents on the east and south we have no reason to suppose that its influence penetrated either very widely or very strongly.
The remains that especially concern us here belong to the later period illustrated by these discoveries, and have everywhere a certain uniformity. Some common influence spread at a certain era over the Ægean area and reduced almost to identity a number of local civilisations of similar origin but diverse development. Surviving influences of these, however, combined with the constant geographical conditions to reintroduce some local differentiation into the Mycenæan products.
The Neolithic Age in the Ægean has now been abundantly illustrated from the yellow bottom clay at Knossos, and its products do not differ materially from those implements and vessels with which man has everywhere sought to satisfy his first needs. The mass of the stone tools and weapons, and the coarse hand-made and burnished pottery, might well proceed from the spontaneous invention of each locality that possessed suitable stone and clay; but the common presence of flaked blades, arrow-heads, and blunt choppers of an obsidian, native, so far as is known, to Melos only, speaks of inter-communication even at this early period between many distant localities and the city whose remains have been unearthed at Phylakopi. The wide range of the peculiar cist-grave strengthens the belief that late Stone Age culture in the Ægean was not of sporadic development, and prepares us for the universality of a certain fiddle-shaped type of stone idol. Local divergence is, however, already apparent in the relative prevalence of certain forms: for example, a shallow bowl is common in Crete, but not in the Cyclades, while the pyxis, so common in the graves of Amorgos and Melos, has left little sign of itself in Crete; and from this point the further development of civilisation in the Ægean area results in increasing differentiation. The Greek mainland has produced as yet very little of the earlier periods (the excavators of the Heræum promise additions); but the primitive remains in the rest of the area may be divided into four classes of strong family likeness, but distinct development.
The pottery supplies the best criterion, and will suffice for our end. We have no such comprehensive and certain evidence from other classes of remains. Except for the Great Treasure of Hissarlik, and the weapons in Cycladic graves, there have been found as yet hardly any metal products of the period. Of the few stone products, one class, the “island idols,” already referred to, was obviously exported widely, and supplies an ill test either of place or date. There have not been discovered sufficiently numerous structures or graves to afford a basis of classification. Fortified towns have been explored in Melos, Siphnos, and the Troad, and a few houses in Ægina and Thera; but neither unaltered houses nor tombs of undoubted primitive character have appeared in Crete as yet, nor elsewhere than in the Cyclad isles.