The classical writers of Greece pointed to Mycenæ and Tiryns in Argolis as being the principal evidence of a prehistoric civilisation, which was assumed to belong to the Homeric period or even farther back to a rude heroic beginning of Hellenic civilisation. This opinion continued to be held by scholars until <small>A.D.</small> 1876. In this year, however, Dr. Schliemann, opening up the graves which are just inside the Lion Gateway of the citadel at Mycenæ, came upon a quantity of objects which proved the high state of civilisation to which the prehistoric inhabitants of the city had attained. Furthermore, they corresponded in character to the vases and gold, silver, and bronze objects which, three years earlier, he had dug from the ruins of the “Burnt City” (Troy) at Hissarlik in the Troad. These objects from the peninsula of Peloponnesus and the mainland of Asia Minor were not only similar in character but also of a fabric and decoration which differed from those of any known art. But a relation between the objects of art described by Homer and these “Mycenæan” treasures was generally allowed. In 1884-1885 Schliemann and Dörpfeld, exploring the ruins of Tiryns, came upon a building which offers the most complete example in Greece of a palace of the “Mycenæan” age, belonging to a period probably between 1400 and 1200 <small>B.C.</small> During the subsequent years of the nineteenth century, when exploration was extended to other parts of the Peloponnesus and Northern parts of Greece, dome or beehive tombs, such as had been found at Mycenæ, were discovered in Attica, Thessaly, and elsewhere. By degrees, exploration was carried beyond the mainland of Greece to the Ionian Islands and the islands of the Ægean, particularly to Cyprus and Crete and the mainland of Asia Minor. This resulted in further discoveries of objects, related in a common family, distinct from that of any other art division. Meanwhile, objects of similar character were met with in Egypt, Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain. Finally, the culmination of all this mass of corroborative evidence was reached by the explorations of Dr. A. J. Evans, at Cnossus in Crete, which have been followed up by explorations in Phæstus, and other Cretan sites. The net result is to establish the knowledge that Crete was the centre of a civilisation which had dealings with Egypt and Mesopotamia and extended to the sea-coast of Asia Minor and Phœnicia, the other islands of the Ægean Archipelago, the Ionian Islands, and the mainland of Greece and spread its offshoots along the west shores of the Adriatic, into Sardinia and Spain and took deep root in Sicily. To the far-extending ramifications of this civilisation has been given the comprehensive name of Minoan or Ægean.