The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 03 : $b Greece to the Peloponnesian War
History
The historians' history of the world in twenty-five volumes, volume 03 : $b Greece to the Peloponnesian War
World history
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.
[Illustration: ARCHED PASSAGE WAY, MYCENÆ]
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