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
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.
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