Comparative mythology has thus given us a juster appreciation of the historical inferences we may draw from the legends of prehistoric Greece, and has led us back to a recognition of the important part played by the Phoenicians in the heroic age. Greek culture, it is true, was not the mere copy of that of Semitic Asia, as scholars once believed, but the germs of it had come in large measure from an Oriental seed-plot. The conclusions derived from a scientific study of the myths have been confirmed and widened by the recent researches and discoveries of archaeology. The spade, it has been said, is the modern instrument for reconstructing the history of the past, and in no department in history has the spade been more active of late than in that of Greece. From all sides light has come upon that remote epoch around which the mist of a fabulous antiquity had already been folded in the days of Herodotus; from the islands and shores of the AEgean, from the tombs of Asia Minor and Palestine, nay, even from the temples and palaces of Egypt and Assyria, have the materials been exhumed for sketching in something like clear outline the origin and growth of Greek civilization. From nowhere, however, have more important revelations been derived than from the excavations at Mykenae and Spata, near Athens, and it is with the evidence furnished by these that I now propose mainly to deal. A personal inspection of the sites and the objects found upon them has convinced me of the groundlessness of the doubts which have been thrown out against their antiquity, as well as of the intercourse and connection to which they testify with the great empires of Babylonia and Assyria. Mr. Poole has lately pointed out what materials are furnished by the Egyptian monuments for determining the age and character of the antiquities of Mykenae.[25] I would now draw attention to the far clearer and more tangible materials afforded by Assyrian art and history.