History of Aegean Civilization

HISTORY OF AEGEAN CIVILIZATION History of an inferential and summary sort only can be derived from monuments in the absence of written records. The latter do, indeed, exist in the case of the Cretan civilization and in great numbers; but they are undeciphered and likely to remain so, except in the improbable event of the discovery of a long bilingual text, partly couched in some familiar script and language. Even in that event, the information which would be derived from the Cnossian tablets would probably make but a small addition to history, since in very large part they are evidently mere inven tories of tribute and stores. The engraved gems probably record divine or human names (see CRETE).

Chronology.

The first chronological datum is inferred from a close similarity between certain Cretan hand-made and polished vases of Minoan Period I. i. and others discovered by Petrie at Abydos in Egypt and referred by him to the 1st dynasty. He goes so far as to pronounce the latter to be Cretan importa tions, their fabric and forms being unlike anything Nilotic. If that be so, the period at which stone implements were beginning to be superseded by bronze in Crete must be dated before 4000 B.C. But below all Evans's "Minoan" strata lies the immensely thick Neolithic deposit. To date the beginning of this earliest record of human production is impossible at present. The Neolithic stratum varies very much in depth, ranging from nearly loft. to 3ft., but is deepest on the highest part of the hillock. Its variations may be due equally to natural denudation of a stratum once of uniform depth, or to the artificial heaping up of a mound by later builders. Even were certainty as to these alternatives attained, we could only guess at the average rate of accumula tion, which proceeds very differently on different sites and under different social and climatic conditions. In later periods at Cnos sus accumulation seems to have proceeded at a rate of, roughly, 3ft. per I,000 years. Reckoning by that standard we might push the earliest Neolithic remains back behind io,000 B.C.; but the calculation would be worthy of little credence. Surer chrono logical links are provided by the close affinity with early dynastic Egyptian products shown by the stone bowls from tombs of the 1st period at Mochlos and in Mesara. At Cnossus actual Egyp tian bowls of the earliest dynastic times have been found. These facts, and the parallelism displayed by Cretan seals in ivory and stone from the Mesara ossuaries and by Egyptian seals of the 1st six dynasties, enable us to say that the 1st period began before the middle of the 4th millennium. We reach another fairly cer tain date in the synchronism of remains belonging to the 12th dynasty (c. 2225 B.C.) with products of Minoan Period II. 2. Characteristic Cretan pottery of this period was found by Petrie in the Fayum and by Garstang at Abydos in conjunction with I2th dynasty remains, and various Cretan products of the period show striking coincidences with 12th dynasty styles, especially in their adoption of spiraliform ornament. The spiral, however, occurs so often in natural objects (e.g., horns, climbing plants, shavings of wood or metal) that too much stress must not be laid on the mutual parentage of spiraliform ornament in different. civilizations. A diorite statuette, referable by its style and in scription to Dynasty 13, was discovered in deposit of Period II. 2. in the central court, and a cartouche of the "Shepherd King," Khyan, was also found at Cnossus. He is usually dated about 1633 B.C. 'Phis brings us to the next and most certain synchro nism, that of Minoan Periods III. I, 2, with Dynasty i8 (c. 1600-1400 B.c.). This coincidence has been observed not only at Cnossus, but previously, in connection with discoveries of scarabs and other Egyptian objects made at Mycenae, Ialysus, Enkomi, etc. In Egypt itself Kefti tributaries, bearing vases of Aegean form, and themselves similar in fashion of dress and arrangement of hair to figures on Cretan frescoes and gems of Period III., are depicted under this and the succeeding dynasties (e.g., Rekhmara tomb at Thebes). Actual vases of late Aegean style have been found with remains of Dynasty 18, especially in the town of Amenophis IV.—Akhenaten—at Tell el-Amarna; while in the Aegean area itself we have abundant evidence of a great wave of Egyptian influence beginning with this same dynasty. To this wave were owed in all probability the Nilotic scenes depicted on the Mycenae daggers, on frescoes of Hagia Triada and Cnossus, on pottery of Zakro, on the shell-relief of Phaestus, etc. ; and also many forms and fabrics; e.g., certain Cretan coffins, and the faience industry of Cnossus. These serve to date, Periods III. 1-2 in Crete, the shaft-graves in the Mycenae circle, the Vaphio tomb, etc., to the 16th and i 5th centuries B.C., and Period III. 3, the walls and palaces of Mycenae and Tiryns, the majority of the 6th stratum at Hissarlik, the Ialysus burials, the upper stratum at Phylacope, etc., to the century immediately succeeding.

The terminus ad quem is less certain—iron does not begin to be used for weapons in the Aegean till after Period III. 3, and then not exclusively. If we fix its introduction about IIoo B.C. and make it coincident with the incursion of northern tribes, remembered by the classical Greeks as the Dorian Invasion, we must allow that this incursion did not altogether stamp out Aegean civilization, at least in the southern part of its area. But it finally destroyed the Cnossian palace and initiated the "Geo metric" age, with which, for convenience at any rate, we may close the history of Aegean civilization proper.

Annals.

From these and other data the outlines of primitive history in the Aegean may be sketched thus. A people, agreeing in its prevailing skull-forms with the Mediterranean race of north Africa, was settled in the Aegean islands from a remote Neolithic antiquity, but, except in Crete, where insular security was combined with great natural fertility, remained in a savage and unproductive condition until far into the 4th millen nium B.C. In Crete, however, it had long been in close contact with Egypt and had developed a certain civilization, and at a period more or less contemporary with Dynasties II and 12 (2200-2000 B.C.) the scattered communities of the centre of the island coalesced into a strong monarchical state, whose capital was at Cnossus. There the king, probably also high priest of the prevailing nature cult, built a great stone palace, and received the tribute of feudatories, of whom, probably, .the prince of Phaestus, who commanded the Messara plain, was chief. The Cnossian monarch had maritime relations with Egypt, and pres ently sent his wares all over the southern Aegean (e.g., to Melos in the earlier Second City period of Phylacope). A system of pictographic writing came into use early in this Palace period, but only a few documents, made of durable material, have sur vived. Pictorial art of a purely indigenous character, whether on ceramic material or plaster, made great strides, and from ceramic forms we may legitimately infer also a high skill in metallurgy. The absence of fortifications at Cnossus, Mallia, and Phaestus suggests that at this time Crete was internally peaceful and externally secure. Small settlements in close relation with the capital, were founded in the east of the island to command fertile districts and assist maritime commerce. Gournia and Palaikastro fulfilled both these ends; Zakro must have had mainly a commercial purpose, as the starting point for the African coast. The acme of this dominion was reached about the end of the 3rd millennium B.C., and thereafter there ensued a certain, though not very serious, decline. The period may be considered to close with a general disaster which overtook the principal Cretan sites at the end of the i 7th century B.C. The cause is still to seek ; some think it was due to war, others believe that it may have been the result of a terrible earthquake. This would have been caused by the explosion of the volcano of Thera which split that island in two and covered the prehistoric remains which belong to the last phase of the middle period with a deep deposit of pumice.

On the mainland the neolithic population, to judge by its brilliantly painted pottery, seems to have been distinct from that of the islands and to have been related rather to the tribes of the Danubian and Carpathian areas, which some regard as the original home of the Aryans. After the close of the first neolithic period in Thessaly a bronze-using folk, closely akin to the inhabit ants of the islands, came to the mainland and advancing from the south-east gradually made themselves masters of the peninsula as far north as Othrys. When this occurred we cannot say, but as the earliest bronze age ware on the mainland is still somewhat primi tive it may have taken place well before the end of the 3rd millennium B.C. Once established the bronze age people, together with the remains of the aborigines, developed on a culture parallel to that of the Cyclades, and several prosperous settlements arise as at Tiryns, Mycenae itself, Asine, Nemea, Zygouries and Korakou. If the Cretans and islanders were of non-Hellenic race, the bronze-using incomers may have introduced the non Hellenic place-names in -ssos and -lithos. When the second period in Crete had already evolved about the beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C. a new factor entered the mainland. This was accompanied by a new kind of pottery, "Minyan Ware," but whence or how it came we do not yet know. This people seems to have coalesced readily with the pre-existing population which, as we know, already contained two racial elements, and this is reflected in the skull types from Asine. At first, though in com munication with islands such as Melos and Paros, they seem to have had no contact with Crete till shortly before the end of the i 7th century B.C. Then Aegean culture, as represented by the Cretan culture of the renaissance after the disaster, came into the mainland in full force. This may have been due to a conquest of the mainland by Cretans, or to the hospitable reception of refugees from the disaster in Crete, or to raids conducted by chiefs of the mainland against Crete. Whatever the cause the mainland became saturated with Cretan culture, but it still retained its own individuality, which changed and charged with its own feeling whatever was borrowed from Crete. For instance the evolution of certain mainland vase shapes continues unbroken, but is modified by the influence of Crete. Thus at the beginning of the 3rd period, almost coincident with the rise of the i8th dynasty in Egypt, we have a renaissance in Crete and the es tablishment of strong centres of culture at Mycenae, Thebes and other mainland sites. In Crete the palaces were rebuilt on a larger scale and with more sumptuous appointments, though there was a distinct tendency towards the baroque. The mainland fol lowed suit, but there is almost the same quality of difference between them as there is between English and American i8th century culture. For two centuries this continued, the mainland becoming stronger and Crete weaker, till just about the time when the i8th dynasty decayed in the nerveless hands of Akhena ten, Crete collapsed and ceased to be the centre of Aegean culture. She still existed, but only as a provincial centre, down to the dawn of- the iron age. Her inheritance passed to the mainland which, probably under the leadership of Mycenae, established a great dominion, such as that which Homer depicts under Agamemnon's suzerainty. This is the age of the greatest uni formity of the Aegean culture. Then arose the great Cyclopean fortresses of Tiryns and Mycenae with their palaces, then were built the proudest of the beehive tombs, then Aegean products of mainland style reached distant shores from Sicily to Philistia, from Macedonia to Egypt. The energy of the mainlanders both in spreading abroad through the Mediterranean the culture which they had adopted as their own and in erecting monumental build ings which testify to amazing architectural skill, demonstrates that they were a people of strong character, capable and original. Were these the Achaeans ? Who were the makers of Minyan ware ? Were they from Asia Minor like the Tantalids; and were they, so to speak, the forerunners of the Etruscans, who in another land at a later date so quickly absorbed Hellenic culture ? These are problems which cannot yet be answered, but it seems possible that Aryans may well have been resident in the peninsula long before the Homeric age and so were not northern invaders as modern criticism has asserted, for Greek tradition regarded the Achaeans as natives. The activities of the mainland folk after 1400 seem to find an echo in the Hittite tablets which record the doings of the Ahhiyava from that century onwards.

Towards the beginning of the 12th century the traditional date for the Trojan War and when Egypt was vexed by the Peoples of the Sea, signs of degeneration again appear and soon after came a final catastrophe, probably about I 1 oo B.C. Mycenae and Tiryns went up in flames. The palace at Cnossus was once more destroyed, and never rebuilt or re-inhabited. Iron took the place of bronze, and Aegean art, as a living thing, ceased on the Greek mainland and in the Aegean isles, including Crete, together with Aegean writing. In Cyprus, and perhaps on the south-west An atolian coasts, the cataclysm was less complete, and Aegean art continued to languish, cut off from its fountain-head. Such artistic faculty as survived elsewhere issued in the lifeless geo metric style which is reminiscent of the later Aegean, but wholly unworthy of it. Cremation took the place of burial of the dead. This great disaster, which cleared the ground for a further evolu tion of art, was probably due to an incursion of northern tribes, gradual rather than sudden, who were possessed of superior iron weapons—those tribes which later Greek tradition and Homer knew as the Dorians. They crushed a civilization , that had out grown its strength ; and it took two or three centuries for the artistic spirit, instinct in the Aegean area, and probably preserved in suspended animation by the survival of Aegean racial elements, to blossom anew. On this conquest seems to have ensued a long period of unrest and popular movements, known to Greek tradition as the Ionian Migration and the Aeolic and Dorian "colonizations"; and when once more we see the Aegean area clearly, it is dominated by Hellenes, though it has by no means lost all memory of its earlier culture, which was after all the mainspring of the Greek genius. The darkness that shrouds the close of the bronze age was but the prelude to a brighter dawn.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.—Much of the evidence is contained in archaeological Bibliography.—Much of the evidence is contained in archaeological periodicals, especially Annual of the British School at Athens (190o et seq.) ; Monumenti Antichi and Rendiconti d. R. Ac. d. Lincei (1901— ) ; Ephemeris Archaiologike (1885 et seq.) ; Archaiologikon Detion (1915 et seq.) ; Journal of Hellenic Studies, Athenische Mitt heilungen, Bulletin de correspondance Hellinique, American Journal of Archaeology, etc. (all since about 1885). Special Works: H. Schlie mann's books (see SCHLIEMANN) , summarized by C. Schuchhardt, Schliemann's Excavations (1891) ; Chr. Tsountas, Mtoccivat (1893) , Ilpoiaropucal 'AKpoR-OXE,,s (1908) ; Chr. Tsountas and J. I. Manatt, The Mycenaean Age (1897) ; G. Perrot, and Ch. Chipiez, Histoire de Part dans rantiquite, vol. vi. (1895) ; W. Dorpfeld, Troja (1893) and Troja and Ilios (1904), Alt-Ithaka (1927) ; A. Furtwangler and G. Loschcke, Mykenische Vasen (1886) ; A. S. Murray, Excavations in Cyprus (1900) ; W. Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece (Igor foll.) ; H. R. Hall, The Oldest Civilization of Greece (19c4), Aegean Archae ology (1915) ; A. J. Evans, "Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult" in Journ. Hell. Studies (i9oi), "Prehistoric Tombs of Knossos" in Ar chaeologia (1905), "Tomb of Double Axes" in Archaeologia (1914), Palace of Minos (1921 et seq.) ; F. Noack, Homerische Palaste (1903); Excavations at Phylakopi, by members of the British School at Athens (1904) ; Harriet A. Boyd (Mrs. Hawes), Excavations at Gournia (1907) ; D. G. Hogarth, "Aegean Religion" in Hastings' Dict. of Re ligions (1906) ; G. Rodenwalt and other Tiryns (1912 et seq.) ; C. W. Blegen, Korakou (1921) ; S. Xanthoudides, Vaulted Tombs of Mesara (1924) ; A. J. B. Wace and M. S. Thompson, Prehistoric Thessaly (1912) ; A. J. B. Wace, "Excavations at Mycenae" in Annual of the British School at Athens, vols. xxiv., xxv. (1922, 1925), Cretan Statu ette in Fitzwilliam Museum (1927) ; Bossert, Altkreta (1923) ; M. Nilsson, Minoan-Mycenaean Religion (1927) ; 0. Montelius, La Grece Preclassique 1. (1924) ; D. Fimmen, Kretisch-Mykenische Kultur (1923) ; H. Bulle, Orchomenos I. (1907) ; H. Goldman, Eutresis (1927) ; R. B. Seager, Excavations in the Island of Pseira (19io— ). Explorations in the Island of Mochlos (1912), Pachyammos (1916) ; E. H. Hall, Vrokastro (1914) ; Frankfort, Studies in Early Pottery of the Near East (1923-1927) ; G. Glotz, Aegean Civilization (1925); R. Dussaud, Civilizations Prehelliniques (1914) ; A. W. Persson and 0. Frodin, "Asine" in Bulletin of R. Soc. of Letters of Lund (1922-3, ; V. G. Childe, Dawn of European Civilization (1925). For recent views of the place of Aegean civilization in the ancient history of the Near East, see the Cambridge Ancient History, vols. i. and ii. (1923, 1924). Various summaries, controversial articles, etc., formerly quoted are now superseded by recent discoveries. See also CRETE, MY CENAE, TIRYNS, TROY, ACHAEANS, IONIANS, DORIANS.

(D. G. H.; A. J. B. W.)