The Age of the Gods

XV. The Mycenæan Culture of Greece and the Age of the Invasions

253 xv The Mycenæan Culture of Greece and the Age of the Invasions i. the succession of cultures in mainland greece during the later Bronze age a new culture, contemporary with the New Kingdom in egypt and the hittite empire, was arising in mainland greece which was destined to take the place of the old Minoan civilisation that had its centre at Cnossus. It occupies an intermediate position between the barbaric cultures of the european Bronze age and the civilised empires of egypt and Western asia, and affords a remarkable example of the new type of warlike society which arose from the contact between the invading Indo-european peoples and the archaic Culture of the Near east. owing to its geographical position and the main lines of communication in the peninsula, greece has been throughout its history the natural meeting-place of Mediterranean and Central european influences . as we have already seen, the earliest culture of the southern Balkans was allied in type to the neolithic peasant cultures of the danube region. at the beginning of the Bronze age, however, this neolithic culture was transformed by the coming of new influences from two different directions. In the south we see the appearance of a metal-using culture of the Ægean type, similar to that of the Cyclades, which is usually termed helladic, and which established itself on the coast in the region of Tiryns and Corinth, and thence gradually extended west and north throughout southern and Central greece. at about the same time a new culture of northern origin made its appearance in 254 The Age of the Gods Thessaly. It brought with it a new type of pottery with encrusted ornament and elaborate forms of handles, far inferior from the artistic point of view to the fine painted ware of the old Peasant Culture, as well as new weapons, such as the northern battle-axe. The coming of this new culture was probably an episode in the great movement of the warrior peoples of Indo-european stock that has already been described, and consequently its bearers may have been the original ancestors of the greek-speaking peoples; for we have no reason to believe that either the Ægean peoples, or the original neolithic population (with the possible exception of the intrusive Painted Pottery Culture of the second Thessalian period) were speakers of greek or indeed of any Indoeuropean language. early in the second millennium, at about the same time as the fall of the second City of Troy and the new wave of invasions which changed the face of Western asia, the domain of the helladic Culture in Central greece was also overrun by the invasion of a northern people who established themselves as far south as the argolis. These new-comers were probably a branch of the same Indo-european people who had settled in Thessaly during the earlier period. Like the latter, they were a warlike people who buried their dead in cist graves, but their pottery—the so-called Minyan ware—is of a far more advanced type than that of the third Thessalian period. a similar type of pottery occurs also at Troy, though only at a later period, the age of the fifth and sixth Cities. ii. the mycenÊan culture and the rise of the achaean power This victory of the northern influence in greece was, however, only a temporary one. In the latter part of the seventeenth century, the Ægean tradition which had already been represented by the early helladic Culture reasserted itself by the sudden appearance of the Cretan Culture in its fully developed form on the mainland. on the rocky hill of Mycenæ, overlooking the plain of argos and dominating the trade route that leads from Tiryns to the gulf of Corinth, a small fortress was built on the site of an earlier helladic settlement. This stronghold became the centre of a powerful state which dominated first the North- The Mycenæan Culture 255 eastern Peloponnese, and later the whole mainland and the islands. The graves of the earliest princes who reigned from perhaps 1620 to 1500 b.c. have been found intact in the grave circle at Mycenæ, and are extremely important and interesting. They are characterised by an extraordinary wealth of gold and elaborate ornaments of fully developed Minoan style, such as chased silver cups, beads of amber and amethyst, ostrich eggs and vessels of...