DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9804#0066
MYCENAEAN AND MINOAN 41
Achasans. Learned and original as the writer is, he never
faces the question whether the facts at his disposal are
at all likely to be sufficient to account for the events of
two or three thousand years. We have the uncomfortable
feeling that a similar way of dealing with a similar amount
of knowledge might have given us the conquest of Britons
by Saxons as a full and adequate account of the thousand
years in the history of our own island which precede
the Norman invasion.
Mr. Evans himself, and, indeed, his immediate fellow-
workers, never fell into this error ; we find them from the
first feeling tentatively after a closer determination of
date. Such dating, modified as it has inevitably been
by the yearly progress of discovery, makes the reading
of Mr. Evans's earlier reports dangerous work, and even
his present conclusions 1 must not in every detail be
accepted as his finaL ones. Before discussing their
soundness or the problems they suggest, it may be well
briefly to describe them. We notice first and foremost
that Mr. Evans has banished the word Mycen.-ean as a
generic description of the early civilisation of Crete, and
has substituted for it the word Minoan. The reason for
a change of some kind is not far to seek. Between the
Neolithic age and the Geometric Mr. Evans has found
himself able to distinguish nine epochs ; and it is only
in the seventh that the earliest of the remains found at
Myceme itself can be said to begin ; while it is only the
ninth which is coincident with the widest diffusion of
what has hitherto been known as Mycenaean culture.
Whether the word Minoan was the best one to sub-
stitute is of course another matter. It is argued by some
German archaeologists, such as Dr. Dorpfeld 1 and Pro-
fessor Reisch,' that it is absurd to describe periods that
1 As given in E.G. 1906, B.S.A. xi. 1906, and on the labels
of the Ashmolean Museum.
2 Ath. Mitt. xxx. 1905, p. 296.
3 A.G.W. 1904, Sitz, p. [14], n. j.
Achasans. Learned and original as the writer is, he never
faces the question whether the facts at his disposal are
at all likely to be sufficient to account for the events of
two or three thousand years. We have the uncomfortable
feeling that a similar way of dealing with a similar amount
of knowledge might have given us the conquest of Britons
by Saxons as a full and adequate account of the thousand
years in the history of our own island which precede
the Norman invasion.
Mr. Evans himself, and, indeed, his immediate fellow-
workers, never fell into this error ; we find them from the
first feeling tentatively after a closer determination of
date. Such dating, modified as it has inevitably been
by the yearly progress of discovery, makes the reading
of Mr. Evans's earlier reports dangerous work, and even
his present conclusions 1 must not in every detail be
accepted as his finaL ones. Before discussing their
soundness or the problems they suggest, it may be well
briefly to describe them. We notice first and foremost
that Mr. Evans has banished the word Mycen.-ean as a
generic description of the early civilisation of Crete, and
has substituted for it the word Minoan. The reason for
a change of some kind is not far to seek. Between the
Neolithic age and the Geometric Mr. Evans has found
himself able to distinguish nine epochs ; and it is only
in the seventh that the earliest of the remains found at
Myceme itself can be said to begin ; while it is only the
ninth which is coincident with the widest diffusion of
what has hitherto been known as Mycenaean culture.
Whether the word Minoan was the best one to sub-
stitute is of course another matter. It is argued by some
German archaeologists, such as Dr. Dorpfeld 1 and Pro-
fessor Reisch,' that it is absurd to describe periods that
1 As given in E.G. 1906, B.S.A. xi. 1906, and on the labels
of the Ashmolean Museum.
2 Ath. Mitt. xxx. 1905, p. 296.
3 A.G.W. 1904, Sitz, p. [14], n. j.