DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9804#0126
ioo THE END 0E THE BRONZE AGE
The great lesson that Cretan discoveries have taught
us is that the art of what we used to call the good or
mature Mycenaean type is not on the upward grade,
soon to be arrested by a catastrophe, but well on the
downward grade, with its catastrophe behind it.
Not indeed that there is an absence of catastrophe
at the end of Late Minoan III. Till within a year or
two ago we should have said without hesitation that the
greatest catastrophe of all came here, when the dead
are no longer buried but cremated, and iron replaces
bronze, and the brooch or fibula is first used to fasten
garments, and stiff geometric patterns are dominant,
and give the age its name. That such a change as this
did come into the JEgean world is as certain now as
ever it was, and that in some places the end came
suddenly and with violence is probable. In Crete itself,
however, the Bronze Age seems to have passed into the
Iron gradually and, so far as our present knowledge goes,
without any such startling blow as the sack of the Palace
at Knossos. Both the Palace of Phoestos and the Villa
of Hagia Triada seem to have been destroyed about
the same time, and perhaps actually in the same catas-
trophe, as the capital of the Empire.1 For Crete the
sack is /Egospotami, Late Minoan III. the long months
that culminate in the surrender of Athens ; the sack
is Leipzig, Late Minoan III. the slow closing in on Paris
that leads up to the abdication of Napoleon. At Knossos
itself the partial reoccupation of the Palace by humbler
men of the old race ended before there are any definite
traces of the Geometric Iron Age, and, before it came,
Zafer Papoura had ceased to be used for burial.2 Even,
however, in the town of Knossos the geometric tombs
1 So far as we can judge from the character of the latest vases
in them. Sec Pernier in Mon. Ant. xiv. 1905, pp. 314 seq. ;
Halbherr in Rend. xiv. 1905, pp. 374-6, and M.I.L. xxi. 5, 1905,
p. 244. Sec also Mackenzie, U.S.A. xi. pp. 220, 222.
« P.T. pp. 133-S ; E.C. p. 11.
The great lesson that Cretan discoveries have taught
us is that the art of what we used to call the good or
mature Mycenaean type is not on the upward grade,
soon to be arrested by a catastrophe, but well on the
downward grade, with its catastrophe behind it.
Not indeed that there is an absence of catastrophe
at the end of Late Minoan III. Till within a year or
two ago we should have said without hesitation that the
greatest catastrophe of all came here, when the dead
are no longer buried but cremated, and iron replaces
bronze, and the brooch or fibula is first used to fasten
garments, and stiff geometric patterns are dominant,
and give the age its name. That such a change as this
did come into the JEgean world is as certain now as
ever it was, and that in some places the end came
suddenly and with violence is probable. In Crete itself,
however, the Bronze Age seems to have passed into the
Iron gradually and, so far as our present knowledge goes,
without any such startling blow as the sack of the Palace
at Knossos. Both the Palace of Phoestos and the Villa
of Hagia Triada seem to have been destroyed about
the same time, and perhaps actually in the same catas-
trophe, as the capital of the Empire.1 For Crete the
sack is /Egospotami, Late Minoan III. the long months
that culminate in the surrender of Athens ; the sack
is Leipzig, Late Minoan III. the slow closing in on Paris
that leads up to the abdication of Napoleon. At Knossos
itself the partial reoccupation of the Palace by humbler
men of the old race ended before there are any definite
traces of the Geometric Iron Age, and, before it came,
Zafer Papoura had ceased to be used for burial.2 Even,
however, in the town of Knossos the geometric tombs
1 So far as we can judge from the character of the latest vases
in them. Sec Pernier in Mon. Ant. xiv. 1905, pp. 314 seq. ;
Halbherr in Rend. xiv. 1905, pp. 374-6, and M.I.L. xxi. 5, 1905,
p. 244. Sec also Mackenzie, U.S.A. xi. pp. 220, 222.
« P.T. pp. 133-S ; E.C. p. 11.