DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11610#0164
r52
TEN YEARS' DIGGING IN EGYPT
iron, of which there is no satisfactory evidence until
about 800 B.C. Iron may have been known perhaps
as a curiosity, just as one example of bronze occurs
two thousand years before it came into actual use;
but it had no effect on the arts. And shortly after
came the Egyptian renascence, when the cycle of
invention was run through, and the Egyptians were
reduced to copying slavishly, and without the original
spirit, the works of their ancestors. The Western in-
fluence became predominant, and importations instead
of development govern the succeeding changes.
But it is rather in Europe than in Egypt that our
interest centres. As no European literature remains
to us older than the sixth or seventh century B.C,
(except the oral poems), it has been too readily
assumed that no civilization worthy of the name could
have dwelt here, and that wc are indebted to the East
for all our skill. So far from this being the case, it
now seems that we must almost reverse the view.
We have in the Egyptian records the accounts of
a great European confederacy, which smote Egypt
again and again,—Greece, Asia Minor, Italy, and
Libya, all leagued together. Wc now know, from the
objects found in Egypt, that these peoples were dwell-
ing there as settlers so far back as 1400 B.C., if not
indeed before 2000 B.C. From the chronology of the
arts now ascertained, we can date the great civilization
of Mykcnae to about 1600 to 1000 B.C. (as I have
stated in ' Notes on Mykcnae,' Journal of Hellenic
Studies, 1891); and wc begin to see a great past rising
before us. dumb, but full of meaning. Some of the
metals were known in Europe before they appear in
TEN YEARS' DIGGING IN EGYPT
iron, of which there is no satisfactory evidence until
about 800 B.C. Iron may have been known perhaps
as a curiosity, just as one example of bronze occurs
two thousand years before it came into actual use;
but it had no effect on the arts. And shortly after
came the Egyptian renascence, when the cycle of
invention was run through, and the Egyptians were
reduced to copying slavishly, and without the original
spirit, the works of their ancestors. The Western in-
fluence became predominant, and importations instead
of development govern the succeeding changes.
But it is rather in Europe than in Egypt that our
interest centres. As no European literature remains
to us older than the sixth or seventh century B.C,
(except the oral poems), it has been too readily
assumed that no civilization worthy of the name could
have dwelt here, and that wc are indebted to the East
for all our skill. So far from this being the case, it
now seems that we must almost reverse the view.
We have in the Egyptian records the accounts of
a great European confederacy, which smote Egypt
again and again,—Greece, Asia Minor, Italy, and
Libya, all leagued together. Wc now know, from the
objects found in Egypt, that these peoples were dwell-
ing there as settlers so far back as 1400 B.C., if not
indeed before 2000 B.C. From the chronology of the
arts now ascertained, we can date the great civilization
of Mykcnae to about 1600 to 1000 B.C. (as I have
stated in ' Notes on Mykcnae,' Journal of Hellenic
Studies, 1891); and wc begin to see a great past rising
before us. dumb, but full of meaning. Some of the
metals were known in Europe before they appear in