DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1021#0043
10 THE MYCENAEAN AGE
credentials, its neighbor Kephallenia is now an accredited
outpost of that civilization as shown by a beehive
and three chamber tombs recently described by
Dr. Wolters.1
In the Aegean, again, Crete is in a fair way to contest
the Mycenaean primacy with Mycenae itself. Without any
thorough-going explorations, we have already in
evidence there fortress and palace (at Knossos),
Cyclopean roads, beehive tombs, Mycenaean pottery, and
particularly great numbers of engraved gems (the so-called
island stones), often bearing pictographic or alphabetic
symbols which are clearly pre-Phoenician. And Mr. Evans
now announces2 his further discovery in the Diktaion
Antron (the legendary-birthplace of Zeus) of "a formal
inscription dating, at a moderate computation, some six cen-
turies earlier than the earliest Hellenic writing, and at least
three centuries older than the earliest Phoenician."
In concluding this rapid survey, we return to Troy.
There, in 1893-94, Dr. Dorpfeld found in the sixth stratum
— four layers above the Burnt City which Schlie-
mann explored — the acropolis of the Mycenaean
age, and so, if ever there was such, the Pergamos of Priam.
Of this momentous discovery a fuller account will be given
in Appendix A.
As the outcome of all these discoveries and the studies
based upon them, there stands revealed a distinct and
homogeneous civilization, — a civilization so sin-
A distinct . _
Hellenic gular in many aspects that scholars have been
slow to see in it a phase of unfolding Hellenic
culture. At first, indeed, it was pronounced exotic and
barbarous j but the wider the area laid under contribution
1 A th. Mm., 1894.
2 Academy, June 13, 1896.
credentials, its neighbor Kephallenia is now an accredited
outpost of that civilization as shown by a beehive
and three chamber tombs recently described by
Dr. Wolters.1
In the Aegean, again, Crete is in a fair way to contest
the Mycenaean primacy with Mycenae itself. Without any
thorough-going explorations, we have already in
evidence there fortress and palace (at Knossos),
Cyclopean roads, beehive tombs, Mycenaean pottery, and
particularly great numbers of engraved gems (the so-called
island stones), often bearing pictographic or alphabetic
symbols which are clearly pre-Phoenician. And Mr. Evans
now announces2 his further discovery in the Diktaion
Antron (the legendary-birthplace of Zeus) of "a formal
inscription dating, at a moderate computation, some six cen-
turies earlier than the earliest Hellenic writing, and at least
three centuries older than the earliest Phoenician."
In concluding this rapid survey, we return to Troy.
There, in 1893-94, Dr. Dorpfeld found in the sixth stratum
— four layers above the Burnt City which Schlie-
mann explored — the acropolis of the Mycenaean
age, and so, if ever there was such, the Pergamos of Priam.
Of this momentous discovery a fuller account will be given
in Appendix A.
As the outcome of all these discoveries and the studies
based upon them, there stands revealed a distinct and
homogeneous civilization, — a civilization so sin-
A distinct . _
Hellenic gular in many aspects that scholars have been
slow to see in it a phase of unfolding Hellenic
culture. At first, indeed, it was pronounced exotic and
barbarous j but the wider the area laid under contribution
1 A th. Mm., 1894.
2 Academy, June 13, 1896.