DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1021#0308
CHAPTER X
THE ISLANDS AS MEDIATORS IN ART
The foregoing inquiry has brought out two clear facts.
First, Mycenaean art stands in close relations with the art
of primitive Troy and with that of the Cyclades. Secondly,
it betrays the influence of the farther East — namely, of
Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia. But it is specially in the
Cyclades that we meet with correspondences so close and
frequent that in many of its features the art of those islands
presents itself to us as an elder sister of the Mycenaean.
The column and the wall-painting of Thera attest something-
more than intimate relations, and the product of her more
advanced ceramic art so closely resembles the unglazed
polychromes of Mycenae that we can hardly draw the line
between them. In general, the Island civilization in its full
bloom can hardly be distinguished from the Mycenaean,
nor can the latter be fully understood without reference to
the former. It seems desirable, therefore, to define more
exactly the character of the Island culture and its relation
to that of the mainland.
In certain of the Cyclades, as Paros and Antiparos,
Naxos, Ios, Amorgos, Thera and Therasia, we find small
Marble rude graves,1 furnished with bronze - weapons
(spear-heads, daggers, wedge-shaped axes) and
1 In one graveyard on Antiparos the graves " were on an average three feet
long, two feet wide, and seldom more than two feet deep," — Bent, The Cy-
clades, p. 405.
THE ISLANDS AS MEDIATORS IN ART
The foregoing inquiry has brought out two clear facts.
First, Mycenaean art stands in close relations with the art
of primitive Troy and with that of the Cyclades. Secondly,
it betrays the influence of the farther East — namely, of
Egypt, Syria and Mesopotamia. But it is specially in the
Cyclades that we meet with correspondences so close and
frequent that in many of its features the art of those islands
presents itself to us as an elder sister of the Mycenaean.
The column and the wall-painting of Thera attest something-
more than intimate relations, and the product of her more
advanced ceramic art so closely resembles the unglazed
polychromes of Mycenae that we can hardly draw the line
between them. In general, the Island civilization in its full
bloom can hardly be distinguished from the Mycenaean,
nor can the latter be fully understood without reference to
the former. It seems desirable, therefore, to define more
exactly the character of the Island culture and its relation
to that of the mainland.
In certain of the Cyclades, as Paros and Antiparos,
Naxos, Ios, Amorgos, Thera and Therasia, we find small
Marble rude graves,1 furnished with bronze - weapons
(spear-heads, daggers, wedge-shaped axes) and
1 In one graveyard on Antiparos the graves " were on an average three feet
long, two feet wide, and seldom more than two feet deep," — Bent, The Cy-
clades, p. 405.