DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1021#0332
280 THE MYCENAEAN AGE
symbols are found even outside of Greece and the Aegean.
We have already seen that many such signs are inscribed
on potsherds found by Mr. Flinders Petrie at Kahun
and Gurob in the ruins of two ancient cities.
Mr. Petrie holds that these cities were occu-
pied by foreigners from the shores of the Aegean; and
accordingly he calls the earthenware " Aegean pottery."
To this there seems to be no chronological objection; for
the brief career of one of these cities — on the site now
occupied by Gurob — falls entirely within the Mycenaean
age (1450-1200); while the other, where Kahun now
stands, was built by a king of the Twelfth Dynasty, that is
to say, in the early third millennium before our era. And
some of the inscribed pottery found there is as old as the
building of the city. In this Petrie and Evans are now
agreed.1 Accordingly, in Egypt, as in Crete, these symbols
occur on various objects from the Twelfth Dynasty down
Fig. 146. Steatite Seal from Lower Egypt
through all the Mycenaean epoch. That the symbols
found in Egypt are the same as those in Greece is clearly
shown by the fact that twenty of Evans' thirty-two sym-
' " There seems no good reason for doubting; Mr. Petrie's conclusion that
the ruder pottery from the same deposit (in the Kahun rubbish-heaps), exhib-
iting the incised character of non-Egyptian forms, may go back in part at
least to the days of the Twelfth Dynasty."— Evans, I. c. p. 350.
symbols are found even outside of Greece and the Aegean.
We have already seen that many such signs are inscribed
on potsherds found by Mr. Flinders Petrie at Kahun
and Gurob in the ruins of two ancient cities.
Mr. Petrie holds that these cities were occu-
pied by foreigners from the shores of the Aegean; and
accordingly he calls the earthenware " Aegean pottery."
To this there seems to be no chronological objection; for
the brief career of one of these cities — on the site now
occupied by Gurob — falls entirely within the Mycenaean
age (1450-1200); while the other, where Kahun now
stands, was built by a king of the Twelfth Dynasty, that is
to say, in the early third millennium before our era. And
some of the inscribed pottery found there is as old as the
building of the city. In this Petrie and Evans are now
agreed.1 Accordingly, in Egypt, as in Crete, these symbols
occur on various objects from the Twelfth Dynasty down
Fig. 146. Steatite Seal from Lower Egypt
through all the Mycenaean epoch. That the symbols
found in Egypt are the same as those in Greece is clearly
shown by the fact that twenty of Evans' thirty-two sym-
' " There seems no good reason for doubting; Mr. Petrie's conclusion that
the ruder pottery from the same deposit (in the Kahun rubbish-heaps), exhib-
iting the incised character of non-Egyptian forms, may go back in part at
least to the days of the Twelfth Dynasty."— Evans, I. c. p. 350.