DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1021#0369
CHAPTEE XIII
THE PROBLEM OF MYCENAEAN CHRONOLOGY
Whether or not the authors of this distinct and stately
civilization included among their achievements a knowledge
An age °^ letters, their monuments thus far address
SdeddatT us OIUy m the universal language of form and
or name action. Of their speech we have yet to read the
first syllable. The vase-handles of Mycenae may have
some message for us, if no more than a pair of heroic
names ; and the nine consecutive characters from the cave
of Cretan Zeus must have still more to say when we find
the key. We may hope, at least, if this ancient culture
ever recovers its voice, to find it not altogether unfamil-
iar : we need not be startled if we catch the first lisping
accent of what has grown full and strong in the Achaean
epic.
But for the present we have to do with a dumb age, with
a race whose artistic expression amazes us all the more in
the dead silence of their history. So far as we yet know
from their monuments, they have recorded not one fixed
point in their career, they have never even written down
their name as a people.
Now, a dateless era and a nameless race — particularly
in the immediate background of the stage on which we see
the forces of the world's golden age deploying — are facts
to be accepted only in the last resort. The student of
human culture cannot look upon the massive walls, the
THE PROBLEM OF MYCENAEAN CHRONOLOGY
Whether or not the authors of this distinct and stately
civilization included among their achievements a knowledge
An age °^ letters, their monuments thus far address
SdeddatT us OIUy m the universal language of form and
or name action. Of their speech we have yet to read the
first syllable. The vase-handles of Mycenae may have
some message for us, if no more than a pair of heroic
names ; and the nine consecutive characters from the cave
of Cretan Zeus must have still more to say when we find
the key. We may hope, at least, if this ancient culture
ever recovers its voice, to find it not altogether unfamil-
iar : we need not be startled if we catch the first lisping
accent of what has grown full and strong in the Achaean
epic.
But for the present we have to do with a dumb age, with
a race whose artistic expression amazes us all the more in
the dead silence of their history. So far as we yet know
from their monuments, they have recorded not one fixed
point in their career, they have never even written down
their name as a people.
Now, a dateless era and a nameless race — particularly
in the immediate background of the stage on which we see
the forces of the world's golden age deploying — are facts
to be accepted only in the last resort. The student of
human culture cannot look upon the massive walls, the