Tsuntas, Chrestos: The Mycenaean age: a study of the monuments and culture of pre-homeric Greece (London, 1897)

CHAPTEK XIV

THE PROBLEM OF THE MYCENAEAN RACE

We have seen that Mycenaean art was no exotic, trans-
planted full grown into Greece, but rather a native growth
The Race —influenced though it was by the earlier civil-
Problem i2ations 0f the Cyclades and the East. This in-
digenous art, distinct and homogeneous in character, no
matter whence came its germs and rudiments, must have
been wrought out by a strong and gifted race. That it
was of Hellenic stock we have assumed to be self-evident.

But, as this premise is still in controversy,1 we have to
inquire whether (aside from art) there are other consid-
erations which make against the Hellenic origin of the
Mycenaean peoples, and compel us to regard them as im-
migrants from the Islands or the Orient.

In the first place, recalling the results of our discussion

of domestic and sepulchral architecture, we observe that

neither in the Aegean nor in Syria do we find

turai evi- the £ahle-roof which prevails at Mycenae. Nor

dence

would the people of these warm and dry climates
have occasion to winter their herds in their own huts —
The cable an ancestral custom to which we have traced the

origin of the avenues to the beehive tombs.

1 The Mycenaean estate has been claimed already for Carian, Phoenician,
Hittite, Goth and Byzantine : and since this chapter was in type the British
Association has heard Prof. Ridgeway stoutly reasserting the prior title of the
Pelasgian. (See London Times, September 22,1896. Cf. J. H. S., xvi. 77-119.)