DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1021#0410
356 THE MYCENAEAN AGE
doubtful; but other evidence, as we have seen, seems to
warrant the conclusion that intercommunication between
the Aegean world and Egypt dates even farther back.
If the Danaans were the pioneers in Greek maritime com-
merce, the Achaeans did not lag behind; indeed they soon
went beyond them in daring and enterprise. They planted
colonies in more distant parts, as in Rhodes and probably
other islands off the Asiatic coast. When the entire Aegean
was thus occupied later on in the Mycenaean age, then —
if not before — the Greeks certainly ventured on expe-
ditions to the older and richer countries of the East. In
Egypt we have tangible evidence not only for such incur-
sions but for actual settlements.1 Thus we may conceive
the men of Greece in training for their larger role in the
history of culture and particularly for that victorious duel
with the East which Homer has eternalized.
On the first point it must now be clear that, far from
being a mere exotic maintaining a feeble growth quite
aside from the highway of the world's progress,
theMyce- Mycenaean culture was one of the strong central
naeans in . , n _ 1 _
the history iorces in the general movement ot the age. Unce
of culture . • i» i s>\ i l
in possession ot the metals, the Greeks were armed
for their great career in art, a career to which they unques-
tionably brought native endowments of a high order. That
they would find their artistic feeling and faculty profoundly
influenced by the land in which they came to dwell we
cannot doubt. And to this inspiration of Nature in her
choicest forms and tints and moods there would be added a
new impulse from new neighbors. Contact with the older
civilizations of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt could not but
prove quickening. The course of trade would bring them
1 See p. 320; and cf. Odysseus' story of his Egyptian raid (Odyssey, xiv.
247 ff.).
doubtful; but other evidence, as we have seen, seems to
warrant the conclusion that intercommunication between
the Aegean world and Egypt dates even farther back.
If the Danaans were the pioneers in Greek maritime com-
merce, the Achaeans did not lag behind; indeed they soon
went beyond them in daring and enterprise. They planted
colonies in more distant parts, as in Rhodes and probably
other islands off the Asiatic coast. When the entire Aegean
was thus occupied later on in the Mycenaean age, then —
if not before — the Greeks certainly ventured on expe-
ditions to the older and richer countries of the East. In
Egypt we have tangible evidence not only for such incur-
sions but for actual settlements.1 Thus we may conceive
the men of Greece in training for their larger role in the
history of culture and particularly for that victorious duel
with the East which Homer has eternalized.
On the first point it must now be clear that, far from
being a mere exotic maintaining a feeble growth quite
aside from the highway of the world's progress,
theMyce- Mycenaean culture was one of the strong central
naeans in . , n _ 1 _
the history iorces in the general movement ot the age. Unce
of culture . • i» i s>\ i l
in possession ot the metals, the Greeks were armed
for their great career in art, a career to which they unques-
tionably brought native endowments of a high order. That
they would find their artistic feeling and faculty profoundly
influenced by the land in which they came to dwell we
cannot doubt. And to this inspiration of Nature in her
choicest forms and tints and moods there would be added a
new impulse from new neighbors. Contact with the older
civilizations of Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt could not but
prove quickening. The course of trade would bring them
1 See p. 320; and cf. Odysseus' story of his Egyptian raid (Odyssey, xiv.
247 ff.).