3. Local pottery in Mycenaean style with spiral and naturalistic designs, falling into two divisions, earlier and later.
4. Imported Mycenaean pottery of the third and fourth styles (see below, p. [271]).
Generally speaking the pottery is of local make, and Phylakopi seems to have been an important centre in the early Mycenaean period, having considerable intercourse with Crete. The earliest wares (class 1) include plain pottery, hand-made, with burnished brown surface or simple incised patterns; those of class 2 are painted in lustrous or matt black on a white slip, or in white on lustrous black or red, with simple patterns; they appear to be hand-made. The Mycenaean pottery is more or less akin to that found elsewhere in the Aegean.
§ 3. Crete
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Dumont-Pottier, i. p. 64 (finds in 1878 at Knossos); Milchhoefer, Anfänge der Kunst; Furtwaengler and Loeschcke, Myken. Vasen, p. 22; Pottier, Louvre Cat. i. p. 173; Mon. Antichi, vi. p. 333 ff.; J.H.S. xxi. p. 78 ff., xxiii. p. 157 ff.; British School Annual, vi. p. 85 ff., vii. p. 51, and ix. p. 297 ff.; Proc. Soc. Antiqs. xv. (1894), p. 351 ff.
In turning our attention next to the island of Crete, we are confronted with a new element in Greek archaeology; namely, the results of the recent discoveries, which as yet have hardly become material ripe for use in a general handbook. On the other hand, their singular importance deserves full recognition. It must, therefore, be borne in mind that much in the succeeding section is merely the embodiment of previous researches, and that the new evidence can only be briefly summarised.
Allusion has just been made to the thalassocracy of Minos and its bearing on the history of early Greek civilisations, and the recent discoveries have done much to show that the prince who built the great palace at Knossos in the early days of Mycenaean civilisation, if he is not actually the Minos of Greek legend, yet represents the rising power which extended its dominion over the Aegean and drove the Carian people to the mainland. This supremacy of Crete from the fifteenth to the eleventh century was artistic as well as political. The Crete of Minos was, moreover, the point of contact between the Aegean peoples and the Oriental races; and in the story of the Minotaur we may perhaps see a reflection of the human sacrifices offered to the Phoenician Moloch or Melkarth. The familiar passage in Homer[[887]] which deals with the ethnography of Crete speaks of four component elements, which may be explained as (1) the Eteokretes, or aborigines of the island, to whom the early civilisation exemplified in their ceramic and glyptic products is mainly due; (2) the Kydonii or Leleges, brought by Minos from the islands[[888]]; (3) the Achaeans or mainland Greeks of the period of the Trojan War; (4) the Dorians, whose connection with the island dates from the eleventh century onwards.
Even before the recent excavations pottery had been found in Crete which dated from the dawn of the Mycenaean period, and from the island’s early connection with Egypt was thought to be contemporaneous with that of Hissarlik and Thera. From the circumstances of its first appearance in any quantity at Kamaraes, in the plain of Ida, it has usually been named after that place. Dr. Orsi discovered two fragments of Hissarlik type at Phaestos,[[889]] also a vase of island type, one of Thera type,[[890]] and some early Cypriote wares.[[891]] Large numbers of fragments of this ware in the Museum at Candia were first noted by Dr. Orsi and Mr. J. L. Myres about 1894.[[892]] The extensive discoveries made by Messrs. Hogarth and Welch for the British School at Athens in 1899–1900 (see p. [60]) have added still further to our knowledge of the ware; and these, taken in conjunction with Mr. Arthur Evans’s extensive finds at Knossos (1899–1902), have enabled a recent writer to draw up a tentative classification of all the prehistoric pottery of Crete.[[893]]
In his paper Mr. Mackenzie divides the pottery into three main classes, which he distinguishes as Neolithic, Early and Middle Minoan, and Late Minoan. The first-named extends down to about 3000 B.C.; the second covers the period 3000–2000 B.C.; and the third (including Mycenaean pottery of the usual types) lasts down to 1500 B.C., about which time the Cretan supremacy came to an end, and the Mycenaean centre of gravity was shifted to the mainland of Greece.