We have already had occasion to deal to some extent with Mycenaean pottery in connection with Cyprus and Crete, but it is now necessary to review it as a whole in the light of the present state of our knowledge of this wonderful civilisation and its products. To enter here upon the wide and much-debated questions to which the discoveries of the last thirty years have given rise is of course beyond our province; but the pottery of the people to whom the name Mycenaean has been somewhat loosely given is of so homogeneous a character, although found in all parts of the Mediterranean, that it may be treated as a phase of Greek ceramics, independently of considerations of ethnography and chronology. First found in any quantity at Ialysos in the island of Rhodes, its exact position in the history of early art was not then recognised; but when the marvellous discoveries of Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae became known to the world, including large numbers of similar vases, Sir Charles Newton readily recognised that the Ialysos vases in the British Museum belonged to the same class. It was not long before the whole number of vases of this type, now christened Mycenaean, was collected in a “Corpus” by two German scholars, with numerous illustrations; but since that time the excavations of “Mycenaean” sites in Cyprus and Crete must have doubled or even trebled the material available.
The pottery at Mycenae was found in four different positions, implying consecutive chronological stages, ranging roughly from the fifteenth to the tenth or even ninth century. On these grounds Furtwaengler and Loeschcke[[911]] distinguished four main classes; but it will be seen that these are capable of even more subdivision. There are, in fact, two main classes, distinguished by the use of matt and lustrous colour respectively; and of the first of these two, of the second four, subdivisions are possible.
Class (1) is indeed comparatively rare,[[912]] and only found at Thera and in the oldest tombs on the Mycenaean Acropolis; it represents the transition from the pottery of Troy and Thera to that of Mycenae. The subdivision is a purely technical one: (a) vases of pale coarse clay, with patterns in a brown colour, some hand-made[[913]]; (b) wheel-made vases of a reddish and finer clay, the designs in black and pale red, occasionally white.[[914]] The decoration generally resembles that of the Thera vases, and animals occasionally appear.
(2) The vases with lustrous painting may be classified as follows:
(a) Badly levigated clay; floral motives in matt-white or red-brown on black ground.[[915]] A fine example of this class was recently excavated at Maroni in Cyprus, a large krater with a figure of a bird outlined in white on either side (Plate [XII].).
(b) Similar clay, but coated with a white or yellow slip on which geometrical or floral patterns are painted in lustrous black.[[916]]
(c) Fine clay with polished yellow surface; designs in black turning to red or yellow, with occasional details in white; chiefly marine plants and animals, but occasionally (especially in Cyprus) human figures.[[917]] This class is by far the most numerous of all, but is not found in Thera. It corresponds with the period 1400–1000 B.C.
(d) Clay grey or reddish, less brilliant, as is also the black; large figures of quadrupeds and human figures.[[918]] The vases are sometimes painted inside, which is a sign of late date.
The structure of these vases is very varied, and no less than 122 different forms may be distinguished in the illustrations to the Mykenische Vasen. Most characteristic and popular is the “false amphora,” as it is generally termed (German, Bügelkanne), a vase with spheroidal body, of varying size, with the peculiarity that the ordinary neck and mouth on the top are closed by a flat handle arching over the vase, and the only aperture is a spout on one side (see Plate [XV]. and Fig. [82]). These are very widely distributed, but their decoration is as a rule very simple; they appear depicted on the paintings of Egyptian tombs of the eighteenth dynasty, and this has often been used as an argument for the dating of Mycenaean vases. But they must have remained in favour for a considerable period. Other favourite shapes are: a funnel-shaped vase with handle at the top, doubtless a reminiscence of a Hissarlik type (p. [258]); a tall graceful two-handled goblet or kylix, almost invariably decorated with cuttle-fish (see Plate [XV].), as the funnel-vases are with murex (purple dye) shells; a beaked jug (German Schnabelkanne), derived from Thera; a squat jar or pyxis, with three small handles (cf. Fig. [82]); and a tall pear-shaped vase with three handles on a high stem, which is perhaps the prototype of the hydria. The large kraters are, as we have seen, peculiar to Cyprus. Rarer forms are a sort of mug, and a combination of the false amphora and pyxis. Mention should also be made of the painted λάρνακες or ossuaria found in Crete by Mr. J. H. Marshall (p. [268] above) and by Dr. Orsi.[[919]]
The technique presents several entirely new features, such as the use of a slip as a basis for the colours; the polished, brilliant, and even surface; and above all the lustrous black varnish, which was the peculiar pride of Greek potters, and is now a lost art. The comparative monotony of the colouring is probably due to a purely technical reason, namely, the difficulty of resisting the action of fire; otherwise such an artistic people would doubtless have exhibited the same richness of colouring in their pottery that we find in their frescoes.