Rambles and Studies in Greece

by J. P. Mahaffy

But proceeding from the gate to the lower side, where the hill slopes down rapidly, and where the great irregular Cyclopean wall trends away to the right, Dr. Schliemann found a deep accumulation of soil. This was, of course, the chief place on an otherwise bare rock where excavations promised [pg 474]large results. And the result was beyond the wildest anticipations. The whole account of what he has done is long before the public in his very splendid book, of which the illustrations are quite an epoch in the history of ornament, and in spite of their great antiquity will suggest to our modern jewellers many an exquisite pattern. The sum of what he found is this:—

He first found in this area a double circuit of thin upright slabs, joined together closely, and joined across the top with flat slabs mortised into them, the whole circuit being like a covered way, about three feet high. Into the enclosed circle a way leads from the lion gate; and what I noted particularly was this, that the whole circle, which was over thirty yards in diameter, was separated from the higher ground by a very miserable bounding wall, which, though quite concealed before the excavations, and therefore certainly very old, looked for all the world like some Turkish piece of masonry.

As soon as this stone circle was discovered, it was suggested that old Greek agoras were round, that they were often in the citadel at the king’s gate, and that people were sometimes buried in them. Dr. Schliemann at once baptized the place as the agora of Mycenæ. It was a circle with only one free access, and that from the gate; it had tombstones standing in the midst of it, and there were the charred remains of sacrifices about them. The [pg 475]number of bodies already exhumed beneath preclude their being all founders or heroes of the city. These and other indications were enough to disprove clearly that the circle was an agora, but that it was rather a place of sepulture, enclosed, as such places always were, with a fence, which seems made in imitation of a palisade of wood.

Inside this circuit of stone slabs were found—apparently at the same depth, but on this Dr. Schliemann is not explicit—very curious and very archaic carved slabs, with rude hunting scenes of warriors in very uncomfortable chariots, and varied spiral ornaments filling up the vacant spaces. These sculptures are unlike any Hellenic work, properly so called, and point back to a very remote period, and probably to the introduction of a foreign art among the rude inhabitants of early Greece. Deeper down were found more tombstones, all manner of archaic pottery, arrow-heads, and buttons of bone; there was also found some rude construction of hewn stones, which may have served as an altar or a tomb.

Yet further down, twenty-one feet deep, and close to the rock, were lying together a number of skeletons, which seemed to have been hastily or carelessly buried; but in the rock itself, in rudely hewn chambers, were found fifteen bodies buried with a splendor seldom equalled in the history of the world. These people were not buried like Greeks. They [pg 476]were not laid in rock chambers, like the Scythian kings. They were sunk in graves under the earth, which were large enough to receive them, had they not been filled up round the bottom with rudely-built walls, or pieces of stone, so as to reduce the area, but to create perhaps some ventilation for the fire which had partly burnt the bodies where they were found. Thus the splendidly-attired and jewelled corpses, some of them with masks and breastplates of gold, were, so to speak, jammed down by the earth and stones above them into a very narrow space; but there appears to have been some arrangement for protecting them and their treasure from complete confusion with the soil which settled down over them. This, if the account of the excavation be accurate, seems the most peculiar feature in the burial of these great personages, but finds a parallel in the curious tombs of Hallstadt, which afford many analogies to Mycenæ.[181]

Dr. Schliemann boldly announced in the Times, and the public believed him, that he had found Agamemnon, and his companions, who were murdered when they returned from the siege of Troy. The burial is indeed quite different from any such ceremony described in the Homeric poems. The number of fifteen is not to be accounted for by any of the legends. There is no reason to think all the [pg 477]tombs have been discovered; one, or at least part of the treasure belonging to it, was since found outside the circle. Another was afterward found by M. Stamatakes. Æschylus, our oldest and best authority, places the tomb of Agamemnon, not at Mycenæ, but at Argos. They all agree that he was buried with contempt and dishonor. The result was, that when the public came to hear the Agamemnon theory disproved, it was disposed to take another leap in the dark, and to look upon the whole discovery as suspicious, and as possibly something mediæval.

Such an inference would be as absurd as to accept the hypothesis of Dr. Schliemann. The tombs are undoubtedly very ancient, certainly far more ancient than the supposed date of Homer, or even of Agamemnon. The treasures which have been carried to Athens, and which I saw and handled at the National Bank, are not only really valuable masses of gold, but have a good deal of beauty of workmanship, both in design and decoration. Though the masks are very ugly and barbarous, and though there is in general no power shown of moulding any animal figure, there are very beautiful cups and jugs, there are most elegant geometrical ornaments—zigzags, spirals, and the like—and there are even imitations of animals of much artistic merit. The celebrated silver bull’s head, with golden horns, is a piece of work which would not disgrace [pg 478]a goldsmith of our day; and this may be said of many of the ornaments. Any one who knows the Irish gold ornaments in the Academy Museum in Dublin perceives a wonderful family likeness in the old Irish spirals and decorations, yet not more than might occur among two separate nations working with the same materials under similar conditions. But I feel convinced that the best things in the tombs at Mycenæ were not made by native artists, but imported, probably from Syria and Egypt. This seems proved even by the various materials which have been employed—ivory, alabaster, amber; in one case even an ostrich egg. So we shall, perhaps, in the end come back upon the despised legends of Cadmus and Danaus, and find that they told us truly of an old cultured race coming from the South and the East to humanize the barbarous progenitors of the Greeks.

I can now add important corroborations of these general conclusions from the researches made since the appearance of my earlier editions. I then said that the discoveries were too fresh and dazzling to admit of safe theories concerning their origin. By way of illustration I need only allude to those savants (they will hereafter be obliged to me for omitting their names) who imagined that all the Mycenæan tombs were not archaic at all, but the work of northern barbarians who occupied Greece during the disasters of the later Roman Empire! Serious re[pg 479]searches, however, have at last brought us considerable light. In the first place Helbig, in an important work comparing the treasures of Mycenæ with the allusions to art, arms, and manufactures in the Homeric poems, came to the negative conclusion that these two civilizations were distinct—that the Homeric poets cannot have had before them the palace of Mycenæ which owned the Schliemann treasures. As there is no room in Greek history for such a civilization posterior to the Homeric poems, it follows that the latter must describe a civilization considerably later than that we have found at Mycenæ. Placing the Homeric poems in the eighth century B. C. we shall be led to about 1000 B. C. as the latest possible date for the splendors of Mycenæ. But this negative conclusion has been well-nigh demonstrated by the positive results of the various recent researches in Egypt. Not only has the Egypt Exploration Society examined carefully the sites of Naucratis and Daphne, thus disclosing to us what Greek art and manufacture could produce in the sixth and seventh centuries B. C. (665–565 B. C.), but Mr. Flinders Petrie has enriched our knowledge by his wonderful discoveries of Egyptian art on several sites, and of many epochs, fairly determinable by the reigning dynasties. He has recently (1890) examined the Mycenæan and other pre-historic treasures collected at Athens, by the light of his rich Egyptian experience, and has given a sum[pg 480]mary of the results in two short articles in the Journal of Hellenic Studies.

He finds that the materials and their treatment, such as blue glass, even in its decomposition, alabaster, rock-crystal, hollowed and painted within, dome-head rivets attaching handles of gold cups, ostrich eggs with handles attached, ties made for ornament in porcelain, are all to be found in Egyptian tombs varying from 1400 to 1100 in date. His analysis leads him to give the dates for the tombs I.-IV. at Mycenæ as 1200–1100 B. C. That an earlier date is improbable is shown by the negative evidence that none of the purely geometrical false-necked vases occur, such as are the general product of 1400–1200 in Egyptian deposits. But as several isolated articles are of older types, as in particular the lions over the gate are quite similar to a gilt wooden lion he found of about 1450 B. C. in date, the Mycenæan civilization probably extended over a considerable period. He even finds proof of decadence in grave IV. as compared with the rest, and so comes to the conclusion, which I am disposed to question, that the tombs within the circle at Mycenæ (shaft-tombs) are later and worse interments made by the same people who had already built the more majestic and costly bee-hive tombs. Instead therefore of upholding a Phrygian origin, Mr. Petrie asserts an Egyptian origin for both Mycenæan and parallel Phrygian designs. The spiral pattern in its [pg 481]various forms, the rosettes, the keyfret, the palmetto, are all used in very early Egyptian decoration. The inlaid daggers of Mycenæ have long been recognized as inspired by Egypt; but we must note that it is native work and not merely an imported article. The attitude of the figures and of the lions, and the form of the cat, are such as no Egyptian would have executed. To make such things in Greece implies a far higher culture than merely to import them. The same remark applies to the glazed pottery; the style of some is not Egyptian, so that here the Mycenæans were capable of elaborate technical work, and imitated, rather than imported from Egypt.... The familiarity with Egypt is further proved by the lotus pattern on the dagger-blade, by the cat on the dagger, and the cats on the gold foil ornaments, since the cat was then unknown in Greece. That the general range of the civilization was that of Africa, is indicated by the frequent use of the palm (not then known in Greece) as a decoration, and by the very scanty clothing of the male figures, indicating that dress was not a necessity of climate. On the other hand this culture reached out to the north of Europe. The silver-headed reindeer or elk, found in grave IV., can only be the result of northern intercourse. The amber so commonly used comes from the Baltic. And we see in Celtic ornament the obvious reproduction of the decorations of Mycenæ, as Mr. Arthur Evans [pg 482]has shown. Not only is the spiral decoration indistinguishable,[182] but also the taste for elaborately embossed diadems and breastplates of gold is peculiar to the Mycenæan and Celtic cultures. The great period of Mycenæ seems therefore to date 1300–1100 B. C., with occasional traditional links with Egypt as far back as 1500 or 1600 B. C.

Such is an abstract of Mr. Petrie’s estimate.[183]