As a question of dates, we know that the supremacy of Mycenæ and its civilization came to an end with the invasion of the Dorians, which is generally placed about 1000 b.c. We know also that it must have had a long existence, but for anything approaching to a date we must refer to the few traces which connect it with Egypt. A scarabæus was found at Mycenæ with the name of Queen Ti engraved on it who lived in the thirteenth century b.c. Mycenæan vases have been found of the older type with lines and spirals, in Egyptian tombs of about 1400 b.c., and of the later type with animals in tombs of about 1100 b.c., and Mr. Flinders Petrie, by whom they were discovered, says that any error in these dates cannot exceed 100 years. Mycenæan pottery has also been found at Thera under volcanic ashes which geologists say were thrown up about 1500 b.c.
We are pretty safe, therefore, in supposing this Mycenæan civilization to have flourished between the limits of 1600 and 1000 b.c. In this case it must have been contemporary with the great events of the New Empire in Egypt which followed on the expulsion of the Hyksos; with the victorious campaigns of Ahmes and Thotmes which carried the Egyptian arms to the Euphrates and to the Black Sea; with the rise of the Hittite power which extended far and wide over Asia Minor, and contended on equal terms in Syria with Ramses II.; and with the coalition of naval powers which on two occasions, in the reigns of Menepthah and Ramses III., commanded the sea and invaded Egypt. The mention of Achæans among the allies whose fleet was defeated in the sea-fight on the Pelusian mouth of the Nile, depicted on the triumphal tablet of Ramses III., becomes an historical reality, and some of the hostile galleys may well have been those of a predecessor of Agamemnon.
It is doubtful, however, whether these Mycenæans or Achæans can be properly called Greek. Both their civilization and art are Asiatic rather than Hellenic; they have left no clue to their language in any writing or inscription; and the type of the race, as far as we can judge of it from paintings on the vases, was totally unlike that of classical Greece.
QUEEN SENDING WARRIOR TO BATTLE. (From "Warrior Vase," Mycenæ. Schliemann.)
In one instance alone the human form is represented on the vases found at Mycenæ, viz. on that known as the great "warrior vase." This is a large amphora, with a broad band of figures round it, representing on one side attacking warriors hurling spears, and on the other a queen, or female figure, sending out warriors to repel them. The vase is broken, but there are in all eight figures with their heads nearly perfect, and all of the same type, which is such an extraordinary one, that I annex a copy of the woman and one of the warriors.
One asks oneself in amazement, can this swine-snouted caricature of humanity be the divine Helen, whose beauty set contending nations in arms, and even as a shade made Faust immortal with a kiss; and this other, Agamemnon, king of men, or the god-like Achilles? And yet certainly they must be faces which the dwellers in Mycenæ either copied from nature, or introduced as conventional ideals. They cannot be taken as first childish attempts at drawing the human face, like those of the palæolithic savages of the grottos of the Vezere, for they are the work of advanced artists who, in other cases, drew beautiful decorations and life-like animals; and in these figures the attitudes, dress, and armour show that they could draw with spirit and accuracy, and give a faithful representation of details when they chose to do so.
