At Praesos were found several globular beads of carnelian and of amethyst such as are well known in the XIIth Dynasty, and the latter material is not found dated to a later period in Egypt.
At Knossos was found a globular alabaster vase of the regular type of the XIIth Dynasty; and also the alabaster vase lid of King Khyan, whose date is unfortunately not fixed on the Egyptian side, but who is probably of the XVIth Dynasty, though perhaps of the XIth.
The long period now known in Greece before the civilization which is dated to the XVIIIth Dynasty compels such a presumption of connection with far earlier periods, and the connection is so well shewn by the Kamares ware, that the evidence for the XIIth Dynasty relationship scarcely needs further support. It depends on identity of style of highly decorated pottery, and of beads; and the transport of two pieces of Egyptian work.
Pan graves.
Another connection of this age is shewn by the “pan-grave” pottery found in Egypt. This class of shallow circular graves is dated to the close of the XIIth Dynasty by several discoveries of worn and damaged objects of the XIIth Dynasty in the graves, without anything that could be fixed to a later date. In these graves is a large class of non-Egyptian pottery; some of it black and red, highly polished; others, rude thick pottery with incised patterns. The similarity of the black and red to the style of the prehistoric pottery of Egypt is obvious; it is a later branch of the same fabric. And when we consider from what other land that may have come into Egypt, we naturally look to the similar forms found in the Celtic pottery of Southern Spain by Bonsor ([Fig. 60]), as indicating that it belongs to the western Libyan culture. Again, the rough incised pottery is of the same Celtic family found in Spain, showing a western source. The suggestion lately put forward that these may have come into Egypt from the East is wholly baseless. It is in Spain and the allied Celtic pottery of Europe that we find the types which were brought into Egypt by the rude invaders at the close of the XIIth Dynasty. So that a connection of the western barbaric culture of the bronze age with the close of the XIIth Dynasty must be concluded, from the evidence of similar pottery intruded into Egypt, and associated in graves with the objects of that age.
Fig. 60.—Celtic and pan-grave pottery and ornament.
| Central Europe. Yorkshire. (J. Anth. Inst. xxxii., pl. xxvii.) | South Spain. (Rev. Arch. xxxv. 121–2.) | Diospolis, Egypt. (Diospolis, xxxviii., xl.) |
It is probably then to the same invaders that we should look for the source of the black incised ware ([Fig. 61]) with patterns filled with white, and of characteristically western—Italic or Greek—forms, which is found in Kahun in the XIIth Dynasty, and in burials at Khataaneh of the XIIIth Dynasty. It is the latest stage of a class of imported pottery which recurs at intervals from the early prehistoric age onwards. A piece of this pottery was found in one of the “pan graves,” thus linking it with the other foreign pottery brought in at that period. It has been found at Hissarlik in the lowest levels, in Bosnia at Butmir, and of prehistoric to XIIIth Dynasty age in Egypt.
