(3) Furniture.--(a) Domestic, such as vessels of all
sorts and in many materials, from huge store-jars down to tiny
unguent-pots; culinary and other implements; thrones, seats,
tables, &c., these all in stone or plastered terra-cotta. (b)
Sacred, such as models or actual examples of ritual objects;
of these we have also numerous pictorial representations.
(c) Funerary, e.g. coffins in painted terra-cotta.
(4) Artistic fabrics, e.g. plastic objects, carved in
stone or ivory, cast or beaten in metals (gold, silver,
copper and bronze), or modelled in clay, faience, paste,
&c. Very little trace has yet been found of large free
sculpture, but many examples exist of sculptors' smaller
work. Vases of all kinds, carved in marble or other stones,
cast or beaten in metals or fashioned in clay, the latter in
enormous number and variety, richly ornamented with coloured
schemes, and sometimes bearing moulded decoration. Examples
of painting on stone, opaque and transparent. Engraved
objects in great numberr e.g. ring-bezels and gems; and
an immense quantity of clay impressions, taken from these.
(5) Weapons, tools and implements, in stone, clay and
bronze, and at the last iron, sometimes richly ornamented or
inlaid. Numerous representations also of the same. No actual
body-armour, except such as was ceremonial and buried with the
dead, like the gold breastplates in the circle-graves at Mycenae.
(6) Articles of personal use, e.g. brooches efbulae), pins,
razors, tweezers, &c., often found as dedications to a deity,
e.g. in the Dictaean Cavern of Crete. No textiles have survived.
(7) Written documents, e.g. clay tablets and discs (so far in
Crete only), but nothing of more perishable nature, such as skin,
papyrus, &c.; engraved gems and gem impressions; legends written
with pigment on pottery (rare); characters incised on stone or
pottery. These show two main systems of script (see CRETE).
(8) Excavated tombs, of either the pit or the grotto
kind, in which the dead were laid, together with
various objects of use and luxury, without cremation,
and in either coffins or loculi or simple wrappings.
(9) Public works, such as paved and stepped
roadways, bridges, systems of drainage, &c.
B. There is also a certain amount of external evidence
to be gathered from--(1) Monuments and records of other
contemporary civilizations, e.g. representations of alien
peoples in Egyptian frescoes; imitation of Aegean fabrics
and style in non-Aegean lands; allusions to Mediterranean
peoples in Egyptian, Semitic or Babylonian records.
(2) Literary traditions of subsequent civilizations, especially
the Hellenic; such as, e.g., those embodied in the Homeric poems,
the legenda concerning Crete, Mycenae, &c.; statements as to the
origin of gods, cults and so forth, transmitted to us by Hellenic
antiquarians such as Strabo, Pausanias, Diodorus Siculus, &c.
(3) Traces of customs, creeds, rituals, &c., in the
Aegean area at a later time, discordant with the
civilization in which they were practised and indicating
survival from earlier systems. There are also possible
linguistic and even physical survivals to be considered.
III General Features of Aegean Civalization.--The
leading features of Aegean civilization, as deduced
from the evidence, must be stated very briefly.
(1) Political Organisation.--The great Cretan palaces and
the fortified citadels of Mycenae, Tiryns and Hissarlik, each
containing little more than one great residence, and dominating
lower towns of meaner houses, point to monarchy at all
periods. Independent local developments of art before the
middle of the 2nd millennium B.C. suggest the early existence
of independent units in various parts, of which the strongest
was the Cnossian. After that date the evidence goes strongly
to show that one political dominion was spread for a brief
period, or for two brief periods, over almost all the area (see
later). The great number of tribute-tallies found at Cnossus
perhaps indicates that the Centre of power was always there.
(2) Religion.--The fact that shrines have so far been found
within palaces and not certainly anywhere else indicates that
the kings kept religious power in their own hands; perhaps they
were themselves high-priests. Religion in the area seems to
have been essentially the same everywhere from the earliest
period, viz. the cult of a Divine Principle, resident in
dominant features of nature (sun, stars, mountains, trees,
&c.) and controlling fertility. This cult passed through
an aniconic stage, from which fetishes survived to the
last, these being rocks or pillars, trees, weapons (e.g.
bipennis, or double war-axe, shield), etc. When the iconic
stage was reached, about 2000 B.C., we find the Divine Spirit
represented as a goddess with a subordinate young god, as
in many other E. Mediterranean lands. The god was probably
son and mate of the goddess, and the divine pair represented
the genius of Reproductive Fertility in its relations with
humanity. The goddess sometimes appears with doves, as
uranic, at others with snakes, as chthonic. In the ritual
fetishes, often of miniature form, played a great part:
all sorts of plants and animals were sacred: sacrifice (not
burnt, and human very doubtful), dedication of all sorts of
offerings and simulacra, invocation, &c., were practised.
The dead, who returned to the Great Mother, were objects
of a sort of hero-worship. This early nature-cult explains
many anomalous features of Hellenic religion, especially
in the cults of Artemis and Aphrodite. (See CRETE.)
(3) Social Organization.---There is a possibility that
features of a primeval matriarchate long survived; but
there is no certain evidence. Of the organization of the
people under the monarch we are ignorant. There are so few
representations of armed men that it seems doubtful if there
can have been any professional military Class. Theatral
structures found at Cnossus and Phaestus, within the precincts
of the palaces, were perhaps used for shows or for sittings
of a royal assize, rather than for popular assemblies. The
Cnossian remains contain evidence of an elaborate system of
registration, account-keeping and other secretarial work, which
perhaps indicates a considerable body of law. The line of
the ruling class was comfortable and even luxurious from early
times. Fine stone palaces, richly decorated, with separate
sleeping apartments, large halls, ingenious devices for admitting
light and air, sanitary conveniences and marvellously modern
arrangements for supply of water and for drainage, attest this
fact. Even the smaller houses, after the Neolithic period,
seem also to have been of stone, plastered within. After
1600 B.C. the palaces in Crete had more than one story, fine
stairways, bath-chambers, windows, folding and sliding doors,
&c. In this later period, the distinction of blocks of apartments
in some palaces has been held to indicate the seclusion of
women in harems, at least among the ruling caste. Cnossian
frescoes show women grouped apart, and they appear alone on
gems. Flesh and fish and many kinds of vegetables were evidently
eaten, and wine and beer were drunk. Vessels for culinary,
table, and luxurious uses show an infinite variety of form and
purpose. Artificers' implements of many kinds were in
use, bronze succeeding obsidian and other hard stones as the
material. Seats are found carefully shaped to the human
person. There was evidently olive- and vine-culture on a
large scale in Crete at any rate. Chariots were in use in the
later period, as is proved by the pictures of them on Cretan
tablets, and therefore, probably, the horse also was known.
Indeed a horse appears on a gem impression. Main ways were
paved. Sports, probably more or less religious, are often
represented, e.g. bullfighting, dancing, boxing, armed combats.
(4) Commerce was practised to some extent in very early
times, as is proved by the distribution of Melian obsidian
over all the Aegean area and by the Nilotic influence on early
Minoan art. We find Cretan vessels exported to Melos, Egypt
and the Greek mainland. Melian vases came in their turn to
Crete. After 1600 B.C. there is very close intercourse with
Egypt, and Aegean things hnd their way to all coasts of the
Mediterranean (see below). No traces of currency have come
to light, unless certain axeheads, too slight for practical
use, had that character; but standard weights have been
found, and representations of ingots. The Aegean written
documents have not yet proved (by being found outside the area)
epistolary correspondence with other lands. Representations
of ships are not common, but several have been observed
on Aegean gems, gem-sealings and vases. They are vessels
of low free-board, with masts. Familiarity with the sea
is proved by the free use of marine motives in decoration.
(5) Treatment or the Dead.--The dead in the earlier
period wore laid (so far as we know at present) within cists
constructed of upright stones. These were sometimes inside
caves. After the burial the cist was covered in with earth.
A little later, in Crete, bone-pits seem to have come into
use, containing the remains of many burials. Possibly the
flesh was boiled off the bones at once (``scarification''), or
left to rot in separate cists awhile; afterwards the skeletons
were collected and the cists re-used. The coffins are of small
size, contain corpses with the knees drawn up to the chin and
are found in excavated chambers or pits. In the later period
a peculiar ``bee-hive'' tomb became common, sometimes wholly
or partly excavated, sometimes (as in the magnificent Mycenaean
``Treasuries'') constructed domewise. The shaft-graves
in the Mycenae circle are also a late type, paralleled in
the later Cnossian cemetery. The latest type of tomb is a
flatly vaulted chamber approached by a horizontal or slightly
inclined way, whose sides converge above. At no period do the
Aegean dead seem to have been burned. Weapons, food, water,
unguents and various trinkets were laid with the corpse at all
periods. In the Mycenae circle an altar seems to have been
erected over the graves, and perhaps slaves were killed to
bear the dead chiefs company. A painted sarcophagus, found
at Hagia Triada, also possibly shows a hero-cult of the dead.
(6) Artistic Production.--Ceramic art reached a specially
high standard in fabric, form and decoration by the middle
of the 3rd millennium B.C. in Crete. The products of
that period compare favourably with any potters' work in the
world. The same may be said of fresco-painting, and probably
of metal work. Modelling in terra-cotta, sculpture in stone
and ivory, engraving on gems, were following it closely by
the beginning of the 2nd millennium. After 2000 B.C. all
these arts revived, and sculpture, as evidenced by relief
work, both on a large and on a small scale, carved stone
vessels, metallurgy in gold, silver and bronze, advanced
farther. This art and those of fresco- and vase-painting and
of gem-engraving stood higher about the 15th century B.C.
than at any subsequent period before the 6th century. The
manufacture, modelling and painting of faience objects, and
the making of inlays in many materials were also familiar to
Aegean craftsmen, who show in all their best work a strong
sense of natural form and an appreciation of ideal balance and
decorative effect, such as are seen in the best products of
later Hellenic art. Architectural ornament was also highly
developed. The richness of the Aegean capitals and columns
may be judged by those from the ``Treasury of Atreus'' now
