set up in the British Museum; and of the friezes we have
examples in Mycenaean and Cnossian fragments, and Cnossian
paintings. The magnificent gold work of the later period,
preserved to us at Mycenae and Vaphio, needs only to be
mentioned. It should be compared with stone work in Crete,
especially the steatite vases with reliefs found at Hagia
Triada. On the whole, Aegean art, at its two great
periods, in the middle of the 3rd and 2nd millennia
respectively, will bear comparison with any contemporary arts.
IV. Origin, Nature and History of Aegean Civilization.---The
evidence, summarized above, though very various and
voluminous, is not yet sufficient to answer all the
questions which may be asked as to the origin, nature
and history of this civilization, or to answer any but a
few questions with absolute certainty. We shall try to
indicate the extent to which it can legitimately be applied.
A. Distinctive Features.---The fact that Aegean civilization
is distinguished from all others, prior or contemporary,
not only by its geographical area, but by leading organic
characteristics, has never been in doubt, since its remains
came to be studied seriously and impartially. The truth
was indeed obscured for a time by persistent prejudices in
favour of certain alien Mediterranean races long known to
have been in relation with the Aegean area in prehistoric
times, e.g. the Egyptians and especially the Phoenicians.
But their claims to be the principal authors of the Aegean
remains grew fainter with every fresh Aegean discovery, and
every new light thrown on their own proper products; with the
Cretan revelations they ceased altogether to be considered
except by a few Homeric enthusiasts. Briefly, we now know
that the Aegean civilization developed these distinctive
features. (i) An indigenous script expressed in characters
of which only a very small percentage are identical, or even
obviously connected, with those of any other script. This is
equally true both of the pictographic and the linear Aegean
systems. Its nearest affinities are with the ``Asianic''
scripts, preserved to us by Hittite, Cypriote and south-west
Anatolian (Pamphyhan, Lycian and Carian) inscriptions. But
neither are these affinities close enough to be of any practical
aid in deciphering Aegean characters, nor is it by any means
certain that there is parentage. The Aegean script may be,
and probably is, prior in origin to the ``Asianic''; and it
may equally well be owed to a remote common ancestor, or (the
small number of common characters being considered) be an
entirely independent evolution from representations of natural
objects (see CRETE). (2) An Art, whose products cannot
be confounded with those of any other known art by a trained
eye. Its obligations to other contemporary arts are many and
obvious, especially in its later stages; but every borrowed
form and motive undergoes an essential modification at the
hands of the Aegean craftsman, and the product is stamped
with a new character. The secret of this character lles
evidently in a constant attempt to express an ideal in forms
more and more closely approaching to realities. We detect
the dawn of that spirit which afterwards animated Hellenic
art. The fresco-paintings, ceramic motives, reliefs, free
sculpture and toreutic handiwork of Crete have supplied the
clearest proof of it, confirming the impression already created
by the goldsmiths' and painters' work of the Greek mainland
(Mycenae, Vaphio, Tiryns). (3) Architectural plans and
decoration. The arrangement of Aegean palaces is of two main
types. First (and perhaps earliest in time), the chambers
are grouped round a central court, being engaged one with the
other in a labyrinthine complexity, and the greater oblongs
are entered from a long side and divided longitudinally by
pillars. Second, the main chamber is of what is known as the
megaron type, i.e. it stands free, isolated from the rest
of the plan by corridors, is entered from a vestibule on a
short side, and has a central hearth, surrounded by pillars
and perhaps hypaethral; there is no central court, and other
apartments form distinct blocks. For possible geographical
reasons for this duality of type see CRETE. In spite of many
comparisons made with Egyptian, Babylonian and ``Hittite''
plans, both these arrangements remain incongruous with any
remains of prior or contemporary structures elsewhere. Whether
either plan suits the ``Homeric palace'' does not affect the
present question. (4) A type of tomb, the dome or ``bee-hive,''
of which the grandest examples known are at Mycenae. The
Cretan ``larnax'' coffins, also, have no parallels outside the
Aegean. There are other infinite singularities of detail;
but the above are more than sufficient to establish the point.
B. Origin and Continuity.--With the immense expansion of the
evidence, due to the Cretan excavations, a question has arisen
how far the Aegean civilization, whose total duration covers
at least three thousand years, can be regarded as one and
continuous. Thanks to the exploration of Cnossus, we now
know that Aegean civilization had its roots in a primitive
Neolithic period, of uncertain but very long duration,
represented by a stratum which (on that site in particular) is
in places nearly 20 ft. thick, and contains stone implements
and sherds of handmade and hand-polished vessels, showing
a progressive development in technique from bottom to
top. This Cnossian stratum seems to be throughout earlier
than the lowest layer at Hissarlik. It closes with the
introduction of incised, white-filled decoration on pottery,
whose motives are presently found reproduced in monochrome
pigment. We are now in the beginning of the Bronze Age,
and the first of Evans's ``Minoan'' periods (see CRETE).
Thereafter, by exact observation of stratification, eight more
periods have been distinguished by the explorer of Cnossus,
each marked by some important development in the universal and
necessary products of the potter's art, the least destructible
and therefore most generally used archaeological criterion.
These periods fill the whole Bronze Age, with whose close, by
the introduction of the superior metal, iron, the Aegean Age
is conventionally held to end. Iron came into general Aegean
use about 1000 B.C., and possibly was the means by which a
body of northern invaders established their power on the ruins
of the earlier dominion. The important point is this, that
throughout the nine Cnossian periods, following the Neolithic
Age (named by Evans, ``Minoan I. 1, 2, 3; II. 1, 2, 3; III.
1, 2, 3''; see CRETE), there is evidence of a perfectly
orderly and continuous evolution in, at any rate, ceramic
art. From one stage to another, fabrics, forms and motives
of decoration develop gradually; so that, at the close of
a span of more than two thousand years, at the least, the
influences of the beginning can still be clearly seen and no
trace of violent artistic intrusion can be detected. This
fact, by itself, would go far to prove that the civilization
continued fundamentally and essentially the same throughout.
It is, moreover, supported by less abundant remains of other
arts. That of painting in fresco, for instance, shows the
same orderly development from at any rate Period II. 2 to the
end. About institutions we have less certain knowledge, there
being but little evidence for the earlier periods; but in
the documents relating to religion, the most significant of
all, it can at least be said that there is no trace of sharp
change. We see evidence of a uniform Nature Worship passing
through all the normal stages down to the anthropism in
the latest period. There is no appearance of intrusive
deities or cult-ideas. We may take it then (and the fact
is not disputed even by those who, like Dorpfeld, believe
in one thorough racial change, at least, during the Bronze
Age) that the Aegean civilization was indigenous, firmly
rooted and strong enough to persist essentially unchanged
and dominant in its own geographical area throughout the
Neolithic and Bronze Ages. This conclusion can hardly entail
less than a belief that, at any rate, the mass of those who
possessed this civilization continued racially the same.
There are, however, in certain respects at certain periods,
evidences of such changes as might be due to the intrusion of
small conquering castes, which adopted the superior civilization
of the conquered people and became assimilated to the
latter. The earliest palace at Cnossus was built probably in
Period II. 1 or 2. It was of the type mentioned first in the
description of palace-plans above. Before Period III. 1 it
was largely rebuilt, and arguments have been brought forward
by Dorpfeld to show that features of the second type were then
introduced. A similar rebuilding took place at the same epoch
at Phaestus, and possibly at Hagia Triada. Now the second
type, the ``megaron'' arrangement, characterizes peculiarly
the palaces discovered in the north of the Aegean area, at
Mycenae, Tiryns and Hissarllk, where up to the present no
signs of the first type, so characteristic of Crete, have been
observed. These northern ``megara'' are all of late date,
none being prior to Minoan III. 1. At Phylakope, a ``megaron''
appears only in the uppermost Aegean stratum, the underlying
structures being more in conformity with the earlier Cretan.
At the same epoch a notable change took place in the Aegean
script. The pictographic characters, found on seals and discs
of Period II. in Crete, had given way entirely to a linear
system by Period III. That system thenceforward prevailed
exclusively, suffering a slight modification again in III.
2 and 3. These and other less well marked changes, say some
critics, are signs of a racial convulsion not long after
2000 B.C. An old race was conquered by a new, even if, in
matters of civilization, the former capta victorem cepit.
For these races respectively Dorpfeld suggests the names
``Lycian'' and ``Carian,'' the latter coming in from the
north Aegean, where Greek tradition remembered its former
dominance. These names do not greatly help us. If we are
to accept and profit by Dorpfeld's nomenclature, we must be
satisfied that, in their later historic habitats, both Lycians
and Carians showed unmistakable signs of having formerly
possessed the civilizations attributed to them in prehistoric
times--signs which research has hitherto wholly failed to
find. The most that can be said to be capable of proof is
the infiltration of some northern influence into Crete at the
end of Minoan Period II.; but it probably brought about no
change of dynasty and certainly no change in the prevailing
race. A good deal of anthropometric investigation has been
devoted to human remains of the Aegean epoch, especially to
skulls and bones found in Crete in tombs of Period II. The
result of this, however, has not so far established more than
the fact that the Aegean races, as a whole, belonged to the
dark, long-headed Homo Mediterraneus, whose probable origin
lay in mid-eastern Africa---a fact only valuable in the present
connexion in so far as it tends to discredit an Asiatic source
for Aegean civilization. Not enough evidence has been collected
to affect the question of racial change during the Aegean
period. From the skullforms studied, it would appear, as we
should expect, that the Aegean race was by no means pure even
in the earlier Minoan periods. It only remains to be added
that there is some ground for supposing that the language
