Page:History of Architecture in All Countries Vol 1.djvu/264

 232 HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE. Part I. that a more ancient record has been read on the monuments of Egypt and dug out of the bowels of the earth in Assyria. It is nevertheless true that the decipherment of the hieroglyphics on the one hand, and the reading of the arrow-headed characters on the other, have disclosed to us two forms of civilization anterior to that which reappeared in Greece in the 8th century before Christ. Based on those that preceded it, the Hellenic form developed itself there with a degree of perfection, never before seen, nor has it, in its own peculiar department, ever been since surpassed. These discoveries have been of the utmost importance, not only in correcting our hitherto nan-ow views of ancient history, but in assisting to explain much that was obscure, or utterly unintelligible, in those histories with which we were more immediately familiar. We now, for the first time, comprehend whence the Greeks obtained many of their arts and much of their civilization, and to what extent the character of these was affected by the sources from which they were derived. Having ali-eady described the artistic forms of Egypt and Assyria, it is not difficult to discover the origin of almost every idea, and of every architectural feature, that was afterwards found in Greece. But even with this assistance we should not be able to understand the phenomena which Greek art presents to us, were it not that the monu- ments reveal to us the existence of two distinct and separate races existing contemporaneously in Gi-eece. If the Greeks were as purely Aryan as their language would lead us to believe, all our ethnographic theories are at fault. But this is precisely one of those cases whei-e archaeology steps in to supjjlement what philology tells us and to elucidate what that science fails to reveal. That the language of the Greeks, with the smallest possible admixture from other sources, is pure Aryan, no one will dispute ; but their arts, their religion, and frequently their institutions, tend to ascribe to them an altogether different origin. Fortunately the ruins at Mycense and Orchomenos are sufficient to afford us a key to the mystery. From them we learn that at the time of the war of Troy a people were supreme in Greece who were not Hellens, but who were closely allied to the Etruscans and other tomb-building, art-loving races. Whether they were purely Turanian, or merely ultra-Celtic, may be questioned ; but one thing seems clear, that this people were then known to the ancients under the name of Pclasgi, and it is their presence in Greece, mixed up with the more ])urely Dorian races, which explains what would otherwise be unintelligil)le in Grecian civilization. Except from our knowledge of the existence of a strong infusion of Turanian blood into the veins of the Grecian people, it would be impossible to understand how a people so purely Aryan in appearance came to adoj)t a religion so essentially Antliroj^ic and Ancestral.