Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/475

 448 Primitive Greece : Mycenian Art. wangler told us, as far back as 1886, that Egypt has supplied our collections with pottery of apparently Mycenian fabrication.^ They are also inclined to attribute the same origin to some vases which appear in the wall-paintings of Egyptian tombs. Within this decade our knowledge has been greatly increased by the researches of Prof. Flinders Petrie, in Lower Egypt. We shall reproduce, by and by, several fine Mycenian specimens picked up there. The presence of such pieces in the Delta or Syria is accounted for by commercial intercourse, and does not in any way point to Achaean supremacy over those countries. The case is somewhat different as regards Asia Minor. In our possession is a very curious vase, said to have come from Pitane, in ^olis. Now, in our opinion, the whole of that coast was held in very early times by tribes closely related to the clans whence the Hellenes of history emerged. What is there to pre- vent Oriental Greeks having advanced breast to breast with their brethren of the West ? Why should their industry have been inspired by a different spirit, or marked with a different taste ? The fact that many fragments of Mycenian pottery have been picked up among the ruins of the burnt city of Hissarlik tends to confirm the hypothesis that common methods and tendencies prevailed on the two sides of the i^gean. The buildings in which they have been found are contemporary with the vases in question. Is it not likely that, were diligent search made, we should come across other constructions and pottery of the same kind, along that portion of the Asiatic coast which is comprised between the entrance of the Hellespont and the headlands facing Rhodes ? Not until this inquiry has become an accomplished fact will it be possible to say how far afield in this direction Mycenian culture really extends. Here, for example, is the tumulus of Tantalus, and the cluster of smaller ones surrounding it on the lamanlar-Dagh, northward of Smyrna.- When they were excavated, nobody had an inkling of the interest attached Mycenian style, has been brought out of one of the lower strata at Tell-el-Hazy. The clay is coarse and imperfectly baked ; the decoration consists of intersecting bands covered with parallel and cross-hatchings. Boldly outlined in the central division is a large bird. The antiquity is dated by its discoverer, M. Bliss, from 1 500-1000 B.C. The mound of Tell-el-Hazy is held by some to cover the site of ancient I^chis. — Trans.] 2 History of Art,
 * Mykenische Vdsen, pp. 31-32, 82.