Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/78

 The People. 57 The trail of the migrations and spirit of enterprise which marked these Tyrrenian or Tyrsenian Pelasgi, is held to have been discovered in the Egyptian annals of the New Empire. According to these documents, the oldest extant containing, if not a precise date, at any rate materials for an approximate chronology, these Tyrsenian Pelasgi would be no other than the Toursha, who early in the reign of Ramses II. landed on the African coast, and allied themselves to Libyan tribes in order to attack Egypt. They were repulsed, but they returned and renewed their onslaughts, once under the reign of Menephtah I., the successor of Ramses, and again in the day of Ramses 1 11.^ If this theory be open to doubt, there seems to be no reason- able ground for refusing to identify the direct ancestors of the Greeks, the Homeric Achaeans, with those Aquaiousha, who once at least figure among the ** sea- faring people, or people from over the sea," as they are called by the Egyptians, against whom the Pharaohs of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties had to stand up in many a hardly-fought battle. The Aquaiousha are mentioned once only in Egyptian records. In the fifth year of the reign of Menephtah, they again invade Egypt in concert with the Libyans, Toursha, Leka, Shardana, and Sakalousha. The allies were beaten at Prosopis and obliged to evacuate the Delta.^ The very frequency of these invasions furnishes us with the clue as to their point of departure ; the fact that the Aquaiousha could thus invade Egypt whenever they pleased, suggests the notion that their home was some island not very far off, where they could be quickly informed of what went on in the Nile valley, and of the circumstances which might seem to favour an invasion. The nearest lands to the Egyptian coast, and therefore the best points for observation, were Crete and Cyprus. It may well be that the armed ships which so repeatedly menaced the safety of Egypt, started now from one now from the other of these islands. Be that as it may, unquestionable documents testify to the fact that three or four ^ De Rouge, Extrait iun Memoire sur ks attaques dirigkes contre T&gypU par ks peuples de la mer {Revue archeologique^ n. s., 1867). Mariette, Kamak), Cf. Maspero, in Zeitschrift fur jEgyptische Sprachc und A/terthumskunde, 1882 {Notes sur diffhrents points de grammaire et d'histoire).
 * Menephtah's Inscription^ i. 2, 14 (Duemichen, Hist, Inschriften^ t. i., or