Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/79

 58 Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. hundred years at the very least before the Iliad and Odyssey came into being, tribes bearing the names which the earliest traditions and the Homeric epic ascribed to the ancestors of the Greeks, were already dispersed among the islands of the iEgean, and probably also on the coasts of the mainland turned towards it, and that even then they could reckon on a number of men sufficiently large and fully equipped to boldly launch ships on the main, not fearing to attack the mighty Pharaohnic empire. Oriental documents from another source, but whose authen- ticity is no less firmly established, e,g. Hebrew writings, likewise attest that at the time of their recension the Greeks were already massed in great numbers in the north-west corner of the Mediterranean ; true, their witness bears upon a much later period than that of the Egyptian texts relating to the Aquaiousha, but it is older than the introduction of writing in Greece, older in any case than the oldest Greek texts which have been pre- served to us. In the Noahchian table of Genesis (chap. x. 4) this race is mentioned as settled on the coasts of the iEgean, split up into different clans, and speaking different languages, under the name of *'sons of lavan." This curious genealogy is instructive as showing the notions held by the Hebrews circ. 1000 B.C., in regard to the geographical distribution, and the kinship of peoples with which they held either direct intercourse or knew only from . hearsay. The Hebrews were aware of the large dealings which even then were carried on between Phoenicians and Greeks ; of the nature and comprehensiveness of these dealings archaeology has already informed us, but still clearer proofs will be put forward in the sequel of this history. When towards 870 B.C. Joel bursts forth into curses against the cities of Tyre and Sidon, one of the crimes laid at their door is their having led away Israelites to the land of infidels to sell them to the lavanim. It requires no great science to recognize in these sons of lavan, or lavanim, the scarcely changed form of the name borne by one of the Hellenic tribes, the one which not only seems to have had a greater propensity for navigation, but was also the first to emerge from barbarism by contact with Eastern nations. The name of I ones or lonians became more or less disfigured on the lips of Phoenicians and other nations ; it sounded as lavan with the Hebrews,