Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/81

 6o Primitive Greece: Mycenian Art. Hebrew chronologfes, we cannot look for rigorous dates in the tabular arrangement of the history found here; such as they are, however, they make us feel and touch the solid residuum which underlies the embellishments of Greek legend and poetry. A main fact brought out by the agreement of traditions and the result of recent excavations is this : the coasts and islands of the -/Egean had settlers long before their names appear in Egyptian annals. In these texts the first mention of the Aquaiousha occurs towards the beginning of the thirteenth century B.C. ; but the Dardana, Iliouna, Masa, and Pedasa, and the Leka or Lycians, already figure about the middle of the fourteenth century B.C., in the list of auxiliaries whom the Hittite king of that period had summoned to him, to fight around Kadish those battles against Ramses II. the representations of which adorn the pylons of Luxor and Karnac. They are the Dardanians, I Hans, Mysians, and Pedasians of classic writers ; the folks whose names and descendants still cling to that region of Asia Minor bordering on the Hellespont. The Greeks too, calling to aid much ingenuity, elaborate calculations, and combinations, set up a chronology of their own. We shall not stop to discuss its method ; the point which concerns us is that their valuations are found to coincide with the data derived from Oriental sources. Their oldest dates creep back to the middle of the thirteenth century B.C., that is to say, the actual epoch when, according to the Ramesside scribes, the barques of the Toursha and Aquaiousha scoured the Archipelago and threatened Egypt. The fact that these peoples could thus undertake distant expeditions and risk them- selves on the open sea so far from their Cretan home, though keeping well in sight of land, not only implies a knowledge of navigation which had long overstepped its beginnings, but a long past during which they had learnt to build and man strong ships, fit to be launched on the main, and learnt also to trust the stars overhead to guide them at night. How long the ap- prenticeship was with either of the tribes it is impossible to say ; but on the sites of the oldest cities, whether in Asia Minor, the islands, or continental Greece, where excavations have been prosecuted as far as the virgin soil or the living rock, under remains of structures and appliances for prompt and strong action, testifying to advanced industry, relics were found of a