Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/466

 Pottery. 409 such beliefs would originate and stimulate his curiosity ? Was it not on the sea-shore, among a population that lived on the sea, and of the sea ? The Mycenians, however, had only a distant view of the ocean ; and their neighbours of Argos, Tiryns, and Nauplia, though somewhat better situated in that respect, were after all, like the other inhabitants of that fertile plain, husbandmen and artisans rather than mariners. Until our view is controverted by a close analysis, made with the help of the microscope, of the pottery in question, as M. Fouqu6 has done for the Thera vases, we shall provisionally place in the islands, rather than on terra firma, the point of departure of the style which is defined by the prevalence of designs derived from marine plants and animals, and which some have proposed to call Pelasgic. Where did this preference first show itself ? Was it in Crete, where vases bearing unequivocal marks of this style are found in plenty ? ^ Or Rhodes, in the lalysos necropolis for example, whence has come our finest collection of lustrous pottery ? I know not ; but I cannot forbear looking towards those islands as to the site that will make good my forecast. If the origin of the so-called Mycenian style remains an open question, this does not apply to the boundaries of the vast area where, no matter the localization of the productive centres, this fabric sold its products. It would appear that, thanks to the elegance and variety of their shapes, as well as the quaintness of their decoration, they were long in vogue, and accepted in distant marts. The best-preserved of these vases have been especially furnished by the necropolis of lalysos, whilst those of Attica and Peloponnesus, Egypt, Phoenicia,^ Thessaly,* the ^ The Cretan pottery is imperfectly known. M. Joubin has made a catalogue of such pottery or fragments of Mycenian pottery as he came across in public and private collections on different points of the island. The octopus is often repre- sented. He printed two vases that contained bones, analogous to those published by Orsi in the Bulletin de correspondance hellenique^ 1892. See also E. Fabricius, Alterthumer auf Kreta^ IV. Funde der mykenischen Epoche in Knossos, M. Haus- soullier was the first to draw attention to the Cnossian vases, as far back as 1880. 2 The Guimet Museum preserves a false-necked amphora of Mycenian style, said to have come from the necropolis at Sidon. ^ Furtwangler, in 1886, wrote that he knew of no Mycenian vases from Northern Greece. Since then the gap has been filled up by P. Wolters, who has published a whole series of vases found by him in the graves situated in the Thessalian district of Pagasae (Athenische Mittluilungen, 1889).