Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/519

 462 Primitive Grkkck : Mycknian Art. should light upon products of plastic art manufactured in Homer s time. With their help we can now creep back far beyond the boundary line that until lately was dimly perceived in the un- approachable distance. The excavations have brought to our knowledge a culture very much older than that of Ionia, where the marvellous Epic had its being and flourished ; they have disclosed an art that had run its course when the Dorian invasion swept over the country. What most strikes the historian who sets about to define pre- Homeric culture, is its having been a stranger to writing. It knows neither of the ideographic signs which Egypt and Chaldcea possessed, nor of that alphabet which Greece will borrow some- what later of Phoenicia. Certain characters seen on Trojan fusaioles have indeed been identified with those of the Cypriote syllabary ; but many of these so-termed inscriptions, which some think they can decipher and read fluently, are but patterns or rude scratchings traced by an otiose graver. On the other hand, the few signs that admit of being recognized as this or that letter of the Cypriote alphabet, without offending reasonable probability, appear to have come from the upper layers of rubbish.^ Attention has been recently called to facts of the like nature that have taken place on continental Greece. On the handle or body of vases from Mycenae, Menidi, and other localities, are incised strokes closely resembling, it is assumed, now Greek letters, now characters of the Asianic alphabet, itself derived from the Hittite system of ideographs, and preserved in the Cypriote script.' The analogy between some sets of strokes is marked enough ; but such letters, if they are letters, occur in groups of two or three, never more, and do not appear to form words. They may, after all, be nothing more than potters* or trade marks, and the would-be resemblances purely fortuitous. The following hypothesis has also been proposed. Native artisans may have beheld on some Phoenician or Hittite ware letters that belonged to one or other of the systems of signs then current in Syria and Asia Minor, and reproduced them as a novel and quaint decoration, although totally unconscious of their value,^ Until further notice, we shall continue to affirm that throughout 1 History of Art -^ Ibid, ^ Tsoundas has published several of these so-called characters (Mw^in* ; lIpa«:nKa, 1889). See also AsXrioVj 1892.