Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/540

 General Characteristics of the Mvcenian Period. 483 The advent of Amenophis III. to the throne is placed towards 1450 b.c. The tombs and domestic abodes in which the objects in question have been picked up cannot be older than the above date ; and the chance of their being more recent is very remote indeed. We cannot go wrong if we place the heyday of the Mycenian civilization somewhere about the middle of the fifteenth century b.c. Scarabaei and broken pottery are from buildings apparently younger than the shaft-graves on the acro- polis, so that we must creep farther back into the past to reach the era when the .first blocks of the formidable circuit- wall were set up against the rock. Assuming that Greek chronographers were correct in placing the Dorian invasion of Peloponnesus towards iioo b.c, it follows that Mycenian culture lasted four or five hundred years in Greece proper, and reached its zenith about the fifteenth or fourteenth century B.C., rather than in the period immediately preceding the fall of the Achaean royalties. Those who have studied the remains of the structures of Tiryns and Mycenae on the spot have almost always found careless construction on such points as show traces of successive repairs and re-handlings. When the northern tribes fell upon southern primitive Greece, they found a weakened and decadent country. Granting that direct relations existed at that time between Hellas and Egypt, we cannot suppose that all the ivory and lustrous earthenware contained in the tombs were fetched from the banks of the Nile by Pelasgi and Achaeans. About this time, Cyprus, Rhodes, Thera, and the sea-board of the ^Egean began to receive colonists from Phoenicia. These vassals and privileged brokers of Egypt offered to the natives the raw materials or wares which they obtained from the Delta and Anterior Asia, or had fabricated themselves. Among the exotic objects found at Mycenae are some that have nothing Egyptian about them ; on the contrary, they rather approach types invented or popularized by Phoenician industry. Such would be the gold simulacra representing either Ashtoreth, surrounded by the doves .sacred to her, or her temple (Figs. 288, 289). The question has been asked if, among the influences exercised on Mycenae, we should not include that of the Hittites or Syro-Cappadocians ? Between these and the clans domiciled on the eastern shore of the -^gean there were no doubt many