bodies were burned. A similar custom carried to greater excess as regards the number of wives sacrificed, would explain the abundance of personal ornaments at Mycena. From the ten to twelve feet of soil above the tombstones, a stratum of two or three feet must be deducted for the late Hellenic remains next the surface, and we have thus an accumulation of only eight or nine feet at the most to account for. Such an accumulation might have taken a long time to form had the acropolis been always deserted. But as it was inhabited in later Hellenic times at least, it would seem on the contrary probable that this formation had been rapidly made. On the theory of a very slow accumulation of débris above the tombstones, we have to bear in mind that a long time must have elapsed before anything of the kind would be permitted, supposing the place to have remained inhabited by descendants of the dead; and bearing this in mind, we very naturally expect that between the antiquities found above the tombstones, and those from beneath them, there would be a long distance of time represented. Except as regards the late Hellenic articles already mentioned, this is not the case so far as I can see: terra-cotta idols, as they are called, of exactly the same stamp, having been found apparently at any depth from three to eighteen feet. the same time there appear to be two very distinct classes among these antiquities, though they are not separated by any difference of level in the soil. On the one class are to be found patterns identical with those on the gold ornaments from the graves, while the other class obviously belong to an early period of Greek art. As illustrations of the latter we may cite for the present No. 213, the fragments of a painted vase from the vast Cyclopean house' (18 feet by 13 feet), and No. 80, an aryballos, painted with figures of warriors and found at a depth of six feet.

At

Let us pause for a moment to consider the dimensions of this house, which is described as the royal palace. If one thing more than another is calculated to impress people with the conviction that the whole Homeric story of Agememnon and the others is a pure legend, it is to be soberly asked to believe that there he and his ancestors dwelt. He would have been more comfortable in one of his many ships. And to bring Cassandra here!

The vases in question belong to the third stage of Greek vasepainting, in which the delineation of the human figure was the main object of the design. This style is sometimes called the Corinthian, and as yet there has been no evidence of its having an earlier date than the end of the seventh century B.C., while there is every probability of its having lasted to the end of the sixth century. The pottery from outside one of the Treasuries' (Nos. 157-8) represents an earlier stage of the art, though found much nearer the surface. Such fragments have long been known as not rare in the surface soil of Mycense. They are admitted always to be essentially Greek.

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The same must, I think, hold good of the three gold ornaments with designs in intaglio (Nos. 253–5) from the third sepulchre, and not only these but also the few engraved stones found elsewhere and bearing generally the representation of animals. As regards two of the gold objects just cited, it will be observed that they are described with a fine fancy, the one as representing Herakles slaying the Nemean lion, the other as a combat between Achilles and Hector. There is no indication of any one of these persons, and if by a stretch of imagination the encounter of a huntsman with a lion could be identified with the well-known group of Herakles and the Lion, it would necessarily be at the expense of relegating this particular work to a fairly late period, since it would seem from the large number of engraved stones of an undoubtedly early date, and from the general tendency of artistic development, that the artistic types of special legends did not commend themselves very readily to minor workers of the kind employed then in engraving.

Without leaving the subject of engraving we may pass to the things characterised more or less as barbarous, by calling attention to the gold ring (No. 530), and inquiring with all seriousness whether it is possible to assign such a work to any but a barbarous workman having highly advanced designs before him to copy or vary as best he could. Among the numerous existing engraved stones of archaic origin, it will be seen that when the subject is a single animal, it is placed on the field in such a way as to cover as much space as possible; when there are two animals or two figures there is a very general observance of symmetry in strict accordance with the principles of early sculpture. But in this ring the design observes none of the conditions of sculpture; on the contrary, it resembles a picture in which symmetry is not essential. In this respect it is not only unlike all that is known of ancient art, whether in Greece, Assyria, or Egypt, but when we come to details, a feeling of repugnance is raised at every point. Nothing is known except in India to prepare us for women with pendulous breasts, wasp waists, and crinoline skirts. Such a tree as that on this ring seems an impossibility except in India. But really there is little use in proceeding with the analysis since, though the ring obviously cannot fit into any stage of Greek art, yet we must confess that it would be something like an injustice to ascribe it even to the Hyperboreans with late Greek models before them. Still, with the barbarous patterns and masks of the tombs it must go.

It may be argued, then, that the pottery and the engraved rings or ornaments here admitted to be of an early class and distinct from the mass of articles found in the tombs had been imported into Mycenae, since objects characteristically the same are found frequently in other places where their production is sufficiently natural; and in the same way it may be argued that the objects having patterns and

elements of design common only to the Northern peoples of Europe, so far as is known, must also have been brought from this quarter. On the other hand, it may be the fate of archæology to discover that the signs which have been determined upon to distinguish the art productions of one ancient nationality from another, are mere fancies, and that there must have been a time when there existed among all mankind a brotherhood so close that no distinctions could be drawn between what was done in Peru and what in Greece. Meantime it is safest to hold by the distinctions, and applying them to the discoveries of Mycenæ, we see no better way out of the difficulty than by supposing the things which are clearly Greek and common to many parts of Greece to have been imported at the time when they were common, and that the things which are clearly common in style to the productions of the North of Europe were, if made in Mycenae, made by people who retained the primitive traditions of art brought from the North, whether these makers were descendants of the original inhabitants of the place or temporary settlers in it in later times.

It should, however, be observed that besides the antiquities which point to a northern origin, there are others again which from their resemblance to things found in Cyprus and at Ialyssos in Rhodes would seem to have been in some way associated with early Greek art, though in fact they present certain features which find no place in the development of Greek design as hitherto known. As an example of this we may take the fragmentary vase (No. 232) with a floral decoration applied in such a way as to intimate a complete ignorance of the principles of ornament on Greek pottery and to suggest at first sight that it must be an entirely foreign production. Yet to some extent there is to be seen also on the pottery from Ialyssos an abandonment of the strictly Greek system and the substitution of a sprawlingness in which the first duty of the potter, to apply his design so as not to interfere with the form of his vase, is forgotten, just as it is very constantly in our day. When, therefore, resemblances were pointed out between designs from Mycena and those of the pottery from Ialyssos, I could not feel that we had got on firm ground, since that very pottery had always presented to me an insurmountable difficulty, for this reason, that it appeared to represent a decadence following upon what in Greece proper was only the first stage of vase-painting. Nor, apart from that question, is it easy to determine the date of the sepulchre at Ialyssos. The bronze swords found in it are exceedingly fine in form and edge. A small ivory figure in the round, seated with hands on knees, would by itself be placed beside the seated figures from Branchidæ, perhaps not earlier than the beginning of the sixth century The engraved gems with figures of animals may be earlier than this, but as yet so much has not been proved. One of them most VOL. V.-No. 23.

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singularly has the same design of two lions rampant and regardant as on the lion gateway at Mycenæ, so that somehow there must have been a community of artistic tradition between the makers of both, distant as the places are. Among the numerous small ornaments of vitrified ware-a substance also found at Mycena-is one with the figure of a sphinx, the design of which has every appearance of having been derived from Egypt or Assyria through the Phonicians. From Egypt also, and probably through the same channel, must have come the porcelain scarab with the cartouche of Thothmes the Third, who reigned about B. C. 1400. Can this object have such an antiquity? I think not, because this same cartouche occurs among the porcelain scarabs found in tombs at Camirus in Rhodes, along with other articles in porcelain, among which is a small vase with a Greek inscription, the palæography of which is not earlier than the sixth century B.C. The question, then, as regards Thothmes is the same as if we were to find, which may be common enough, a very ancient Chinese signature on a very modern piece of China ware.

Since the discoveries at Mycenae an ancient sepulchre has been found at Spata, a village in Attica, at the foot of Mount Hymettos, and among its contents are certain ornaments, more or less of the same type as ornaments from Mycenae. Without this comparison these objects would not have been very surprising, since with them were found things of more ambitious design in which, to judge from the engravings in the Athenaion, it is impossible not to trace the hand of a Phoenician craftsman, or some other working in the same vein. There is thus this difference between Spata and Mycenae, that in the former the figure drawing is excellent of its kind, though the patterns are indifferent, while at Mycenae the only skill recognisable is in the patterns. There is likely to be a variety of theories advanced as to the ancient inhabitants of Spata, but meantime I may cite the passage of Herodotus (vi. 137) tracing the story of the Pelasgians of Lemnos, who had formerly had a settlement at the foot of Mount Hymettos assigned them for having built the Pelasgic wall round the acropolis of Athens. This wall has always been supposed to have been built at the same time as the walls of Tiryns and Mycena.

After these digressions within digressions, which might have been multiplied many times without exhausting the various points of importance to archæology, we are ready to breathe freely again in the air of Mycenae. I had previously thought and said that the distinction of the antiquities from the acropolis into two classes, the one of a northern character, the other Phoenician or Pelasgic, and in part early Greek, was confirmed by this difference in the circumstances under which they were found, that the things from the tombs were exclusively of the northern type, while those met with in the soil above the tombs were of the other class. The difficulty of the lowermost objects being the most recent seemed to

be not unnaturally explained on the theory that over the graves had been made, when the interment took place, a mound collected from the ancient soil of the immediate neighbourhood, this habit of making mounds over the dead having been a very common practice among northern peoples. The surface soil of Mycenae is rich in fragments of archaic workmanship. I still adhere to the probability of this explanation, though I must now admit, on the authority of Dr. Schliemann's record, that certain objects characteristically identical in design with things found in the tombs were also met with in the upper soil, and that contrariwise certain articles were yielded by the tombs no less akin, from an artistic point of view, with articles found above them. On the other hand, I am not assuming that the people who made these interments came in a night and vanished at daybreak, but in view of the evidence to which reference has been made at length, I would prefer to suppose that Mycena, down to a comparatively late period, was inhabited for the most part by a people who, while retaining the semi-barbarous habits common to Ætolia, Epirus, and the more northern districts of Europe, had yet, like the people of these countries, as I have shown, utilised their opportunities of importing articles of luxury apparently through the Phoenicians, without at the same time having their own peculiarly northern system of decoration affected by their importations. But, it will be said, the obviously imported designs at Mycenae fall in an undoubtedly early period, so far as they represent a vital stage in the development of art, yet if we take, as we may fairly enough, the latest possible date for this vital stage, we shall not be obliged to go beyond B.C. 500, and if we regard it as a possibility that certain designs peculiar to this stage had been perpetuated in a place like Mycenae, where there are no remains of the high art which flourished considerably before then in the great centres of Greece, we shall not, I think, be far from the mark. It is true that the only positive evidence of a late occupation of Mycenae points unmistakeably to a people who fully shared the artistic decline of the rest of Greece, as may be seen from some fragments of sculptured stele in the British Museum, brought from Mycenae many years ago by Mr. Inwood. They may be as late as Roman times, and in any case are not evidence of more than a few settlers. But why not, it may be asked, assume that the interments had taken place at some remote time, when the greater part at least of Greece must have been in a primitive condition, common probably to the rest of Europe? The obstacle to that is that among the designs in these graves, not to recall other peculiarities which have been pointed out, there are elements which appear to present conclusive proof of being debased from designs the origin of which cannot be traced to any very early period. A. S. MURRAY.