CHAPTER VI

_PRIMITIVE FABRICS_

Introductory—Cypriote Bronze-Age pottery—Classification—Mycenaean pottery in Cyprus—Graeco-Phoenician fabrics—Shapes and decoration—Hellenic and later vases—Primitive pottery in Greece—Troy—Thera and Cyclades—Crete—Recent discoveries—Mycenaean pottery—Classification and distribution—Centres of fabric—Ethnography and chronology.

In the preceding chapters we have given a general _résumé_ of the subject of Greek pottery; we have discussed the sites on which Greek vases have been found, the methods employed in their manufacture, the shapes which they assume, and the uses to which they were put both on earth and in the tombs; and we have now reached perhaps the most important part of the subject, at any rate in the eyes of archaeologists, namely, the history of the rise, development and decadence of painting on Greek vases.

It has already been noted (in Chapter I.) that this branch of the study of Greek vases is one that has only been called into existence in comparatively recent times, and that up to the year 1854 or thereabouts all attempts at dating the vases (chiefly of course owing to the poverty of material) were purely empirical and tentative. They were moreover largely combined with fantastic interpretations of the painted designs.

During the last forty years, and especially during the last twenty, the steady growth of archaeological study and increased attention to excavations have enormously increased both the material at command and the power of utilising it with scientific method. The extensive finds of pottery in Greece, Asia Minor, Northern Africa, Italy, and elsewhere, including more especially products of the earlier periods, have enabled the students of the subject to trace the sequence of fabrics from the rude wares of Troy and the Greek Islands up to the graceful and finished products of the Athenian _ateliers_, and onward to the overgrown luxuriousness of the gigantic Apulian wares. The subjects of the paintings, once of all-absorbing, are now only of subordinate interest, except so far as they illustrate certain phases of development, and the chief interest of the vases is the question of their origin, their maker, or their place in relation to others.

It will therefore be the object of this and of the succeeding chapters to trace with all possible detail, as far as space permits, the history of Greek vase-manufacture and vase-painting in all their aspects. We have already indicated (p. 31) the limits within which the subject falls, and the convenient rough division into four main classes of which it permits (p. 23). This introductory chapter, therefore, deals with the primitive fabrics, leading up, through the two following, to the period of black-figured vases in Chapter IX. The lines of demarcation are, indeed, difficult if not impossible to draw, but they must not in any case be taken as rigid ones, being largely conventional, and only adopted in order to obtain a point of division for the chapters.

Perhaps the leading feature of the early history of Greek vases is the gradual coalescence of the numerous local fabrics first into two or three main streams, and finally into the one great and all-absorbing current of Athenian art. In the sixth century this was really brought about more by historical causes than anything else, as a result of the gradually increasing supremacy of Athens in art and culture from the time of the Peisistratidae down to that of Perikles.

One region, and one only, pursues its artistic course without regard to the contemporaneous tendencies prevailing in the Greek world, and that is the island of =Cyprus=. Here again the causes are largely political, as we shall see; largely also ethnographical and geographical, from the character of the inhabitants and the position of the island, a meeting-place and bone of contention between the great nations of the Eastern Mediterranean. For this reason we propose to deal first with the pottery of Cyprus, which has little in common with that of the rest of Greece, and always retains something of its primitive character, though it is always as much influenced from Greece on the one hand as from the East on the other. It is in Cyprus also that we meet with some of the earliest remains of pottery yet found on Greek soil.

§ 1. CYPRIOTE POTTERY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cesnola, _Cyprus_; O.-Richter, _Kypros, the Bible, and Homer_; Perrot and Chipiez, _Hist. de l’Art_, iii. p. 648 ff.; _Cyprus Mus. Cat._ (Myres and O.-Richter); _B.M. Excavations in Cyprus_ (Turner Bequest), 1894–6; Dümmler in _Ath. Mitth._ xi. (1886), p. 209 ff.; _Archaeologia_, xlv. p. 127 ff.; Pottier, _Cat. des Vases ant. du Louvre_, i. p. 82 ff., and other references there given.

In order to understand aright the history of Cypriote art, it is indeed necessary to know something of its ethnography and political history, and the various influences to which it has been subjected. But space forbids us to do more than make very brief allusions to the more important of these features. Speaking generally, Cyprus may be regarded as a centre wherein have met all the currents of ancient civilisation, forming an amalgamation of artistic elements. Thus Cypriote art, though it loses in originality, gains in interest; and yet though often slavishly imitative, it has at bottom great individuality, more especially in its pottery. Hence it will be seen that it is essentially necessary to consider the pottery of Cyprus as a thing apart.

As regards chronology, except for a certain determinable sequence of artistic phases, even more caution than in dealing with Hellenic art is required. The remarkable conservatism and persistence of types exhibited by Cypriote art has more than once proved a pitfall, and has given rise to considerable controversy at one time or another. Dates can only be used in the vaguest manner.

The pottery of Cyprus falls under three headings, which for convenience, though not perhaps with the strictest accuracy, are usually defined as follows:—

1. _Bronze Age_, from about 2500 B.C. to 800 B.C.

2. _Graeco-Phoenician period_, from 800 B.C. to 400 B.C., overlapping with

3. _Hellenic period_, from 550 B.C. to 200 B.C., representing the time during which imported Greek vases are found in the tombs, native pottery gradually dying out except in the form of plain vessels.

The pottery of the Bronze-Age period again falls into two distinct periods: (1) Copper Age or pre-Mycenaean period (2500–1500 B.C.), during which few bronze implements are found in the tombs, and all the pottery is purely indigenous, the work of the original inhabitants of the island, without any admixture of importations. (2) The Mycenaean period (1500–800 B.C.), during which the local pottery (including both unpainted and painted vases) is reinforced by large quantities of imported Mycenaean pottery, together with elaborately decorated vases of Mycenaean technique, either made locally or specially made for Cyprus and imported.

The sites on which Bronze-Age remains are found (see above, p. 66) are chiefly confined to the central and southern parts of the island, the most important sites being near the modern towns of Nicosia, Larnaka, and Famagusta. The discovery in these tombs of such objects as milking-bowls and querns is an additional proof of the conclusion naturally to be drawn—that the early inhabitants of Cyprus were a race of pastoral lowlanders.[820] The tombs (see p. 35) are mostly pit-tombs of moderate depth, recalling in type the Egyptian _mastaba_, and burial is universal.

There is no doubt that the art of pottery was introduced into Cyprus coincidently with the beginning of the Copper Age, which may be placed at about the year 2000 B.C. Although no bronze is found in the earliest tombs, on the other hand stone implements are absent, and the types of the pottery are identical with those of the later Bronze Age. It will be seen that it presents throughout very striking parallels with the pottery of Hissarlik, which will form the subject of the next section. The forms are largely similar and the technique is the same, but the Hissarlik pottery is ruder and of inferior clay. Stone implements are found at Hissarlik, but no copper, from which the inference may be drawn that that metal, being indigenous to Cyprus, supplanted stone there at an earlier date than in the Troad, whither it had to find its way by means of commerce. It was no doubt largely due to the existence of its copper ores that Cyprus so early shows an advance in its civilisation.

The shapes of the earliest Cypriote pottery are purely indigenous and very characteristic, but the technique may very likely have been learned from elsewhere; in regard to which it should be noted that as it is invariably hand-made, an Egyptian origin is altogether precluded, owing to the early use of the wheel for pottery in that country (see pp. 7, 206). For the most part the forms are characterised by a tendency to fantastic and unsymmetrical modelling, with a preference for complicated forms, such as two or three vases joined together. Others again imitate gourds or vessels of straw and basket-work, such as are used in Cyprus at the present day. They have no foot or “base-ring” to stand upon; and another characteristic is the frequent absence of handles, the place of which is supplied by small ears, by means of which the vase was hung up or carried by cords.[821] Sometimes these ears cover the whole outline of the vase. The plastic principle is always popular in the Bronze-Age pottery, and manifests itself in more than one direction. From the first it is exhibited in the tendency, so common in early art, to combine the vase and the statuette,[822] a tendency which is even stronger in the pottery of Hissarlik. It also takes the form of designs in relief covering the surface of, or moulded to, the vase.

In one point Cyprus is manifestly in advance of the rest of the ancient world, and that is, in the decoration of the pottery. Here, in fact, we meet with the first attempts at painted vases, combined with the employment of a fine bright red or polished black slip to cover the surface. In the earlier varieties the designs, when they occur, are confined to simple rectilinear geometrical patterns incised through the slip before baking; but these are soon supplemented by the employment, first of a matt-white pigment, secondly of a brown-black paint obtained from the native umber. The only other locality in which painted vases occur at so early a period is the island of Thera (see below, p. 260).

We pass now to the consideration of the later Bronze-Age pottery—namely, that which is found in tombs together with vases of Mycenaean style. In this we see various modifications of the indigenous art, and witness its eventual transformation by the introduction of new processes and ideas from various sources. The main streams of influence are three in number, coming from the east, south, and west respectively. Of these the first represents the Asiatic civilisations of Babylonia and the Hittites, to whom in the first place are due the engraved cylinders frequently found in these tombs, and at a comparatively late date such objects as the ivory draught-box from Enkomi in the British Museum, which affords points of comparison with the reliefs of Kouyounjik. Egyptian influences date from the invasion of Cyprus by Thothmes III. (eighteenth dynasty), about 1450 B.C., as exemplified by the frequent occurrence of scarabs and porcelain objects. A counter-influence of Cyprus on Egypt is seen in the presence of exported Cypriote pottery in tombs at Kahun, Saqqara, and elsewhere.[823] Lastly, there is the far more extensive influence of the Mycenaean civilisation, covering several hundred years, and eventually absorbing the indigenous fabrics until the foundations of a new phase of decorative art were laid on a combination of the two. The Mycenaean vases belong to the later styles exclusively (see below, p. 271), and show a strong preference for certain forms such as the false-necked amphora and the large richly-decorated krater peculiar to Cyprus; but these we must discuss later in fuller detail. Briefly, they represent the first entry of Greece proper into the Cypriote world.

The ethnological affinities of the early inhabitants of Cyprus cannot be positively ascertained. In M. Heuzey’s opinion they were Asiatics, Syrian rather than Phoenician, and he suggests that the names of Kition (Chittim) and Amathus (Hamath) imply Hittite and Hamathite colonists. Dümmler regarded them as closely akin to the race which inhabited the second city at Hissarlik,[824] an idea to which the similarity of the pottery might be thought to lend support. At all events in Greek legend this people was personified by the mythical king Kinyras, the father of Adonis, who came from the neighbouring Asiatic coast. The Hellenic, or rather Achaean, invasion is crystallised into the legends of Teucer’s colonisation of Salamis after the fall of Troy,[825] of an Arcadian settlement at Kerynia and elsewhere, and of the founding of Curium by Argives (? Mycenaeans).[826]

The first attempt to classify the pottery of Cyprus, and to distinguish between the Bronze-Age wares and what are now known as the Graeco-Phoenician fabrics, was made by the late Mr. T. B. Sandwith in 1876.[827] Considering the comparative poverty of material at his command, and the state of archaeological knowledge at the time, his brief but illuminating monograph is a wonderfully accurate and scientific contribution, and, so far as it goes, his classification can still be accepted in the main. But the extensive series of excavations in the island since the British occupation, and the investigation of such fruitful sites as Salamis, Curium, and Kition, have resulted in a great advance of our knowledge of the subject. The elaborate classification made by Messrs. Myres and Ohnefalsch-Richter of the representative collections of the Cyprus Museum must for the present be regarded as final, and of necessity forms the basis of the succeeding description.

* * * * *

The pottery of the Bronze Age may be classified under two main headings: Painted and Unpainted Pottery. Of these the former is practically confined to the later tombs, and we naturally turn first to the unpainted pottery as taking precedence in chronology and development.

Almost the commonest, and probably the earliest, variety is the =red polished ware=, sometimes plain, but generally ornamented with incised patterns or reliefs (see Plate XI., Nos. 3, 4, 7).[828] The polished surface, which seems to betoken a great advance in technique, was doubtless produced by means of a burnisher. In some varieties the surface is black, a result due to the action of smoke in firing. The commonest forms are a globular bottle with long neck and handle, a plain bowl, a cooking-pot on feet, and a two-handled globular amphora; besides composite and abnormal forms. None of these vases have any kind of base except the cooking-pots.

The incised patterns, when they occur, are scratched in deeply before firing, and often filled in with white; the patterns, which tend to become more and more elaborate, consist of zigzags, wavy lines, chequers and lozenges, network patterns, and concentric circles. Ornament in relief is applied in the form of strips of clay, often worked into the shape of rude figures of trees, snakes, animals, or simple patterns. Many tombs and even cemeteries, as at Alambra, Agia Paraskevi, and elsewhere, contain no other form of pottery; but though these are undoubtedly earlier than the mixed tombs, the red ware in a degenerate form continues long afterwards.

There is also a small class of =black-slip ware=, covered with a thin dark lustreless slip which flakes off easily. The ornamentation, which is seldom absent, is generally in the form of a straight or wavy line with a row of dots alternately on either side, either incised or in relief. The forms are much the same as in the red ware, but often seem to suggest metal or leather prototypes.

An interesting class is formed by the =black punctured ware=, in which the clay is black throughout, without a slip, but partly polished. Most of these vases are small jugs with a narrow neck, swelling body, and small foot, and they are ornamented with punctured dots, usually in triangular patches, but sometimes irregularly distributed. In Cyprus they are mostly found in the early necropolis at Kalopsida, but they also occur in the late Mycenaean tombs at Enkomi. The special interest of this ware is that it is found in Egypt, under such circumstances that it can fairly be dated; notably at Khata'anah in conjunction with scarabs and flint chips of the twelfth and thirteenth dynasties (2500–2000 B.C.). It is also found in the Fayûm, where Prof. Petrie obtained some good specimens.[829]

Allied to this is the Cypriote _bucchero_ ware, of plain black clay without slip, ornamented with ribs or flutings. It is only found in the later tombs, and can be traced through the subsequent transitional period.[830]

Of the remaining fabrics the most conspicuous is that termed by Mr. Myres the =base-ring ware=, which is marked off from other Bronze-Age types by its flat-ringed base in all cases. The clay is dark and of fine texture, with thinly-glazed surface. The ornament is either in relief or painted in matt-white, the patterns being exclusively of a basket or network type (Plate XI., figs. 1, 2). The reliefs, when they occur, consist of scrolls or raised seams curving over the body, obviously in imitation of the seams of a leather bottle; they sometimes end in a leaf-ornament,[831] and at other times take the form of a snake. This fabric is very commonly found in the later tombs with Mycenaean vases, and hardly earlier. It has been found in Egypt and at Lachish.[832]

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PLATE XI

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Among the rarer varieties of unpainted wares Mr. Myres includes white base-ring ware (plates and bowls), imitations of straw-plait or wicker-work, and plain _wheel-made wares_ with red or black slip, of peculiar form.[833]

Among the Painted Pottery by far the most widely-spread local fabric is that styled by Mr. Myres the =white-slip ware=, which appears in the tombs of the later Bronze Age, and is more than any other associated with Mycenaean vases. In cemeteries such as Enkomi, Curium, and Maroni[834] it has been found in large quantities in almost every tomb, and its range is not limited to Cyprus. The characteristics of this ware are a black gritty clay, worked very thin, and a thick white creamy slip with which it is covered both inside and out; it is exceedingly brittle, and perfect specimens are comparatively uncommon. The ornament is laid on in a black pigment, often turning to red by the action of fire; the most common form is that of a hemispherical bowl with a flat triangular handle, notched at the apex. Almost the only other forms are a long-necked flask or bottle of the lekythos type and a large jug with cylindrical body (like an _olpe_) and a flat thumb-piece above the handle.

Mr. Myres[835] points out that the scheme of decoration seems intended to imitate the binding and seams of a leather bowl; it usually consists of a band of various patterns (lattice-work, zigzags, lozenges, or lines of dots) round the rim, from which similar bands descend vertically, but do not meet at the bottom. Similarly the handle seems intended to represent two pieces of flexible wood bound together. In the case of the jugs the patterns follow a similar principle, giving the effect of a decoration in panels to the upper part. Specimens of this ware are given in Plate XI., Nos. 5, 6.

Beyond the confines of Cyprus isolated specimens of this ware have been found at Athens, Hissarlik, Thera, Lachish in Palestine, and at Saqqara and Tell-el-Amarna in Egypt, in the last-named instance along with Mycenaean vases.[836] The resemblance of some white-slip wares to the Dipylon vases is not a little curious.[837] But it can hardly be thought that the one influenced the other.

The other local painted wares are by no means so common. They are, in fact, almost limited to specimens of an unpolished _white ware_, with fine cream-coloured clay, on which patterns such as groups of straight or wavy lines, chevrons, chequers, and triangles filled with hatched lines are painted with a pigment varying from dull black to dull red. The commonest forms are one-handled bowls and small bottles, either globular or sausage-shaped. The latter are distinguished by often having long tube-like spouts attached and by the numerous perforated projections for the attachment of strings, handles being generally absent at first, but when they are introduced the projections remain as an ornamental survival. In a few isolated specimens the surface is covered with a polished slip. Others again are covered with a _black glaze_,[838] on which are painted in dull red groups of short parallel lines, which (as Mr. Myres points out) seem to have been executed at a single stroke with a cluster of brushes.

* * * * *

The =Mycenaean pottery= which has been found on not a few sites in Cyprus, and of late years in such surprising quantities at Enkomi and in the neighbourhood of Larnaka and Limassol (Maroni, Curium, etc.), belongs properly to another section of this chapter, and would not call for discussion in this connection, but for the fact that in Cyprus it presents certain features which seem to be almost exclusively local. At all events it is advisable to consider how far Mycenaean pottery in Cyprus differs from that found in Rhodes, Crete, or Mycenae.

Two points claim our attention in the first instance: (1) that in point of technique the Cypriote finds fall absolutely into line with those in other parts of the Mycenaean world; (2) that the range of subjects depicted on the vases found in Cyprus is wider and in a measure more developed than elsewhere. To what extent we may be permitted, bearing both facts in mind, to predicate a local fabric of Mycenaean pottery in Cyprus, must for the present remain an open question; at the same time it seems extremely probable that the larger vases, which it will be necessary to discuss in detail, are, if not of local manufacture, at all events a fabric made specially for exportation to Cyprus, as we shall see was the case with a later variety of black-figured Attic ware.

The peculiarity of the Cypriote-Mycenaean pottery is that whereas on other sites the decoration is confined to linear ornaments, and animal or vegetable subjects drawn almost exclusively from the aquatic world (such as cuttle-fish, shell-fish, or seaweed), in Cyprus we find represented not only animals, such as bulls, deer, goats, and dogs, but even human figures, both male and female, and monsters such as Sphinxes and Gryphons. Having regard to what M. Pottier[839] calls the law of the _hierarchie des genres_, it does not seem impossible that this may imply a _late survival_ of Mycenaean art in Cyprus, and although this view has been hitherto strongly contested in certain quarters, it finds support from other evidence obtained in recent excavations. The whole chronology of Cypriote pottery is still in a very unsettled state, and until it can be definitely shown that the Cypriote Geometrical style began concurrently with the appearance of Geometrical pottery in Greece, it is still admissible to urge that Mycenaean art prevailed here for some time subsequent to its disappearance from the greater part of the Hellenic world. For this the accepted date is the end of the tenth century B.C., but it is not necessary to extend its influence in Cyprus more than two centuries longer, _i.e._ beyond the eighth century, at the latest.

If we accept the view generally held that the Mycenaean civilisation was Achaean, and that after the Dorian invasion its representatives were driven in an easterly direction and settled on the coast of Asia Minor; and if again we regard this as an historical version of the Greek traditions of the Trojan war and the subsequent migrations of the Achaean heroes[840]; we may then consider that the stories of Teucer’s foundation of a new Salamis and of an Argive colonisation of Curium find their verification in the Mycenaean settlements recently discovered on those two Cypriote sites. The extent and richness of the old Salamis at Enkomi at any rate seems to suggest that it may have flourished as a Mycenaean settlement for some centuries.

But to return to the pottery. Two forms are eminently characteristic of the Cypriote varieties. Of these, one—the “false amphora” (p. 271)—is not peculiar to the island, but is found wherever Mycenaean pottery has penetrated; though especially common in Cyprus, it is in fact the most popular of all Mycenaean shapes. The other is a large krater, found in two varieties, either a straight-sided deep bowl with wide mouth and no neck, or a spheroidal vessel on a high stem, with a low straight neck of less diameter than the body. It is this latter class which appears to be of local manufacture and presents such a variety of painted decoration.

Up to the year 1895 only some half-dozen of these kraters were known, one of which was found by General Cesnola in the rich necropolis at Agia Paraskevi near Nicosia[841]; another he alleged to have come from Amathus, but it was no doubt found at Maroni, not so far distant, where for many years a Bronze-Age cemetery has been known. In the above-named year two more came to light at Curium,[842] one of the same type as General Cesnola’s, with figures driving two-horse chariots; the other having in addition the unique subject of a series of women, each figure in a separate panel, represented as waving their arms or holding flowers.[843] These were speedily followed by the rich and valuable series from Enkomi now in the British Museum, since which time other interesting specimens have been obtained for the Museum in various excavations or have found their way into the hands of local collectors (see Plate XII.).

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PLATE XII

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Native imitations of the Mycenaean vases, which have been described as “sub-Mycenaean wares,” have been found in considerable numbers on most of the sites where the genuine Mycenaean ware exists. They fall technically under the heading of painted white ware (p. 251),[844] the difference being that the decoration is in _matt_ colour (varying from black to red) on an unpolished drab ground. The patterns mostly follow Mycenaean models, but some are new. They are well represented on the Mycenaean site at Curium,[845] especially in one or two tombs of transitional character, and in some cases the decoration is of a distinctly Geometrical type, illustrating the development of the succeeding style. In any case it is not difficult to distinguish them from the genuine Mycenaean fabrics.

* * * * *

In these so-called sub-Mycenaean vases we can trace the best evidence of the transition from the Bronze Age to the succeeding or Graeco-Phoenician period. But on the whole the line of demarcation is clearly defined, as for instance by the forms and position of the tombs, which become larger and lie deeper; by the appearance of iron implements and bronze fibulae; and by the fact that all the native pottery is now made on the wheel. Relations with continental Greece are evidenced by the occasional importation of Geometrical pottery of the Dipylon type (as in the great vase found at Curium), dating from the ninth and eighth centuries B.C. As we have already seen, the first Hellenic settlements in Cyprus seem to have followed on more or less immediately after the Dorian invasion, in the sites of Salamis, Curium, Kerynia, Paphos, and others which afterwards became the capitals of small Hellenic kingdoms.

On the other hand, the Phoenician thalassocracy, which began about the ninth century B.C., never had much foothold in Cyprus, less at any rate than was formerly supposed. Politically at all events the Phoenician influence was comparatively small, even in their settlements at Kition and Amathus[846]; we read of expeditions of the kings of Tyre in the tenth and eighth centuries, the object of which was to force the former town to pay tribute; but subsequently they were compelled by the Assyrian domination under Sargon to retreat westwards. In the seventh century a new power arose in the shape of Egypt, and in the sixth Cyprus became a tributary of Amasis.[847] Throughout, however, relations with Greece were maintained, and we read that in 501 B.C. the Cypriote princes joined the Ionians in their revolt against Persia, a fact which shows the strength of the Hellenic element.

Nevertheless the term “Graeco-Phoenician,” which has been adopted to describe the art of this period, is convenient, and can hardly be improved upon, if we bear in mind that the term “Phoenician” really represents the combination of Egyptian and Assyrian elements of art which filtered through that race into Cyprus, and in which sometimes the one, sometimes the other has the predominance. This is seen perhaps more clearly in the sculpture, metal-work, and terracottas, as for instance in the incised bronze and silver bowls,[848] than in the pottery. Painted pottery was never a feature of Oriental art, and the Phoenician influence in the pottery is confined to borrowed motives of Oriental character, like foreign words in a language. Another proof that Cyprus resisted the Phoenician domination is afforded by the curious fact that though the Greeks of the mainland adopted the Phoenician alphabet entirely, in Cyprus, on the other hand—where, above all, we should have expected to find it—its place is taken by a syllabary, the forms of which appear to bear some relation to the Lycian, Carian, and Pamphylian alphabets. That this syllabary, which is universally employed for inscriptions down to the fourth century, is of a very high antiquity is shown by its close affinities with the newly-discovered Cretan script, and by the fact that single characters of a similar type are often found engraved on the handles of Mycenaean vases in Cyprus. Each character represents a syllable, not a letter (except in the case of vowels), and the dialect is thought to be largely influenced by Aeolic.

Mycenaean influence, as might be expected, was slow to die out in Cyprus, and the pottery is no exception. It is seen not only in the patterns, such as the concentric circles—an invention of the Cypriote-Mycenaean pottery, which forms a favourite and almost universal motive at a later date—but in the subjects and technique. The practice of painting figures in outline, not in silhouette, as in the birds and beasts of the Enkomi kraters, the use of dull red and black pigments on an unglazed light-coloured surface, and many other details are an heritage from the Bronze Age, extending over many a succeeding century. With these are combined the influences of the early Attic pottery,[849] in the panels of Geometrical patterns, and the later rosette and conventionalised lotos-flower, which, with the concentric circles, form the stock-in-trade of the “Graeco-Phoenician” potter. The British Museum collection includes one or two remarkable isolated specimens which illustrate this principle. It is for instance instructive to compare the Sphinxes on a krater from Enkomi[850] with those on a large amphora lately acquired from the Karpas,[851] or the oinochoe from General Cesnola’s collection with a chariot-scene (Plate XIII.),[852] with those from Mycenaean sites similarly decorated. On the other hand, the extraordinary large vase from Tamassos,[853] with its crudely and childishly drawn figures, combines a curious admixture of Greek and Oriental motives, and early as it must be, is not Mycenaean in conception or technique.

Oriental influence is not, however, altogether wanting in the pottery. The lotos-flowers and rosettes, of which we have already spoken, are derived respectively from Egypt and Assyria, and the conventionalised palm-trees, which also appear, are of course purely Oriental. So too, again, the typically Oriental subject of the sacred tree between two animals appears in various forms. But here again we are met with the surprising fact that the Oriental element is far stronger in Greece than in Cyprus, as will be seen later in the account of the early Hellenic fabrics; and no doubt it is due to this cause that the Geometric style was not driven out from Cyprus as it was from Greece, but continued for many centuries.

In attempting a detailed description of the Graeco-Phoenician pottery, it will be seen that any chronological system is impossible. The conservative tendency of Cypriote art caused the same methods of decoration to be employed with extraordinary persistency during a period of time which saw the whole development of Hellenic vase-painting from its earliest beginnings to its decline, and though there is a certain amount of variety, there is no development properly speaking, and the latest fabrics are, artistically speaking, on the same level as the earliest. It might be thought that the evidence of excavations would compensate for this absence of artistic criteria; but such is not the case. As a general rule in tombs containing imported Greek vases, the dates of which can be fixed within reasonable limits, native pottery is conspicuous by its absence, as may be seen from the results obtained at Curium. In any case, in the tombs richest in Hellenic pottery, as at Poli, the local wares are largely of a definitely late character, and so far distinct from the Geometrical and Orientalising fabrics as to form a class by themselves. Another difficulty which has to be taken into account, is that caused by the frequency of re-burials in Cypriote tombs. Of this there were countless instances at Amathus and Poli, so much so that explorers of the latter site were actually led to believe that the Geometrical pottery was contemporaneous with remains of the Hellenistic age with which it was frequently found.[854] But where trustworthy evidence can be obtained, it entirely militates against this possibility.

The principal sites[855] on which “Graeco-Phoenician” pottery has been found are: Amathus, Curium, Dali (Idalion), Kition, Lapathos, Poli (Marion-Arsinoe), Paphos, Salamis, Soli, and Tamassos. Other sites are not at present identified, but the finds were made in the neighbourhood of the modern Achna, Ormidhia, and other villages, and in the Karpas. Of these sites the richest are Amathus, Dali, Curium, and Poli; but in the finest collection of vases of this class, that of General Cesnola at New York, the alleged sites are not always to be accepted with certainty.

Graeco-Phoenician pottery is, as has been said, exclusively wheel-made, and almost always supplied with a “base-ring.” Reliefs and incised ornaments are never found, but instances of moulded wares, combining the vase with the statuette, are not wanting, especially among the later varieties. The designs are usually painted in a non-lustrous black pigment, varied with the use of opaque purple and white, corresponding to the pigments employed by Hellenic potters. The ground is either white, without any polish or slip—as in the painted white ware of the Bronze Age and sub-Mycenaean fabrics—or else covered with a more or less lustrous red slip, varying from a bright orange or deep red to a dark brown (the latter usually with unpolished surface). Purple is employed only on the white wares, white only on the red. The typical decoration of the white wares consists of lotos-patterns, tree-ornaments, and water-fowl. Generally speaking, these are earlier than the red. On the lustrous red wares the decoration is usually confined to simple patterns of concentric circles, vertical and horizontal, maeander crosses, lozenges and triangles. Fig. 75, from Curium, is a typical specimen of the more elaborate types, and another is shown in Plate XIII.

The forms are at first very varied, but gradually crystallise into some half-dozen main types: dishes, bowls on stems, lekythi with one or two handles, jugs with globular bodies, and large amphorae with vertical side-handles. Of these the jug is by far the commonest. Among the peculiar forms in the earlier tombs (eighth to sixth centuries) may be mentioned _aski_ in the form of birds or oxen (the latter a Mycenaean survival), and a kind of flask with barrel-shaped body, on which the decoration of concentric circles, etc., does not follow the usual horizontal system of classical pottery, but is disposed vertically, in contradiction to all artistic feeling (see Plate XIII.). The circles are often very fine and close, and were produced by holding a brush full of paint close to the surface of the vase as it was turned on the wheel. The drawing of the circles in different planes, without regard to the lines of the vase, was easily effected by placing it in different positions. In the period of Hellenic importations the principal form is the jug with ovoid body and modelled spout, and flat dishes are also common.

* * * * *

Unpainted pottery is almost as common as painted in the Graeco-Phoenician period, and calls for a few words of separate treatment. For the most part it comes under the heading of Domestic Ware, or earthenware vessels similar to those in ordinary use at the present day. They are made of plain, unrefined, usually reddish, clay, without any slip or polish, and include various forms of jugs, bowls, and plates, as well as the large wine-amphorae with pointed bases universally found at all periods. Many lamps and small “cup-and-saucer” double bowls occur in this category. In the earlier tombs of the Transitional period, pottery of a black-slip ware, with reeded body, is frequently found, chiefly in the form of jugs and kraters. Plain black wares, like the Italian _bucchero_, are also rarely found; as are vessels covered with a fine red slip and polished.

* * * * *

In most of the painted pottery of the Graeco-Phoenician period, especially in its earlier phases, the technical methods are those which we have already described in speaking not only of the “sub-Mycenaean” or Transitional fabrics, but also of the painted white ware of the Bronze-Age tombs. That is to say, that the decoration is in dull colour on a lustreless and (usually) unpolished white or drab ground. The colour, however, is usually not red, as in the earlier stages, but black, red being used chiefly as an accessory or for picked-out details. The latter varies from a pale brick-red to deep purple. The system of decoration is often extremely elaborate, although the range of subjects is limited. Apart from geometrical or conventional patterns, such as the stylised palmette, lotos-flower, stars, or trees, we only find water-fowl, fish, a few quadrupeds such as bulls or deer,[856] and finally human figures. But the last are exceedingly rare, and confined to the white wares, the best example being perhaps the very Oriental design of two warriors driving in a chariot,[857] or the worshippers rendering homage to seated deities on the fine vase from Ormidhia (Fig. 76).[858]

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PLATE XIII

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The system of geometrical decoration on some of the earlier vases, especially the large jars, is often extremely elaborate, covering every available inch of the surface[859]; the patterns consist of rosettes, panels of lozenge-pattern or chequers, triangles of hatched lines, dotted circles, etc., all combined in parallel bands or friezes, much in the same way as on the Dipylon wares. The disappearance of this elaborate style, together with human figures and figures of animals, is perhaps to be accounted for by the importations of Hellenic wares which began in the sixth century, and relegated the local fabrics to a subordinate position, just as in Greece the early Geometrical fabrics were obscured by the Mycenaean pottery (see below, p. 279).

Some interesting specimens, forming a late survival of these earlier Geometrical wares, were found at Amathus in 1894.[860] They include one which has a parallel in a vase found at Phocaea by Prof. Ramsay,[861] and originally thought to be Ionic in origin; the decoration consists of a head of Hathor the Egyptian goddess in a panel, with debased geometrical patterns. There can be no doubt now that the fabric is Cypriote, probably of the fifth century, and not without traces of Ionic influence. Another shows a remarkable development in the direction of naturalism, and the subject is unique in Cypriote pottery: men banqueting under a palm-tree.

These probably date from the fifth century, the period which seems to be represented by the later Geometrical red wares with concentric circles, now slowly dying out under the influence of Hellenic importations, and exceedingly rare in tombs where Greek vases are found. At the same time a great transformation comes over the contents of the tombs, which themselves begin to increase in size, with a shorter δρόμος, to which a flight of steps leads down. Other tombs—and this is often the case where Greek importations are found, as at Curium—are merely in the form of ramifying passages cut in the earth, without any structural remains. Sixth century and earlier Greek fabrics, such as the Geometrical, Corinthian, or Ionian wares, are very rare; but the imported Dipylon vase found by General Cesnola at Curium[862] is a notable instance. Black-figured vases when found are almost invariably of a late and careless type, characteristic of the last efforts of that style in the fifth century. There is, however, a remarkable exception in the case of a small class of jugs, which are in shape an exact imitation of the globular Cypriote jugs with concentric-circle decoration[863]; the long narrow neck and trefoil mouth, with its incised eyes, are retained, but the decoration is purely Attic, in the style of B.F. vases of 520–500 B.C. These are found at Poli and Amathus, and appear to have been made specially at Athens for importation to Cyprus. Poli (Marion) was for some reason a great centre for Athenian imports in general, and has yielded many fine specimens of Hellenic pottery (see p. 67). Red-figured vases signed by Chachrylion, Hermaios, etc., have been found here,[864] and at Curium a fine R.F. krater with the name of Megakles (καλός)[865]; also some fine white-ground specimens at Poli.[866]

By the fourth century, if not earlier, the Geometrical and Hellenic vases are almost entirely replaced by a new class of wares, which may be termed “Graeco-Cypriote,” in contradistinction to the Graeco-Phoenician. The same red clay, covered with a more or less polished red slip, still obtains, but the painted decoration is confined to olive-wreaths in brown or plain bands of colour. We also witness the revival of an old practice, in a partial return to the taste for plastic decoration on vases. In many of the fourth-century tombs are found large pitchers, with a spout modelled in the form of a woman holding a jug, out of which the liquid was intended to pour (Plate XIII.).[867] These are sometimes richly decorated in polychrome, red, blue, green, black, pink, and white; but the colouring is apt to flake off and disappear. The imported wares of the fourth century are confined to plain cups and bowls of glazed black ware with stamped patterns, such as are often found in Greece and Italy. In the Hellenistic period (300–146 B.C.) painted vases are practically unknown, though a few rare specimens have turned up at Curium[868]; and it is not long before they are entirely replaced by the glass vessels and common wine-amphorae of the large and elaborate Roman tombs.

§ 2. PRIMITIVE POTTERY IN GREECE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

TROY: Schliemann, _Ilios_; Dörpfeld, _Troja 1893_, and _Troja und Ilion_ (1902), i. p. 243 ff.; Dumont-Pottier, _Céramiques_, i. p. 3 ff.; Pottier, _Louvre Cat._ i. p. 74 ff.

THERA: Fouqué, _Santorin_; Dumont-Pottier, _Céramiques_, i. p. 19 ff.; Perrot, _Hist. de l’Art_, vi. p. 135 ff.; Furtwaengler and Loeschcke, _Myken. Vasen_, p. 18; Pottier, _Louvre Cat._ i. p. 119 ff.; Hiller von Gaertringen, _Thera_, vol. ii. (1903), p. 127 ff.; _Ath. Mitth._ xxviii. (1903), p. 1 ff.

MELOS: Excavations of British School at Phylakopi (_J.H.S._ Suppl. Vol. iv. 1904). See also Dümmler in _Ath. Mitth._ xi. (1886), p. 15 ff.

The earliest remains of pottery on Hellenic soil are to be sought chiefly in the Cyclades and on the site of ancient Troy. We have already had occasion to allude to the latter in speaking of the earliest Cypriote fabrics, and it is therefore fitting that we should now give it our first attention.

The site of =Troy=, now known as Hissarlik, was, as is well known, first explored by Dr. Schliemann in his laudable endeavours to prove the truth of the early Greek legends of the Trojan War. Although doubtless there are visible links between the Homeric poems and the discoveries at Hissarlik, and although it is not necessary to deny all credence to the historical truth of the “Bible of the Greeks,” yet it is now generally recognised that Dr. Schliemann’s pardonable enthusiasm sometimes led him to hasty conclusions. For instance, Dr. Dörpfeld in his more recent investigations proved that if any remains are to be connected with the tale of Troy, it is those of the sixth, not of the second or burnt city.[869] Nine layers in all have been traced, of which the five lowest may be termed prehistoric, the third, fourth, and fifth being mere villages on the ruins of the first two. In the lowest and earliest of all, which may be roughly dated 3000–2500 B.C., flint implements were found, together with rude black pottery: hand-made utensils baked in the open, with rings for suspension in place of handles.

The second city belongs to the period 2500–2000 B.C., and it is this which has yielded pottery analogous to the earliest examples from Cyprus (p. 238). It is of the same rough hand-polished black ware, with decoration either of a plastic character or engraved in the clay while wet and filled in with white paint. Apart from this there are no traces of painted decoration, or of any slip; but the colour of the surface varies with the firing. The patterns consist of zigzags, circles, and other rudimentary geometrical ornaments. A few wheel-made specimens were found, but the majority are made by hand. What artistic sense was evinced by these primitive potters was shown exclusively in the forms, and in the tendency which is especially conspicuous in primitive times, though it lingered on through the history of Greek art, and again broke out in the period of the decadence, to combine the ceramic and the plastic idea, and to give to the vase the rude resemblance of the human form.[870] That this was no far-fetched idea is shown by the universal nomenclature which permits us to speak of the mouth, neck, shoulder, body, and foot of a vase—a principle which has been extended by general consent to countless inanimate objects. Thus we find the Hissarlik potter incising eyes on the upper part of the vase, or affixing lumps of clay to give a rude suggestion of ears, nose or breasts, or bands to denote necklaces. The handles often seem intended for rudimentary arms, and we are tempted to see in the hat-shaped covers of the vases the idea of a head-covering. Schliemann even went so far as to regard them as actual idols, and was led by the superficial resemblance of some to the form of an owl into identifying them with figures of the “owl-eyed” (γλαυκῶπις) Pallas Athena (cf. Fig. 77). But this interpretation has not found favour for many reasons, and the accidental combination of forms is obviously only an artistic phase. There are also many similar shapes, such as plain jars and jugs, and deep funnel-shaped cups with two graceful handles.

M. Dumont[871] classifies the fabrics as follows: (1) ordinary vessels, plates, etc.; (2) large jars or amphorae; (3) primitive kraters, deep cups, etc.; (4) spherical vases with base-ring [?] and long neck[872]; (5) long two-handled cups; (6) vases reproducing the human form; (7) vases in the form of pigs and other animals; (8) exceptional forms, such as double vases; (9) vases with incised patterns, on one of which a Sphinx is engraved. Figs. 78–80 give examples of classes (5), (7), and (8); Fig. 77 a specimen of class (6).[873]

The Hissarlik pottery may be regarded as a local development, partly parallel with that of Cyprus,[874] partly derivative therefrom; of Oriental influence there are no traces, but the connection with Thera and Cyprus is indisputable.

Passing over the unimportant traces of the three succeeding settlements, we find in the sixth city a great advance. The plastic forms disappear, and generally speaking the shapes become more classical. Besides plain pottery with matt-black polished surface we meet with painted vases with curvilinear and vegetable patterns. The remains of genuine Mycenaean pottery, the fortifications and buildings, with great halls in the style of Mycenae and Tiryns, bear out Dr. Dörpfeld’s contention that this is the Troy of Homer. Two points among the pottery finds of this period are worth noting; firstly that they included a fragment of Cypriote “white-slip” ware, secondly that Geometrical patterns mingle with the Mycenaean in the upper layers.

The three remaining layers cover respectively the archaic period, the developed Hellenic and Hellenistic periods, and the age in which the city of Ilium was refounded by the Romans. Dr. Dörpfeld found some interesting local fabrics dating from the fifth century, examples of which had previously been obtained by Mr. Calvert for the British Museum.[875]

* * * * *

Of almost equal antiquity with the remains at Hissarlik is some of the pottery discovered in the Cyclades, and especially at =Thera=. Here, indeed, we meet with the earliest known examples of Greek _painted_ pottery (Crete excepted), and that, as we shall see, of a remarkably developed type.

The island of Thera may be described as a sort of prehistoric Pompeii buried under volcanic deposits, which have completely transformed the configuration of the island. The results of preliminary excavations by the French in 1866 showed that the cataclysm which overwhelmed the island must (on geological grounds) have taken place about the twentieth century B.C., and that the remains of pottery must be anterior to this event.[876] Herodotos[877] states that Kadmos founded a settlement in the fourteenth century, and the Minyae again about the twelfth, and the island must have been uninhabitable for a long time previously.

The houses and other remains of civilisation discovered below the volcanic deposits show an advance on Hissarlik (second city) and the earliest Cypriote culture, and the pottery is no exception. The vases are wheel-made, fired at a moderate heat in closed furnaces (sometimes baked in the sun), and plastic forms are almost wanting.[878] Many are pierced with holes in the bottom, for what purpose is not known. They were often found _in situ_, mixed with stone implements, and with evidence of having contained grain. The forms are very regular, a cylindrical shape being specially affected, and they are made of a badly levigated clay, covered with a greyish slip, on which the patterns are laid in _matt_ colours—white, black, or red—without any incised markings.

M. Dumont distinguishes four varieties of ornament: simple patterns, such as bands, hatchings, and dots; volutes, wave-patterns, and intersecting circles; vegetable motives, such as long narrow leaves or flowers; and animals, including deer, and ducks or swans. Generally there is a strong predilection for vegetable motives, and in this naturalistic tendency we may see the prelude to the Mycenaean period. Among those now at the French School at Athens, which has the best collection, are several interesting examples illustrated in Fig. 81.[879] One is a trefoil-mouthed jug with running quadrupeds in black, and red bands, on a grey ground; another jug is painted with birds in black, the details in red and white. A sort of cream-jug is decorated with water-plant patterns; a cylindrical jar with oblique wreaths; and a dish with seaweed. A funnel-shaped vase and a beak-mouthed jug are obvious prototypes of Mycenaean forms.

The chief differences from the Hissarlik vases are in the forms and methods of decoration, but resemblances may be noted in the long narrow necks, and the rings for suspension, as in the plastic forms when they do occur. That the fabric is a local one hardly admits of doubt, but it is interesting to note the occurrence of a bowl of white-slip ware from Cyprus in Thera,[880] and conversely the appearance of a vase of Thera fabric at Mycenae.[881] Thus we have evidence of extensive commercial relations. Some tombs of the Hellenic period seem to have been dug right down into the volcanic deposit, for they contained pottery with Geometrical decoration.[882]

The discovery of primitive stone idols in Thera shows that it belonged to the Cycladic civilisation, which extended from 2500 to 1600 B.C., filling up the gap between Hissarlik and Mycenae. It has been suggested that these Cycladic peoples were Carians,[883] subsequently driven to the Asiatic mainland by Minos, who typifies the rising power of Crete and the Mycenaean world.[884] This Cycladic civilisation is also exemplified in the earliest finds from other islands, such as Amorgos, Syra, Paros, and Antiparos, and in other instances noted early in the century by the observant traveller Ross.[885] The pottery from these sites is, however, less advanced than that of Thera, but varies in character. Painted patterns were found on vases from Amorgos and Syra, the latter in the form of brown foliage on yellow ground.

It would not be right to conclude this section without some notice of the remarkably interesting pottery excavated at Phylakopi in =Melos= by the British School in 1896–99, which is important as forming a connecting link between the Cycladic wares and the fully-developed Mycenaean style. Space forbids more than a brief abstract of the results obtained, which have just been given to the world in an admirable publication.[886] Mr. C. C. Edgar, to whom the task of studying the pottery was allotted, distinguishes four main groups:

1. (_a_) Primitive pottery of the cist-tomb type, corresponding to that of Hissarlik; (_b_) more advanced ware of the same kind.

2. Painted Geometrical wares.

3. Local pottery in Mycenaean style with spiral and naturalistic designs, falling into two divisions, earlier and later.

4. Imported Mycenaean pottery of the third and fourth styles (see below, p. 271).

Generally speaking the pottery is of local make, and Phylakopi seems to have been an important centre in the early Mycenaean period, having considerable intercourse with Crete. The earliest wares (class 1) include plain pottery, hand-made, with burnished brown surface or simple incised patterns; those of class 2 are painted in lustrous or matt black on a white slip, or in white on lustrous black or red, with simple patterns; they appear to be hand-made. The Mycenaean pottery is more or less akin to that found elsewhere in the Aegean.

§ 3. Crete

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dumont-Pottier, i. p. 64 (finds in 1878 at Knossos); Milchhoefer, _Anfänge der Kunst_; Furtwaengler and Loeschcke, _Myken. Vasen_, p. 22; Pottier, _Louvre Cat._ i. p. 173; _Mon. Antichi_, vi. p. 333 ff.; _J.H.S._ xxi. p. 78 ff., xxiii. p. 157 ff.; _British School Annual_, vi. p. 85 ff., vii. p. 51, and ix. p. 297 ff.; _Proc. Soc. Antiqs._ xv. (1894), p. 351 ff.

In turning our attention next to the island of Crete, we are confronted with a new element in Greek archaeology; namely, the results of the recent discoveries, which as yet have hardly become material ripe for use in a general handbook. On the other hand, their singular importance deserves full recognition. It must, therefore, be borne in mind that much in the succeeding section is merely the embodiment of previous researches, and that the new evidence can only be briefly summarised.

Allusion has just been made to the thalassocracy of Minos and its bearing on the history of early Greek civilisations, and the recent discoveries have done much to show that the prince who built the great palace at Knossos in the early days of Mycenaean civilisation, if he is not actually the Minos of Greek legend, yet represents the rising power which extended its dominion over the Aegean and drove the Carian people to the mainland. This supremacy of Crete from the fifteenth to the eleventh century was artistic as well as political. The Crete of Minos was, moreover, the point of contact between the Aegean peoples and the Oriental races; and in the story of the Minotaur we may perhaps see a reflection of the human sacrifices offered to the Phoenician Moloch or Melkarth. The familiar passage in Homer[887] which deals with the ethnography of Crete speaks of four component elements, which may be explained as (1) the Eteokretes, or aborigines of the island, to whom the early civilisation exemplified in their ceramic and glyptic products is mainly due; (2) the Kydonii or Leleges, brought by Minos from the islands[888]; (3) the Achaeans or mainland Greeks of the period of the Trojan War; (4) the Dorians, whose connection with the island dates from the eleventh century onwards.

Even before the recent excavations pottery had been found in Crete which dated from the dawn of the Mycenaean period, and from the island’s early connection with Egypt was thought to be contemporaneous with that of Hissarlik and Thera. From the circumstances of its first appearance in any quantity at Kamaraes, in the plain of Ida, it has usually been named after that place. Dr. Orsi discovered two fragments of Hissarlik type at Phaestos,[889] also a vase of island type, one of Thera type,[890] and some early Cypriote wares.[891] Large numbers of fragments of this ware in the Museum at Candia were first noted by Dr. Orsi and Mr. J. L. Myres about 1894.[892] The extensive discoveries made by Messrs. Hogarth and Welch for the British School at Athens in 1899–1900 (see p. 60) have added still further to our knowledge of the ware; and these, taken in conjunction with Mr. Arthur Evans’s extensive finds at Knossos (1899–1902), have enabled a recent writer to draw up a tentative classification of all the prehistoric pottery of Crete.[893]

In his paper Mr. Mackenzie divides the pottery into three main classes, which he distinguishes as Neolithic, Early and Middle Minoan, and Late Minoan. The first-named extends down to about 3000 B.C.; the second covers the period 3000–2000 B.C.; and the third (including Mycenaean pottery of the usual types) lasts down to 1500 B.C., about which time the Cretan supremacy came to an end, and the Mycenaean centre of gravity was shifted to the mainland of Greece.

(1) Pottery of the Neolithic period is quite exceptional in Aegean localities; yet the evidence from the excavations is so unmistakable that there can be no question of its great antiquity. It consists of common household vessels of grey clay, hand-made and burnished; at first devoid of decoration, but subsequently fragments appear with incised patterns filled in with white. These, it may be noted, may help to date the analogous wares from Troy and Egypt. The black surface becomes more and more lustrous, and in some cases a sort of rippling effect is produced in the soft clay with a blunt instrument[894]; finally an age of decline manifests itself, but at the same time an advance is made from filling in hollows with white to painting in colours on the flat surface.

(2) The pottery in this stage is still hand-made; but the clay, which is of a brick or terracotta colour, is greatly improved, and shows that a potter’s oven must have been employed. The most remarkable feature is that, along with the white or polychrome patterns on dark ground, the origin of which has been noted, there appear vases with patterns in lustrous dark colour on buff ground, like the Mycenaean wares. Hitherto it had been supposed that the latter process was much later than the other[895]; but the Cretan evidence admits of no doubt as to their synchronism, even at this early stage of painted pottery in any form. The pre-Mycenaean character of the Early Minoan deposits is, for instance, proved by the entire absence of plain pottery of Mycenaean types. It is then clear that Crete developed both independently of, and with far greater rapidity than, the rest of the Aegean at this period. The painted patterns are usually of a Geometrical character.[896]

The middle deposits of the third millennium, found above the floors of the first palace, are, like the preceding, both polychrome and monochrome in their decoration. The former include most of the types formerly known as Kamaraes ware, the patterns being mainly but not exclusively Geometrical; the curvilinear are rather later in date. The commonest shape is one resembling a tea-cup.[897] In the next stage relief-work is introduced to enhance the polychrome effect, probably in imitation of metal. In the latest deposits a great decline is manifest, and the monochrome vases tend to assert themselves to the exclusion of the others.

That the period under discussion must have been one of great length is shown by the depth of the “Minoan” deposits; they are, moreover, so extensive at Knossos, and so scanty and isolated are examples from other sites, that it cannot be doubted that here we have the centre of the fabric. As regards their date we have good evidence from early Aegean deposits in Egypt. By means of Professor Petrie’s finds at Kahun in the Fayûm, which include specimens of the best Minoan ware,[898] we are able to place the height of the period about 2500 B.C.

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PLATE XIV

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The appearance of the so-called Kamaraes ware is unmistakable, with its bright, almost gay, aspect, and the contrast of the colours with the lustrous black ground. The pigments employed are four in number—milky white, yellow ochre, brick-red, and purple-red. These vases are mostly made on the wheel, and the buff-coloured clay is fairly well levigated, as is the slip, on which the pigments are directly laid; its lustre often almost rivals that of the best Hellenic pottery. Mr. Evans found some specimens in 1902 of an extremely delicate character, almost as thin as an egg-shell. The colours are, however, sometimes dull and powdery, and apt to flake away except when fired. The forms are of a Cycladic type, the favourite being a two-handled globular vase with spout, and a pear-shaped one-handled vase, also with a spout[899] (see also Plate XIV.[900]).

The decoration is, as has been indicated, plastic as well as pictorial; the relief ornaments are often of an elaborate type, as may be seen in some of Mr. Hogarth’s finds.[901] Some vases are merely covered with knobs, or with a sort of honeycombing in relief[902]; in others toothed or bossed bands are employed, either simply or combined into complex patterns. In any case this plastic element is quite a new departure. The pictorial designs include geometrical and linear patterns, zigzags, network, concentric circles, spirals, and swastikas; leaves, rosettes, and other vegetable forms; fishes, and even in one case a human figure.[903] The chief field of decoration is the shoulder of the vase.

Although varying in the extent of their naturalism, the patterns exhibit considerable boldness and power of drawing; they seem to be drawn chiefly from floral or textile sources, and are closely parallel to the Thera vases, but more advanced. Some motives are of Mycenaean character, such as the use of rows of white dots[904]; on the other hand, the style of the fishes and human figure is more like that of the Geometrical vases.

Mr. Hogarth notes that metal types of Kamaraes cups appear in the hands of Kefti tributaries in the paintings of the tomb of Rekhmara (about 1550 B.C.), and he even found their Neolithic prototypes at Kephala, near Knossos.[905] He also traces a connection with the early Aegean pottery of Phylakopi in Melos. The Kamaraes pottery can be shown not to have survived the incoming of the new Mycenaean influences, but the patterns rapidly became conventionalised, and are replaced by the new motives of the Mycenaean wares. It may further be noted that fragments of Kamaraes ware have turned up not only in Egypt, as at Kahun (already mentioned), but at Tiryns, in the fifth and sixth Acropolis graves at Mycenae, and at Curium in Cyprus.

(3) The pottery of the “Late Minoan” period from the palace of Knossos falls into two groups—the “palace” style, and the ordinary Mycenaean fabrics. The former class of vases has been found in considerable numbers in the second palace, and also at Zakro and other sites. The vases are painted in a lustrous brown-to-black glaze on a buff hand-polished slip, with fine and elaborate naturalistic designs, including vegetable patterns, birds, and fishes; others, again, are more architectonic in character.[906] We also find adaptations of the Kamaraes style, with bands of white paint laid on the black varnish, the usual forms being a flat bowl and a small cup with flat handles like the Vaphio cups.[907]

In their decoration the most highly developed varieties of the “palace” style show a parallelism with the wall-paintings, the patterns consisting of rosettes, spirals, and conventional flowers; in some very naturalistic examples this is strongly marked, the designs of olive and myrtle wreaths and bulbous plants showing an almost Japanese fidelity to nature. Others, again, have marine subjects—seaweed, shells, and rocks. Lastly, there are the representations of the double axe, which Mr. Evans has shown to be a religious symbol.[908]

The whole of this pottery belongs to the third or highest period of Mycenaean pottery, a time when decadence was actually beginning to set in, concurrent with the end of the eighteenth dynasty. At this time all over the Aegean area, in Melos, Egypt, and elsewhere, the styles of pottery were perfectly uniform, and had clearly been imported from one centre. In the light of recent discoveries we can no longer doubt that this centre was Crete, and the previous history of its pottery and the early development of its technical processes, as well as its geographical position, point in the same direction. About the year 1500 B.C. the site appears to have been invaded and abandoned, with the consequent result that Mycenaean civilisation now spread all over the Aegean, centring chiefly in Greece, where it lasted several centuries longer. Of its influence on Cyprus we have already spoken.

Mycenaean vases had turned up in Crete for some time previous to 1899 in a sporadic fashion[909]; but these, being for the most part of the ordinary type, do not call for separate consideration. There is, however, one class that appears to be peculiar to the island. It consists of large “false amphorae” and other vases, made of a rough coarse-grained clay, and decorated in the “third Mycenaean” style with large cuttle-fish; at Knossos this was found only outside the palace, and was probably a coarse household ware. A good specimen has also been found at Curium in Cyprus.[910]

§ 4. MYCENAEAN POTTERY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Furtwaengler and Loeschcke, _Mykenische Thongefässe_ (1879), and _Mykenische Vasen_ (1886); Dumont-Pottier, i. p. 47 ff.; Perrot, _Hist. de l’Art_, vi. p. 893 ff.; Pottier, _Louvre Cat._ i. p. 181 ff. General reference should also be made to Schuchhardt, _Schliemann’s Excavations_ (transl. E. Sellers); Schliemann’s own works; Hall, _Oldest Civilisation of Greece_; Tsountas and Manatt, _The Mycenaean Age_; and other works.

We have already had occasion to deal to some extent with Mycenaean pottery in connection with Cyprus and Crete, but it is now necessary to review it as a whole in the light of the present state of our knowledge of this wonderful civilisation and its products. To enter here upon the wide and much-debated questions to which the discoveries of the last thirty years have given rise is of course beyond our province; but the pottery of the people to whom the name Mycenaean has been somewhat loosely given is of so homogeneous a character, although found in all parts of the Mediterranean, that it may be treated as a phase of Greek ceramics, independently of considerations of ethnography and chronology. First found in any quantity at Ialysos in the island of Rhodes, its exact position in the history of early art was not then recognised; but when the marvellous discoveries of Heinrich Schliemann at Mycenae became known to the world, including large numbers of similar vases, Sir Charles Newton readily recognised that the Ialysos vases in the British Museum belonged to the same class. It was not long before the whole number of vases of this type, now christened Mycenaean, was collected in a “Corpus” by two German scholars, with numerous illustrations; but since that time the excavations of “Mycenaean” sites in Cyprus and Crete must have doubled or even trebled the material available.

The pottery at Mycenae was found in four different positions, implying consecutive chronological stages, ranging roughly from the fifteenth to the tenth or even ninth century. On these grounds Furtwaengler and Loeschcke[911] distinguished four main classes; but it will be seen that these are capable of even more subdivision. There are, in fact, two main classes, distinguished by the use of _matt_ and lustrous colour respectively; and of the first of these two, of the second four, subdivisions are possible.

Class (1) is indeed comparatively rare,[912] and only found at Thera and in the oldest tombs on the Mycenaean Acropolis; it represents the transition from the pottery of Troy and Thera to that of Mycenae. The subdivision is a purely technical one: (_a_) vases of pale coarse clay, with patterns in a brown colour, some hand-made[913]; (_b_) wheel-made vases of a reddish and finer clay, the designs in black and pale red, occasionally white.[914] The decoration generally resembles that of the Thera vases, and animals occasionally appear.

(2) The vases with lustrous painting may be classified as follows:

(_a_) Badly levigated clay; floral motives in matt-white or red-brown on black ground.[915] A fine example of this class was recently excavated at Maroni in Cyprus, a large krater with a figure of a bird outlined in white on either side (Plate XII.).

(_b_) Similar clay, but coated with a white or yellow slip on which geometrical or floral patterns are painted in lustrous black.[916]

(_c_) Fine clay with polished yellow surface; designs in black turning to red or yellow, with occasional details in white; chiefly marine plants and animals, but occasionally (especially in Cyprus) human figures.[917] This class is by far the most numerous of all, but is not found in Thera. It corresponds with the period 1400–1000 B.C.

(_d_) Clay grey or reddish, less brilliant, as is also the black; large figures of quadrupeds and human figures.[918] The vases are sometimes painted _inside_, which is a sign of late date.

The structure of these vases is very varied, and no less than 122 different forms may be distinguished in the illustrations to the _Mykenische Vasen_. Most characteristic and popular is the “false amphora,” as it is generally termed (German, _Bügelkanne_), a vase with spheroidal body, of varying size, with the peculiarity that the ordinary neck and mouth on the top are closed by a flat handle arching over the vase, and the only aperture is a spout on one side (see Plate XV. and Fig. 82). These are very widely distributed, but their decoration is as a rule very simple; they appear depicted on the paintings of Egyptian tombs of the eighteenth dynasty, and this has often been used as an argument for the dating of Mycenaean vases. But they must have remained in favour for a considerable period. Other favourite shapes are: a funnel-shaped vase with handle at the top, doubtless a reminiscence of a Hissarlik type (p. 258); a tall graceful two-handled goblet or kylix, almost invariably decorated with cuttle-fish (see Plate XV.), as the funnel-vases are with murex (purple dye) shells; a beaked jug (German _Schnabelkanne_), derived from Thera; a squat jar or pyxis, with three small handles (cf. Fig. 82); and a tall pear-shaped vase with three handles on a high stem, which is perhaps the prototype of the hydria. The large kraters are, as we have seen, peculiar to Cyprus. Rarer forms are a sort of mug, and a combination of the false amphora and pyxis. Mention should also be made of the painted λάρνακες or _ossuaria_ found in Crete by Mr. J. H. Marshall (p. 268 above) and by Dr. Orsi.[919]

The technique presents several entirely new features, such as the use of a slip as a basis for the colours; the polished, brilliant, and even surface; and above all the lustrous black varnish, which was the peculiar pride of Greek potters, and is now a lost art. The comparative monotony of the colouring is probably due to a purely technical reason, namely, the difficulty of resisting the action of fire; otherwise such an artistic people would doubtless have exhibited the same richness of colouring in their pottery that we find in their frescoes.

The Mycenaean pottery is deservedly held in high estimation for its picturesque and naturalistic style, which in its reproduction of animal and vegetable forms often rivals Japanese art. Although its scope is remarkably wide, yet there is a strong preference for marine subjects—the cuttle-fish, the murex shell, the nautilus, and various kinds of seaweed or such plants as the _Vallisneria spiralis_ (Chapter XVI.). In Fig. 82 two good examples in the British Museum are illustrated—one from Egypt, the other from Kalymnos.[920] Altogether there is an originality and poetry of ideas such as never appears again in Greek art; but that is not a peculiar possession of the potters, as the metal-work, gem-engraving, and fresco-paintings testify—above all, such masterpieces as the Vaphio gold cups, or some of the wall-paintings recently discovered in Crete.

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PLATE XV

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Religious ideas, on the other hand, are strangely conspicuous by their absence. Mycenaean mythology is so far almost nonexistent in the art; and although attempts have at times been made to detect traces of early cults, as in the figures of men dressed as animals,[921] or the representations of the double axe,[922] they have not as yet met with universal acceptance. More improbable is the curious idea recently mooted,[923] that the subjects of the vase-paintings indicate an acquaintance with such theories as those of biological evolution.

Mycenaean pottery has been found on a very large number of sites throughout the Mediterranean. The most productive have been Mycenae, Crete, and Cyprus, especially the cemetery at Enkomi in the latter island. Other Cypriote centres are Curium, Agia Paraskevi near Nicosia, Maroni, and the neighbourhood of Dali and Larnaka (see p. 66). In Attica the Acropolis of Athens and the beehive tombs of Spata and Menidi have been most fruitful, and finds have been made at Haliki and elsewhere. In the Peloponnese the chief site is Tiryns, and many fragments have also been found at Nauplia; in Central Greece several sites in Boeotia, such as Orchomenos, may be mentioned. Of the Aegean islands, Rhodes and Melos are most conspicuous, especially the sites of Ialysos in the former island, Phylakopi in the latter. In Asia Minor, Mycenaean remains are rare, except at Troy, but in Egypt there is ample evidence of a close commercial relation, as in the finds at Tell-el-Amarna, in the Fayûm, and elsewhere. In the Western Mediterranean, Syracuse has yielded numerous fragments, and occasional finds have been made in Italy.[924]

Having reviewed the extent of Mycenaean influence, the next question we must consider is which, if any, was the centre whence this pottery was exported. It had been for some time observed that the early varieties of Thera, and those of Crete and Cyprus (_v. supra_), showed strong indications of local origin; but on the whole the Mycenaean pottery proper is remarkably uniform and homogeneous. It is perhaps possible to detect technical differences between the pottery, _e.g._, of Athens and Rhodes, but they may be only differences of date rather than fabric. Furtwaengler and Loeschcke regarded Argolis as the centre of manufacture, at least for the later lustrous varieties[925]; Pottier, on the other hand, writing before the recent discoveries, thought that Crete was, after Thera, the original centre, and Argolis only subsequently, the pottery of Rhodes lying midway between. In the light of the Cretan discoveries it is now possible largely to disregard previous theories. We have seen that Mycenaean pottery found in Crete has a pedigree which no other region can claim, and that it can only have a local origin. We have also seen that the Cretan supremacy came to an end about 1500 B.C., and that, though the pottery may have continued to be made in the island, it ceased to be an exclusive centre, and for the remainder of the Mycenaean Age the art, learned in Crete, spread to other Aegean centres—Mycenae, Rhodes, and Cyprus.

A far more difficult question to decide is the ethnographical one, together with the consideration of the relation of the Mycenaean civilisation to others in which the same decoration appears (as in the case of the spiral). One point seems to be abundantly clear, viz. that Mycenaean decoration owes nothing to Oriental influences. That there was a close relation with the East has already been indicated, and is much more apparent in other forms of Mycenaean art; but no student of this art in general can doubt that it is, as has been pointed out, purely spontaneous and unique, the art of a people of genuine artistic genius. Among the art of ancient races it stands alone in this respect, that of Egypt and Assyria, its only prominent rivals, being always essentially conventional; and herein lies its special distinction.

That the Mycenaeans were a maritime people admits of no doubt. It is shown by the position of their chief centres, by the evidence of their extensive commercial relations, and, as far as concerns their pottery, pre-eminently by the subjects which form the staple decoration. Hence of late years an attempt has been made to substitute for “Mycenaean” the more comprehensive term “Aegean,” and there is much to be said in its favour. As regards the actual ethnographical position of the race, _Quot homines, tot sententiae_, may almost be said. They have been identified with the Achaeans, the Pelasgians, the Phoenicians, the Carians, and as combinations of Phrygians with Cretans, of Phoenicians with Greeks of Asia Minor.[926] But few of these terms have real historical value, and such identifications do not really advance the solution of the question.

A more real ground of battle is that afforded by the question of date, though on this point scholars now show a greater tendency to fall into line, and a period culminating in the years 1400 to 1100 or 1000 B.C. is now very generally accepted.[927] The question necessarily turns largely on the evidence afforded by Crete and Egypt, and so far as this is trustworthy it all points in the same direction. But it would be beyond the scope of a work of this kind to do more than briefly summarise the general results of archaeological criticism.

An interesting study of Mycenaean ornamentation has been made by Dr. Riegl,[928] who deals generally with the principles underlying its vegetable motives, and points out that here we first meet with scrolls or continuous bands of foliage applied to a decorative purpose. These motives are peculiar to Greek art, and in Mycenaean design their origin is to be sought. In this way we may regard it as the immediate forerunner of Hellenic art, although its development was temporarily arrested by the Dorian invasion, just as the people who produced it formed the basis of the Hellenic race. The naturalism of Mycenaean ornament, which is seen both in continuous and in isolated patterns, is in marked contrast to the convention of Egypt, where the same motives may be in use. It is not, in short, the motive, but its treatment, which shows the independence of Mycenaean art. There are, again, other patterns, such as the spiral, which cannot be traced in Oriental art, and seem to be purely original, at least as far as concerns the Eastern Mediterranean.

Another recent writer, Dr. S. Wide, has noticed that where Mycenaean influence was originally strongest, as in Crete and Rhodes, there its characteristics were most strongly impressed upon the art of the succeeding period, and he is inclined to place the centre of the fabric in these islands or on the coast of the adjoining continent of Asia. At all events the Mycenaean influence shows itself more in the pottery of the islands than it does in Attica; and, in Crete and Rhodes in particular, instances have been found of undoubted survivals of typical Mycenaean ornaments in later pottery.[929]

Footnote 820:

See _Cyprus Mus. Cat._ p. 14.

Footnote 821:

Cf. Perrot, _Hist. de l’Art_, iii. figs. 487–93.

Footnote 822:

Cf. Perrot, _op. cit._ iii. figs. 498–503.

Footnote 823:

See Hall, _Oldest Civilisation of Greece_, p. 72.

Footnote 824:

See _Athen. Mitth._ xi. p. 249 ff., and Perrot, _Hist. de l’Art_, vi. p. 648. A fragment of late Bronze-Age Cypriote pottery was found at Hissarlik (Dörpfeld, _Troja und Ilion_, i. p. 286, fig. 182).

Footnote 825:

See Meursius, _Cyprus_, i. chap. 20; Heuzey, _Cat. des Fig. ant. du Louvre_, p. 115.

Footnote 826:

Strabo, xiv. 6, p. 683.

Footnote 827:

_Archaeologia_, xlv. p. 127 ff.

Footnote 828:

Similar red polished wares were found in the New-Race tombs of Egypt (seventh to tenth dynasty), but in spite of the likeness it cannot be said that one is borrowed from the other (_Cyprus Mus. Cat._ p. 16).

Footnote 829:

See Hall, _Oldest Greek Civilisation_, p. 69; _Journ. Hell. Stud._ xi. pl. 14; _Cyprus Mus. Cat._ p. 38.

Footnote 830:

The resemblance to Italian bucchero ware is probably only accidental. See Chapter XVIII.

Footnote 831:

_E.g._ A 66 in B.M.

Footnote 832:

Hall, _Oldest Civilisation_, pp. 72, 98.

Footnote 833:

_E.g._ B.M. A 67–8.

Footnote 834:

Cf. _Excavations in Cyprus_, pp. 34 ff., 72.

Footnote 835:

_Cyprus Mus. Cat._ p. 39.

Footnote 836:

Myres, _ibid._

Footnote 837:

Cf. for instance the jug given in Cesnola, _Cyprus_, p. 408, fig. 29.

Footnote 838:

_E.g._ B.M. A 134: cf. _Cyprus Mus. Cat._ 401–2.

Footnote 839:

_Cat. des Vases du Louvre_, i. p. 250: see below, pp. 284, 315.

Footnote 840:

The Trojan legends were familiar in Cyprus, as the Κυπριακά of the local Cyclic poet Stasinos shows.

Footnote 841:

Cf. Perrot, _Hist, de l’Art_, iii. pp. 714–15, figs. 525–26.

Footnote 842:

_Excavations in Cyprus_, p. 73.

Footnote 843:

Recent discoveries by Mr. Arthur Evans at Knossos (_Brit. Sch. Annual_, 1901–2, p. 15) seem to suggest that these panels may be meant for windows or storeys of houses. Cf. also the bronze from Enkomi (_Excavations_, p. 10).

Footnote 844:

_Cyprus Mus. Cat._ p. 59.

Footnote 845:

_Excavations in Cyprus_, p. 74.

Footnote 846:

See _Athen. Mitth._ xi. (1886), p. 248; cf. also Meursius, _Cyprus_, i. chap. 10; Heuzey, _Cat. des Fig. ant. du Louvre_, pp. 116–17.

Footnote 847:

Cypriote pottery with concentric circles has been found at Nebesheh in the Delta. It was brought by the Cypriote mercenaries, enrolled by Psammetichus, in the seventh century (_Eg. Expl. Fund_, 4th Mem. pl. 3, p. 20).

Footnote 848:

Perrot, _Hist. de l’Art_, iii. p. 769 ff.

Footnote 849:

M. Pottier (_Louvre Cat._ i. p. 92) thinks that Greek influence may explain all the stages of Cypriote pottery from the Mycenaean period onwards. See also on this subject Dümmler, in _Ath. Mitth._ xi. p. 284.

Footnote 850:

_Excavations in Cyprus_, p. 8, fig. 14.

Footnote 851:

B.M. C 244.

Footnote 852:

B.M. C 121 = Perrot, _Hist. de l’Art_, iii. pp. 716–17, figs. 527–8.

Footnote 853:

B.M. C 120 = _Rev. Arch._ ix. (1887), p. 77 ff.

Footnote 854:

_Cyprus Mus. Cat._ p. 26.

Footnote 855:

_Ibid._ p. 21.

Footnote 856:

See Perrot, _Hist. de l’Art_, iii. figs. 510–13; _ibid._ figs. 520–23 (human figures); Cesnola, _Cyprus_, p. 55, pls. 44–6; _Excavations in Cyprus_, pp. 75, 104 ff.; _J.H.S._ v. p. 103.

Footnote 857:

See above, p. 249. Cf. Layard, _Monuments of Nineveh_, pl. 10 = Nimroud Gallery of B.M., slab 4_a_.

Footnote 858:

Perrot, _op. cit._ iii. p. 711, fig. 523.

Footnote 859:

_E.g._ Perrot, _op. cit._ iii. figs. 507, 523, pp. 699, 711; _Excavations in Cyprus_, pp. 104–5, figs. 151–52.

Footnote 860:

_Excavations in Cyprus_, p. 105, fig. 152.

Footnote 861:

B.M. C 268 = _J.H.S._ ii. p. 304.

Footnote 862:

_Cyprus_, pl. 29.

Footnote 863:

See O.-Richter, _Kypros, the Bible, and Homer_, p. 497, and frontispiece to text volume; also _B.M. Excavations in Cyprus_, p. 105, fig. 152.

Footnote 864:

B.M. E 34; _Branteghem Cat._ 30; Klein, _Meistersig._^2 p. 221.

Footnote 865:

Louvre A 258.

Footnote 866:

_E.g._ _J.H.S._ xii. pl. 14; _Jahrbuch_, 1887, pl. 11.

Footnote 867:

See Hermann, _Gräberfeld von Marion_, p. 46 ff.; _B.M. Excavations in Cyprus_, pp. 78, 109.

Footnote 868:

_Excavations in Cyprus_, p. 78, Fig. 110.

Footnote 869:

_Troja 1893_, p. 86; _Troja u. Ilion_, i. p. 18. On the pottery generally see the latter, p. 243 ff.

Footnote 870:

Its evolution is well illustrated by the Canopic vases described in