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

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

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.

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

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.