Minoan and Mycenaean Art [antikvár]

Introduction When Heinrich Schliemann claimed in 1876 to have discovered a new world for archaeology, he was stating no less than the truth. The occasion for this claim was his historic discovery of the Royal Shaft-Graves at Mycenae, which opened the door to the study of Bronze Age Greece. It is a surprising fact that although Classical Greece has been familiar to us, after a fashion, since the Renaissance, the rich Bronze Age culture of the Aegean area was completely unknown as recently as a century ago. Indeed, so unfamiliar were the treasures from the Shaft-Graves that they were variously interpreted by experts (who should have known better) as Celtic, Carian, Scythian, Byzantine, Gothic, and even Indian. The principal reason for this amazing ignorance is that whereas the Classical period has bequeathed us a wealth of literary sources, the Bronze Age has left us precious little on which to build but the evidence which archaeology can supply. The lack of contemporary documentation has not, however, been all loss, for the student of prehistoric art in the Aegean area is forced to assess the surviving material on its merits alone, unhampered by the often confusing judgments of ancient art-critics. This book is concerned with the three principal civilizations of the Aegean in the Bronze Age: those of Crete, the Cycladic islands, and Mainland Greece. The title is therefore convenient rather than strictly accurate, for our scope is somewhat wider than it would suggest. Yet the fact remains that of the cultures to be considered, the Minoan and Mycenaean are by far the most important. The tale begins shortly after 3000 bc, with the gradual replacement of stone for tools and weapons by copper, and later by bronze, an alloy of copper and tin. It ends shortly before 1000 bc with the destruction of the Bronze Age sites, the arrival of the Dorian branch