The Aegean Isles and Coasts
It will prevent confusion at the outset to apply the terms Greece and Greek to a geographical area and its inhabitants of whatever race, reserving the terms Helleneand Hellenic specifically for those Aryan peoples who occupied it only a shorttime before the full light of history breaks upon it. The area covered is the modernBalkan Peninsula, together with the islands of the Aegean Sea and the coast regionsof Asia Minor, the mountainous interior of Asia Minor being both geographically and ethnically distinct from it.
In this Greek or Aegean region there had grown up during many centuriesan advanced civilization entirely apart from, and independent of the civilizations of Western Asia and Egypt; and the peoples among whom it arose were ethnicallydistinct from Egyptians, Sumerians, Semites, Aryans, and probably Hittites too.
There are indications of an African origin, neither Hamite nor negro; but if theywere African emigrants they came into Greece before Egypt had achieved a distinctive culture, in the neolithic times before the use of metal had been discovered.
To the early Greek culture the name Minoan has been given from the mainlylegendary Cretan king Minos, who figures in the hero-tales of the Hellenes. Ineffect, Minoan is equivalent to Cretan, the reason being that Knossos in Crete isthe remarkable burial-place of pre-Hellenic remains, from the excavation of which
most of our still somewhat hypothetical knowledge is derived, tempered by inferences from Hellenic legends.
From these excavations, from the varying characteristics of the artistic and architectural relics unearthed by the archaeologists, a sundry chronology can bedrawn. Fragments of Egyptian bowls point to some communication with theNile Delta in the time of the Third Egyptian Dynasty, roughly at the end of the
fourth millennium. When the dynasty of Rameses was ruling in Egypt, the Cretan Knossos had given place to Mycenae in the Peloponnesus as the centre of the most advanced culture, but Knossos had not yet lost its supremacy when the artists ofThothmes the Great were depicting the visitors from Keftiu or Crete. An intermediate Minoan period shows correspondence with the period of the Twelfth Egyptian Dynasty, around the twentieth century B.C. It is therefore clear that a definite educated Minoan culture existed from a time contemporary with or prior to the building of the first pyramid by Tjeser, and lasted through progressive stages until it was displaced by the Hellenic expansion of the thirteenth century. It is also interesting to note that the hardening of copper tools by the admixture of tin was understood by the Cretans long before it was adopted by the Egyptians.
It is difficult to establish with clarity the precise relation between the culture of Crete, and ultimately of Mycenae, and that of another centre of Greek culture, on the north-east corner of the Aegean, the city of Troy. The Troy which actually perished at the time when the Mycenaean culture was at its height was Mycenaen; but it was built upon the ruins of an older Troy, itself built upon the ruins of another. The excavators tell us that there were six successive towns of Troy on the same site, and that the first Troy was mainly, if not wholly, neolithic. There is evidence that the later pre-Hellenic population of Asiatic Greece was of Aryan origin, though in part at least it took on the non-Aryan Minoan culture,very much as the originally barbarian Hellenes themselves appropriated the Mycenaen culture and transformed it into an entirely characteristic culture of their own.
In the light of all this evidence, therefore, it is safe to say that the Mycenaean culture came in contact with the Trojan after Troy had become Aryanized, and not before five successive Troys had been buried. Even then the hard-headed Aryan refused to be absorbed by the more sophisticated southern race and only took on its culture with a difference.
Now, it would seem that in the whole region of Greece in its prehistoric state there were at least two strongly opposed racial elements gradually occupying the territory: an African element pushing up from the south and developing an advanced civilization emanating mainly from Crete; on the north, Aryan peoples occupying Thrace and Illyria, and pushing down into Macedonia and Thessaly, while another branch pushes over the Hellespont into the coast lands of Western Asia Minor. Of these Aryan peoples, the eastern branch is the more advanced; the western or Hellenic is still in the neolithic stage, perhaps as late as the fifteenth century. The eastern or Phrygian branch should probably not be called Hellenic at all.
Manifestly the Africans, the Minoans, were a seafaring folk who spread over the Archipelago and developed their culture there. Whether the first occupants of the mainland east and west of the Aegean were precursors of the Minoans of the same original stock, who remained neolithic and unprogressive, or were precursors of the Aryans, or were of a race distinct from both, remains unknown; but it is generally presumed that they were not Aryan. What is however clear is that about the end of the fourteenth century and during the thirteenth century the region wasmainly inhabited by a population of mixed descent, partly and not predominantly Hellenic, over whom Minoan invaders established a supremacy.
The Minoan culture on the mainland belongs entirely to the Late Minoan period, which lasted approximately from 1500 to 1200. But the early and middle bronze-using Minoan culture had dominated the Aegean islands for nearly fifteen hundred years before. The Middle Minoan period corresponds to what is generally referred to as the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, and the Hyksos period, i.e. from the 20th to the 16th centuries. It was a little before the end of the Early Minoan period that Troy passed out of the neolithic stage, influenced though not dominated by the Minoan culture. It is usually assumed that during the next few centuries the population of European Greece as well as Western Asia Minor became one of mixed descent combining Phrygians and pre-Phrygians, but with the Phrygian element predominating in the north, and the pre-Phrygian or Carian in the south.
At a very early stage, Knossos must have been a centre of political power wielded by an imperial dynasty. Spacious architectural conceptions are evident in the earliest designs, which must have been earlier than the 20th century. The Cretan monarchs preferred palace building to temple building, and in that field they left the Egyptians far behind. From one point of view, the most surprising characteristic is the presence of great drainage works on a scale unknown in the ancient world except to the Romans; and, from another, the representations of ladies of the Minoan court clad in raiment highly suggestive of more recent times.
Hellenic tradition made Minos a great Cretan king who, before he sank or rose to the dignity of a judge in the underworld, ruled mightily over the islands of the Aegean, until Theseus, the Athenian hero, slew his monster son, the Minotaur.Whether Minos actually reigned or not, all the evidence points to an effective Minoan supremacy over sea and islands and coast. The Minos tradition, with others attributing an eastern origin to heroic families among the Hellenes and to their earliest instructors in civilized arts, suggests that Hellenes were already settled in Boeotia, in Attica, and in the Peloponnese, and then became subjected about the 15th century to Minoan dynasties: a view much more probable than the other, that the mainland natives imported and adopted Minoan ideas of their own account. It is noticeable that the Minoan development, which has given us the great remains at Mycenae and Tiryns, was apparently accompanied by the decadence of Knossos and the transfer of the centre of Minoan splendour to the southern European mainland of Greece.
Armed with all the above evidence and inferences, it is possible to state that about the beginning of the 14th century B.C. Minoan princes were reigning in Boeotia and the Eastern Peloponnese over a mixed population who may be called Ionian or Pelasgian, according as the Hellenic element predominated or was
subordinate. Farther north, in Thessaly, was a definitely Hellenic population, the Achaeans, practically untouched by the Minoan civilization. Beyond these again were the Aryan tribes of Macedonia, with Illyria on the west and Thrace on the east,those to the westward being of Hellenic stock, while those to the east may have been Slavonic. In the islands, the power of the once mighty state centred at Knossos had vanished, overthrown perhaps by the recently developed Minoan state on the mainland.
At this stage, then, a new migratory impulse was stirring among the Northern Hellenes. This people had been behind their neighbours, and remained in the neolithic stage long after copper and bronze had been brought into full use by Minoans, Semites, and Egyptians; but in remote Danubian regions, they made forthemselves a still more valuable discovery, the use of iron, which rendered them infinitely more formidable. The southward movement from Illyria and Macedonia brought them into collision with their kinsmen, Achaeans and Danaans, who had only recently learned the use of bronze weapons from the Minoans. So, Achaeans and Danaans, under pressure from the north, pushed southward upon Ionians and Pelasgians, or took to their ships and pressed eastwards into the islands or on to the Adriatic coast. Under pressure from them again, their southern Ionian and Pelasgian kinsfolt pushed across to the southern coast of Asia Minor, through the Cyclades. Their impetus set in motion the Phrygian or partly Carian peoples, who had already been profiting by the fall of the Minoan state to obtain a footing in the southern
islands, in Crete and in Cyprus, from which the Ionian newcomers now again ejected them. And so it befell that in the days of Meneptah, about 1230 B.C., mixed hordes of sea-rovers, some of whom were certainly Hellenes, joined with the Libyans in that attack whose repulse has been recorded. And so, also, it befell that nearly half a century later, mixed hordes, of whom only a very few were Hellenes, were flinging themselves upon the coasts of Phoenicia and Palestine till their conquering career was checked by Rameses III.
According to this view of history, the iron-using Hellenes from the north have no part in the actual southward and westward movement of Achaeans and Ionians and the corresponding movement of Minoans and Phrygians, although they provided the original impulse. The facts and hypotheses tally also remarkably well with these invaluable Homeric documents, the Homeric poems. Troy was a real town, a town which had been wealthy and important for many centturies, until it was absolutely wiped out and levelled with the ground by a great force of Achaeans, Danaans, and Argives, at a date which tradition fixed in 1184 B.C. -- precisely at the time when indubitable history relates that the islanders and the peoples of southern Asia Minor were seeking new territory and were checked by the skill and valour of Rameses III; the time when they had been set in motion by the advance from the west of Achaeans and Ionians.
In the Homeric poems, which probably only attained their consummate form in the hands of an Ionian poet or poets in the 9th century, the Greeks bear the names used above. They are not known to themselves as Hellenes. They are users of bronze, but of iron only to a very slight extent; their great hero is the Thessalian Achilles; the "Argives". Argeoi manifestly take their name not from Argos in the Peloponnese but from Argos in Thessaly. The record is the traditional record of the Achaean and Ionian advance upon Northern Asia Minor, mingled with the traditions of Minoan kings of Peloponnesian Mycenae, although these are crossed by the appropriation of the Mycenaean glories to the later Hellenic conquerors of the Dorian branch, the iron-users from the north.
It must be remembered that, however firmly convinced one may be that a single poet wrote the "Iliad", and a single poet wrote the "Odyssey", or even that a single poet wrote both, still he was not describing contemporary events or conditions, but was working upon traditions of past history passed from lip to lip, generation after generation, over a period of several centuries. That tradition was embodied in old lays, refashioned and welded together in one magnificent whole by the master hand; but the master did not choose to obliterate the original marks of diversity, nor was he at any pains to harmonize discordant traditions for the sake of historic truth. So far as he sought to harmonize them, it was only for the sake of artistic truth. He was an Achaean Ionian of the 9th century, portraying Achaeans of the 12th century, inevitably importing into his portrayal some colouring derived from later ideas. But the result shows that the Achaean tradition did not depart further than what oral tradition would allow. As for the rest, historians will go on debating ad infinitum among themselves without any hope of shedding futher light on events that took place in the mists of time and which in all likelihood will never be elucidated.