THE EARLY AGE OF GREECE VOL.I by W.Ridgeway 1901

PREHISTORIC REMAINS AND THEIR DISTRIBUTION. 15
Though geometrical patterns and spirals frequently
occur on
it {cf. Fig. 11), its designs as a rule are naturalistic, such as ivy,
the water-lily, the iris, and the palm, and especially marine
animals and plants, such as nautilus, cuttle-fish (polypus), starfish,
fishes {cf. Fig. 13), sea-nettles, shells, and seaweed ;
birds
are not infrequent {cf. Fig. 12), but it is only
on the latest
examples that quadrupeds and men appear. On one sherd
oxen are browsing, on another a dog hunts a hare.
The dull painted pottery was found only in the circle of
the royal graves, and outside of that circle only in the lower
strata of the excavations.
Fi. 12.
liilysos.
To the lustrous class belong the well-known .so-called
*
false-necked '
Mycenean vases (Fig. 10). This type
is not
found in any other known style of ceramics. Its neck is closed,
the liquid passed thi'(Migh
a short sj)out in the uiper jtai't of
the vessel. Two short handles I'ise on each side of the false
neck to which they are attached, thus pi'e.seiiting the shape of
a ])air of stii-rups, from which the (Jermans term this vase
Bagelkanne {>i\vr\\\) the French y,\v),
(tinphore a ('trier.
Both the dull and lustrous jtotteiy are f)un(l togothei-, but
there is reason to believe that the dull is the earlier and comes
next to the coarse monochronie in
order of development.
16 PREHISTORIC REMAINS AND THEIR DISTRIBUTIOX.
The description of the pottery from Mycenae practically
serves for that found on the other
Bronze Age
sites. Decoration
with linear ornament incised or
painted is not peculiar
to the
Greek area. For incised linear
ornament is common to all Europe,
and is used universally by
the primitive peoples of the
Fig. 13. lalysos. present day.
The dull painted pottery with
linear ornament, especially spirals,
is found also in Cyprus,
Palestine, Assyria, Thera, Sicily, and is still used among
barbarous peoples, for instance in North Africa.
The dull Myceneaii pottery, though usually wheel-made,
is sometimes hand-made. It thus marks two great steps in
the ceramic art,
the invention of the wheel, and the substitution
of colour for incised ornament.
It is altogether different with the glazed ware, for the art
of painting with a lustrous varnish was confined to the Greek
area, and to t)thers such as Etruria and south Italy to which it
passed from Greece. In this fully developed Mycenean pottery
we have the beginnings of the ceramic art of the classical times
of Greece ^
An amphora found in a chambered tomb bears on one of its
handles three characters incised when the clay was yet soft.
Like symbols were also found on a .stone pestle and the fragments
of a stone vessel.
Temi-cottas. There were many rude terra-cotta figures in
the form either of a woman (Figs. 14, 16), or of a cow (Fig. 15).
Most of the former have ornaments painted in bright i-ed on
a dead ground of light led, and breasts in relief, bt'low which
arc rudely fashionod arms (Fig. 16), which 8chliemann took to
])v horns "intended to ropi-esent the moon's crescent or the
two hoi'iis of the cow, or both one and tlie other at tliL' same
'
Fintwiuigler and Loesclie, Mi/kenixclie I'ascii, pp. vi. sijij.
In this invaluable
work, tu which refeienco will be very frequently nuule in tliese ])a