AEGEAN CIVILIZATION

INTRODUCTION:

Aegean civilization is the general term for the prehistoric civilizations in Greece and the Aegean.

Aegean civilization is a general term for the Bronze Age civilizations of Greece around the Aegean Sea

There are three distinct but communicating and interacting geographic regions covered by this term: Crete, the Cyclades and the Greek mainland.

Crete is associated with the Minoan civilization from the Early Bronze Age.

ORIGIN AND CONTINUITY

Eight periods of the Bronze Age were incised, white-filled decoration on pottery, whose motifs are found reproduced in monochrome pigment age.

These periods fill the whole Bronze Age, with whose close, by the introduction of the superior metal, iron, the Aegean Age is conventionally held to end.

Iron came into general Aegean use about 1000 B.C., and possibly was the means by which a body of northern invaders established their power on the ruins of the earlier dominion.

Throughout the nine Knossian periods, following the Neolithic period, at the close of a span of more than two thousand years, at the least, would go far to prove that the civilization continued fundamentally and essentially the same throughout.

It is supported by less abundant remains of other arts.

In religion, beginning with a uniform nature worship passing through all the normal stages down to the anthropism in the latest period. There is no appearance of intrusive deities or cult-ideas.

The Aegean civilization was indigenous, firmly rooted and strong enough to persist essentially unchanged and dominant in its own geographical area throughout the Neolithic and Bronze Ages.

DISTINCTIVE FEATURES

For a time the surviving remains were thought to have originated with Egyptions or Phoenicians, but with more remains uncovered this was shown to be untrue.

The Aegean civilization developed three distinctive features.

INDIGINOUS SCRIPT

An indigenous writing system existed which consisted of characters with which only a very small percentage were identical, or even obviously connected, with those of any other script.

The decipherment in the 1950s of Linear B unlocked the meaning of this script, but an earlier script Linear A remains undeciphered.

ART

Aegean Art is distinguishable from those of other early periods and areas.

Its borrowings from other contemporary arts are clear, especially in its later stages, but received an essential modification at the hands of the Aegean craftsman, and the product is stamped with a new character, namely realism and is a precursor of Hellenic art.

The fresco-paintings, ceramic motifs, reliefs, free sculpture and toreutic handiwork of Crete have supplied the clearest proof of it, confirming the impression already created by the goldsmiths' and painters' work of the Greek mainland .

ARCHITECTURE

The arrangement of Aegean palaces is of two main types:

First, the chambers are grouped around a central court, being linked one with the other in a labyrinthine complexity, and the greater oblongs are entered from a long side and divided longitudinally by pillars.

Second, the main chamber is of what is known as the megaron type, isolated from the rest of the plan by corridors, is entered from a vestibule on a short side, and has a central hearth, surrounded by pillars and perhaps open to the sky; there is no central court, and other apartments form distinct blocks.

A type of tomb, the dome or "bee-hive," of which the grandest examples known are at Mycenae. The Cretan 'larnax' coffins, also, have no parallels outside the Aegean.

POLITICAL ORGANIZATION

Evidence of monarchy at all periods on Crete can be found by the great Cretan palaces and the fortified citadels of Mycenae, Tiryns and Hissarlik, each containing little more than one great residence, surrounded by smaller buildings for the townsfolk.

Pockets of local developments of art before the middle of the 2nd millennium BC suggest the early existence of separate traditions, of which the strongest was the Minoan.

After that date the evidence strongly suggests that one political dominion was spread for a brief period, or for two brief periods, over almost all the area.

The great number of tribute-tallies found at Knossos perhaps indicates that the center of power was always there.

RELIGION

The fact that shrines have so far been found within palaces and not certainly anywhere else indicates that the kings kept religious power in their own hands. Perhaps they were themselves high-priests.

Religion in the area seems to have been essentially the same everywhere from the earliest period, consisting of features like the cult of a Divine Principle, resident in dominant features of nature (sun, stars, mountains, trees, etc.) and of controlling fertility.

When the iconic stage was reached, about 2000 BC, we find the Divine Spirit represented as a goddess with a subordinate young god, as in many other east Mediterranean lands.

In the ritual, fetishes, often of miniature form, played a great part: all sorts of plants and animals were sacred: sacrifice (not burnt, and not human), dedication of all sorts of offerings and simulacra, invocation, etc., were practiced.

This early nature-cult explains many anomalous features of Hellenic religion, especially in the cults of Artemis and Aphrodite.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION

There is a possibility that features of a primeval matriarchate long survived; but there is no certain evidence.

Theatre-like structures found at Knossos and Phaestus, within the precincts of the palaces, were perhaps used for shows or for sittings of a royal assize, rather than for popular assemblies.

The Minoan remains contain evidence of an elaborate system of registration, account-keeping and other secretarial work, which perhaps indicates a considerable body of law.

The line of the ruling class was comfortable and even luxurious from early times.

This can be seen by the fine stone palaces, richly decorated, with separate sleeping apartments, large halls, ingenious devices for admitting light and air, sanitary conveniences and marvellously modern arrangements for supply of water and for drainage.

After 1600 B.C. the palaces in Crete had more than one story, fine stairways, bath-chambers, windows, folding and sliding doors, etc. In this later period, the distinction of blocks of apartments in some palaces has been held to indicate the seclusion of women in harems, at least among the ruling caste. Minoan frescoes show women grouped apart, and they appear alone on gems.

At least on Crete there was evidently a large-scale olive- and vine-culture. Chariots were in use in the later period, as is proved by the pictures of them on Cretan tablets, and therefore, probably, the horse also was known. Indeed a horse appears on a gem impression. Main pathways were paved. Sports, probably more or less religious, are often represented, e.g. bullfighting, dancing, boxing, armed combats.

COMMERCE

Commerce was practised to some extent in very early times, as is proved by the distribution of Melian obsidian over all the Aegean area and by the Nilotic influence on early Minoan art. Cretan vessels were found exported to Melos, Egypt and the Greek mainland. Melian vases came in their turn to Crete.

After 1600 BC there is very close commerce with Egypt, and Aegean things had their way to all coasts of the Mediterranean. No traces of currency have come to light, unless certain axeheads, too slight for practical use, had that character.

The Aegean written documents have not yet proved (by being found outside the area) to be epistolary (letter writing) correspondence with other countries.

Discoveries, later in the twentieth century, of sunken trading vesels round the coasts of the region have brought forth an enormous amnount of new information about those times.

TREATMENT OF THE DEAD

The dead in the earlier period were laid (so far as we know at present) within cysts constructed of upright stones. These were sometimes inside caves. After the burial the cyst was covered in with earth. A little later, in Crete, bone-pits seem to have come into use, containing the remains of many burials. Possibly the flesh was boiled off the bones at once ("scarification") or left to rot in separate cysts a while. the skeletons would be collected and the cysts re-used.

In the later period, a peculiar "bee-hive" or "tholos" tombs became common, sometimes wholly or partly excavated, sometimes (as in the magnificent Mycenaean "treasuries") constructed domewise. The shaft-graves in the Mycenae circle are also a late type, paralleled in the later Minoan cemetery.

The latest type of tomb is a flatly vaulted chamber approached by a horizontal or slightly inclined way, whose sides converge above. At no period do the Aegean dead seem to have been burned. Weapons, food, water, cosmetics and various trinkets were laid with the corpse at all periods.

ARTISTIC PRODUCTION

Ceramic art reached a specially high standard in technique, form and decoration by the middle of the 3rd millennium BC on Crete.

The same may be said of fresco-painting, and probably of metal work. Modelling in terra cotta, sculpture in stone and ivory, engraving on gems, were following it closely by the beginning of the 2nd millennium.

After 2000 BC all these arts revived, and sculpture, as evidenced by relief work, both on a large and on a small scale, carved stone vessels, metallurgy in gold, silver and bronze, advanced farther. This art and those of fresco- and vase-painting and of gem-engraving stood higher about the 15th century B.C. than at any subsequent period before the 6th century.

The richness of the Aegean capitals and columns may be judged by those from the "Treasury of Atreus" now set up in the British Museum; and of the friezes we have examples in Mycenaean and Minoan fragments, and Minoan paintings.

The magnificent gold work of the later period, preserved to us at Mycenae and Vaphio, needs only to be mentioned. It should be compared with stone work in Crete, especially the steatite vases with reliefs found at Hagia Triada. On the whole, Aegean art at its two great periods, in the middle of the 3rd and 2nd millennia respectively, will bear comparison with any contemporary arts.