Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 1.djvu/474

The Islands of the ^gean. 447 rightly classify and define the specimens in question. According to M. Ohnefalsh Richter, whose extensive explorations in Cyprus are well known, vases of Mycenian style have more particularly come from a triad of cemeteries : the first is found at Haghia Paraskevi, by the gates of Nicosia, the second at Phoenikies, midway between Dali and Nicosia, and the third at Alambra, southward of Dali. In these necropoles, the graves and the shafts by which they are entered are mostly rock-cut. As a rule they have but one chamber, which, to judge from the quantity of human remains, has been used again and again. The shape of the vault is frequently very irregular, and recalls a natural grotto. As at Nauplia, on either side of the entrance are niches, sunk in the wall, in which funereal offerings of mediocre import- ance have been placed. Side by side with these vases are bronze weapons, which are of so rare occurrence in other necropoles ; whorls with linear decorations, like those at Hissarlik ; perforated beads of terra-cotta, and idols similar to the clay figures of the Argolic graves, as well as stone implements. The attention of future explorers should be directed to distinguish home-made from imported wares. The former, as the only products which we may expect to find in the oldest graves, would represent the labour of folk who practised on their own account an industry then current over the whole eastern basin of the Mediterranean, and who thus had a share in the movement of what has been termed "^Egean culture." On the other hand, wares met with in later graves should be attributed to Argolic workshops, or local imitations of them. It would be well also to study from this same stand-point every vestige, however slight, of very archaic buildings, which the investigator may chance to come across on the Cypriote soil ; so as to ascertain whether certain peculiarities in the details of the construction, arrangement, and decoration, which characterize the architectonic labours of this primitive civilization from the shores of the Hellespont to the Argolic Gulf, are also traceable in Cyprus. The island is very near to Syria ; we shall not be surprised, therefore, if some day or another fragments of Mycenian vases should come out of graves situated on the Phoenician coast.^ Loeschke and Furt- ^ In the Guimet Museum is preserved a vase of genuine Mycenian fabrication, said to have come from a Sidonian necropolis. It belongs to the class which the Germans call " Biigelkanne" (see above, P'ig. 166). [A fragmentary vase, in genuine