Page:History of Art in Primitive Greece - Mycenian Art Vol 2.djvu/119

Primitive Greixe : Mycenian Art. in Cyprus.' But we have proved that throughout the primitive period, wherever the graves were sufficiently well preserved to furnish sure Indications, these always show, in no unmistakable language, that inhumation, not burning, had been practised. Finally, in the later tombs of Phoenicia and Cyprus alike, a shaft serves as entrance passage to the vault, whilst the graves of prehistoric Greece are approached by a horizontal or gently- inclined dromos. One is tempted, therefore, to ask whether the habit of placing the chamber at the bottom of a well was not borrowed by the early inhabitants of Cyprus from Egypt, or rather Phcenicia, its near neighbour. On the other hand, these tombs contained no imported objects which could be attributed to either of these two countries, where, at any rate in remote antiquity, the dead were interred without having passed through fire. There are, then, very peculiar characteristics about Cypriote necropoles, respecting which we do not care to commit ourselves; we could not, however, pass the island by without pointing it out to future explorers.