The Bookman

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 94, 22 April 1933, Page 17

The Bookman

SEVENTY YEARS IN ARCHAEOLOGY

ADVENTURES IN PALESTINE

MYCENAE AND RAVENNA

(By "Ajax.")

Seventy Years in Archaeology. By Flinders Petrie, Kt., D.C.L., etc., etc., 9J x 6, viii + 284 pp. London: | Sampson Low, Marston, and Co., Ltd. No date. [Final Notice.] On March 11, 1890, Sir Flinders Petria reached Jerusalem from Egypt to work for the Palestino Exploration Fund in and around Gaza. He found plonty of good hunting, but from the standpoints both of <labour and of security the conditions were much less satisfactory, than they were in Egypt. The country was still in tho hands of 'the Arabs whom, no Turkish Governor had been- strong enough' to reduce to obedience. They, were free to fight one another/and- to take very unpleasant liberties with explorers and excavators. .*' *' ' ,' *:'■ * '* Sir Flinders quotes as follows from his diary, written apparently at Tell Hesy in April, 1890:— There was a skirmish between the Terrabin and the Aziziu down at Nejileh, where I went last Sunday, with the result of eiffht killed, five of one and three of the other, only leafing a blood balance of two to be wiped out. .- . .The other day I saw dozens of Sheykhs riding past to, go, and pee the Pasha at Gaza; they fell out by the way, and at Beit Hanun two were killed. But a task -which had baffled the Turks for fonr -hundred years was carried out ■with complete success by the British in ten. This , state of society, Dr. Petrie continues, is worth record, now that one may walk, alone over all that country, and not a single raid occurs in a whole year. Ten years of unselfish rule has cured the miseries of tho land, and by 1028 not a single British soldier was needed in .all that country, and only a few police officers, over the native, poire*. 1- • *'.. ' * ' ! l>r. Petrie makes light of Ihe troubles of forty years ago, but once at least he had a very close call. ','He was approaching Dhaberiy'eh when'his camel •which wasMn front was pulled down by four men,1 and two of them ran up to him. I backed up a slope, revolver in hand, and dropped my purse and-gold bag in the long grass* Then there was nothing much to lose, so when all four armed men closed on me I went limp and let them rummage. There were a few silver coins in my pocket for them; my watch, I remarked, had a number on it, which saved it; my note book was returned, to me, they got my little revolver, and the affair was over. I dropped in the grass and bewailed my losses, while I grubbed about for my purse and gold, put them in my pocket, and wo went on. Altogether I think the business was conducted quite as pleasantly as such affairs ever are. *-»■.* ! But the.,pleasant,attentiojis of the bandits ..oi Dhaberiyeh and tile charms of the deepjTfcil^'aE^jßureyr, "' ,' '" stagnant, .very' green, and rather salt. . . . When, boiled it is three courses in one—soup, fish, and greenswere cheerfully accepted as part of tho day's work. What did chafe this eager spirit was the dog-in-the-manger vandalism of the French officials in Egypt, ■who permittpd the destruction of monuments 'by -their own people but obstructed the investigations of English, scholars. After being delayed in .Cairo by a painful experience of these tactics Dr. Petrie was thankful to return to "the tranquil toils of desert life" in Egypt towards the end of "3 890. • • ■ ■ # * Here -I am once more in peace in this land, he writes on December 17, and'the relief of getting back here I never felt so much before. The real tranquillity and room for quiet thought in this sort of life is refreshing. I here live, and do not to fit myself to the requirements of others. In a narrow tomb, with the figure ofNefermaat standing on each side' of me-^as he has stoQd through all that we know as human history—l have just room for my bed, and a row of good read-; ing in which I can take my , pleasure' when I retire to the blankets after dinner. Behind me is that Great Peace, the Desert. It is an entity—a power—just as much as the eea is. No wonder men 'fled to it from the turmoil of the ancient world. * ■■; ♦ ■■ . » ' It would do many a modern more good than anything else, both for mind and body, just to come »nd live in a cave, and cultivate a little bean plot like an ancient eremite, for half a year,, and then return to the jangle of Europe. Every time I come back to England 1 am more and more disgnsted with .the merciless rueh, and- the turmoi 1, of strife for money, and 'the paitseless scheming and ousting .of one strugglcr by another. ... The writhing and wriggling of .this maggoty world ia loathsome. ... It is delightful to have done' with the degradation of having al,wayjj .a WqueK-r-pr- still worse, a woman— Helping you"'when you don't need it; degradation to you, because a degradation to. them." * , » ♦ In April, 1891, Dr. Petrie loft Egypt! . for Athens in order, as he says, "to apply the dating which had^beon found at Gurob to the Mykcnaean discoveries." The revolutionary effect of his conclusions, the speed with which they were arrived at, and their prompt acceptance by tho specialists in a province in which he was a stranger inako the episode one -of tho most remarkable in his book, and, I should guess, ia the history of archaeology. The general character-of these conclusions is described in tho paragraph which follows. *' ■': ■■■•#■■■ # The Mykcnaean civilisation was widespread, the objects imitated from Egyptian sources are not made in Egjpt, but made in Greece, allowing evidence of a high civilisation there, capable of inlaying metals in several colours, nnd of pJazing pottery with elaborate patterns. From the cat and lotus on this native work, Ihe makers must have been familiar with Egypt r itself. Then the silver, elk or reindeer, and the Baltic amber show a northern intercourse; and the evident origin of Celtic ornament in the Mykenaean, arid the Scandinavian custom of draping tumulus-chambers, point to a\ continuity with the northern European civilisation.1 We deal, therefore, with a great widespread civilisation, and not a local culture. This agrees with the Egyptian inscriptions whjch ! show : the.-power of the Libyo-Aegean league which attacked them. * *.:.■'.*,■'■ The chronology, with which Dr. Pettie was particularly concerned; is summarised as follows:— Many of the things came from; Egypt 5n 1450 8.C., and the designs even from 1650, which is what we might expect if the Aegean civilisation was already rising •• early as 2500 B.C. [referring to Kamares ware at Kahun]. The epoch of grand tombt*, such as the great treasuries, would be about 1400 to 1200 8.C.; the •plendid cups of gold from Vapheio, which show suck high art, being about 1200. Then 'decadence' set-in," and is markedly known in -.the great finds of Schliemann flMtybt-CTsreg in the circle of the'acro-

polis; those I date about 1100 by-various points, mainly the colours of some green glazed things. ■» « #. ' Then, about 1000 8.C., came in the impressed glass ornaments, as they are nearly always along with ribbed- Egyptian beads of 1000-800 B.C. The tombs Of Menidi, Sparta, Nauplia, and those lately found at Mykenae, all belong to this age. The Doric migration broke up this civilisation there, and a date has just turned up for the "dipylon vases" from two glazed lions in a recent find which cannot be earlier than 650 B.C. As the vases cannot be later, this fixes their date very closely. * * ♦ Professor Ernest Gardner, Dr. Petrie's friend and former colleague, who had become ths head of the British School at Athens, and had helped him in his investigations, naturally looked askance at tho doctor's "heresy."' But when tho .case had been fully stated, Professor Gardner ■ not only became a heretic himself, but declared that his friend had done more, in a week than the Germans had done in ten years to clear up the matter from an Egyptian-basis..' Drj Petrie adds' that despite "the swamping effect of all tho Cretan discoveries, '' there seems little to" alter in, the. .outline reached then, though forty years have fhicc passed. » * * On his way home through Italy in the same year, Dr. Petric travelled with an American archaeologist from, whom he "gathered tho orthodox points of view on ancient art." But surely, if his mentor was anything better than a hide-bound pedant, tho unorthodox man did not get the best of the deal. I wonder whether, in so narrow a compass, even J. E. Green ever paid to any old-world city a mori? beautiful, more vivid, or more thrilling tributo than Petrie pays to Ravenna. •■.,.' ■»■-.■ . * And I went to Ravenna. It is the .Roman world still living. . . . Every other place, almost, has died; Pompeii is dead and 'only stands a skeleton; Egyptian temples are dead; even the Pantheon' is in a new guise. But here are the churches as Honoring and Theodoric built them, brick for brick; here are the mosaics with which they encrusted them exactly as they were put up while Rome was tho world's power, as bright, as ' fresh, as clear, as when the Emperor I passed his approval on them. .'. . « * -if And they are still living buildings, cared for, used, and have never been a day out of human hands and attention f-ince Rome was, and iill northern Europe a wilderness. ... As the mosaics are all of fractured glass not ground or polished, the surfaces t'etain their brilliancy. . . . Ravenna, from its vitality and its perfection, is a far more moving sight than Rome—perhaps the most impressive place that I have ever seen.. It strikes on one as if an ichthyosaurus and plesiosaurus had kept house together in some unworldly nook since Meso/:oic times, and offered to show off for a. trifling consideration.