origin of the patterns, or the manner of their disposition on the vases. From the point of view of the natural history of ornament, if I may use the expression, these patterns represent the lowest terms of a series of conventionalisations. They cannot be regarded as original on the pottery or supposed gourd models, but have to be traced back through an ascending series to naturalistic prototypes. In this connexion a further consideration may be advanced. As far as the ornament of primitive peoples has been studied, it appears to be generally associated with religious ideas, and to be talismanic or ceremonial in purpose. Illness, death, and misfortune are not regarded by the primitive mind as due to natural causes, but as the direct effect of the malign influences of superior beings, or powers controlled by hostile persons. The evils of life are to be averted by talismans, and the theory of medicine is based on magic. These ideas have persisted through periods of advanced civilization, and are perhaps better described as unscientific rather than primitive. They were, we know, deeply rooted in Egypt and Chaldæa.

From this point of view ornament is not a department of æsthetics, but belongs to the serious business of life. How far the ornament of domestic pottery may be related to the idea of a spirit life associated with the vase itself, as with the Zuñi Indians, is a matter for evidence in each particular case; but we are, I think, justified in assuming the prevalence of at least a ceremonial use of ornament in the case of sepulchral pottery. It would therefore appear that, although technique may influence the form of conventionalisation of patterns, it could not, according to the preceding line of argument, originate the patterns, which would thus be purposeless. They are, on the contrary, to be traced to the conventionalisation of objects to which a religious or talismanic meaning was attached, and for which they are signatures or symbols.

The geometric lotus forms of the later Cyprian pottery furnish us with a series which explains how the incised forms may have been derived. But inasmuch as the geometric lotus pottery is possibly a thousand years later than the incised, there is no proof that the incised forms have been so derived. The probability that the incised patterns have been derived through a lotus series, rests, however, on the fact that, behind the incised pottery, lies the vast stretch of the lotus ornament of Egypt, reaching back possibly some two thousand years behind the earliest pottery from Cyprus. It may be said that the tracing of everything to the lotus presses the argument too far. But it must be remembered that the lotus is everywhere in Egypt, that practically the entire body of Egyptian ornament, ranging through a period to be counted in millenniums, consists of modifications of the lotus motive, and that therefore it is consistent with the facts that the special features of the great school of design which Egypt presented to the ancient world should constantly recur in the ornament of the Mediterranean peoples. To what extent the incised patterns of Cyprus have been influenced

by the Mycenæan patterns, or vice versa, is still in controversy. Dr. Ohnefalsch-Richter considers that the Cypriote pottery is earlier than that of Mycenae, and contends that the concentric circle ornament was developed as a special feature in Cyprus, where it so abounds on incised and later pottery. On plate ccxvi., he figures No. 14, a vase with incised pattern of a waving band of lines with concentric circles in the alternate spaces. This pattern is found at Mycena and in Hungary, whence, with modifications, it spread to the North (see pattern on pommel of sword, fig. 38). It may be instanced in favour of the priority of the Cyprus examples.

It may be further observed that on Mycena pottery we have examples of lozenge and half-circle patterns, and the system of half-circles applied to vertical lines (figs. 20 and 22). It is thus seen that patterns of the order of the geometric lotus patterns of Cyprus can be put back in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean to a period closing on that of the incised pottery. That the remarkable development of the concentric circle patterns of the incised ware exercised a conservative influence on the later painted pottery of Cyprus may be admitted, but in the period represented by the painted geometric lotus pottery, in which we find normal lotus forms in company with the entire series of conventional derivatives, it seems probable that under the improved conditions of freer methods of execution and increased artistic skill, the series of conventionalisations was re-ascended, and that, taking the incised and geometric lotus forms of Cyprus and the Ægean forms as a whole, we have a body of allied forms in the application of which decorators were constantly passing up and down the series throughout the period of their We must wait, however, for systematic excavations in the Syrian coast-lands, and Asia Minor, before the problems raised by the incised pottery can be finally approached, or the position of Cyprus, in relation to the bronze culture of Europe, fixed.

use.

This digression has run to greater length than I anticipated, but will be found not without a bearing on subsequent portions of our subject.

We may now resume the direct line of our inquiry. Taking the Mycena spiral system as our starting-point on European soil, we find that, as we move westward, the tendency of the spiral to degrade to, and be replaced by, concentric circles is one of the most decisively marked features of Bronze Age ornament in Europe. As already shown, this tendency is noticeable within the Mycena area itself; and it would seem that with the extension of spiral patterns to every-day objects the original decorative impulse was degraded and exhausted.

Figure 36, of a funeral urn, one of a number of urns discovered a few years since in Crete,' illustrates admirably the process of degradation of Mycena ornament, and may here fitly summarise the argument of the earlier sections.

1 Reproduced from "Revue Archéologique," 1892, p. 93.

On the upper portion, inability to cope with the complexity of interlocking spirals, or cheapness of production, has led the decorator to substitute for the systematic treatment of returning spirals of the original models a number of irregularly-placed single spirals. A crude attempt is made to obtain the effect of continuous returning spirals by joining these single spirals by the loose end one to another. On the lower portion of the urn the middle row is formed of spirals joined by tangents, with the exception of the last, in which the spiral is replaced by concentric circles. At both ends of the row, tag lines are added to suggest the idea of a continuous line. The lower row, except the first which is spiral, consists wholly of concentric circles joined by tangents. The ornament filling the centres may be considered as a simplification of the rosette. The pattern on the end of the urn is no doubt a lotus derivative.

West of Greece the spiral rapidly drops out of Bronze Age ornament. The single spiral is Fig. 36.-Funeral Urn found in Crete. found on objects from the lake dwellings and the Terremare of northern Italy,' marking extension of influence to the head of the Adriatic, but it is no longer a characteristic or dominant motive. In Gaul and Spain even the single spiral is not found. Concentric circles, half-circles, lozenge, and x patterns are, however, fully represented in Western Europe.

In contrast with the failure of the spiral westward, we find that if we take a line from the Egean by the Danube Valley through Hungary to the North, the full impulse of the Mycena spiral system is maintained to the Baltic.

In this connexion the following extract will be of interest from a review by Mr. A. J. Evans of Dr. Naue's work on the "Bronze Age in Upper Bavaria" :-In reference to the source of the spiral ornament in the Upper Bavarian region, Dr. Naue institutes a comparison with the spiraliform motives of the Bronze Age decoration of Hungary and Northern Europe on the one side, and of Mycenae on the other, and refers to the parallel decoration of the Egyptian scarabs from the IV. Dynasty onwards. In some respects Mr. Evans is unable to agree with Dr. Naue's conclusion, "and as," he adds, "the diffusion of the spiral

1 Munro's "Lake-Dwellings of Europe," figs. 63, 64, 84, and 85.

2 "Die Bronzezeit in Oberbayern.' By Dr. Julius Naue (Munich, 1894).Academy, April 27th, 1895.

motive is of first-rate importance in the history and chronology of the primitive European culture, a few remarks may not be out of place."

"Dr. Naue suggests that foreign merchants may have introduced this decorative motive into the Upper Bavarian region from the South-that is over the sea from Egypt-laying stress on the occurrence of a single glass bead in one of the graves; and he seems to imply that these foreigners may have been Phoenicians. He con

siders that the Northern traders from the mouth of the Elbe, to whom was due the amber so plentiful in these Bavarian graves, may have here exchanged their native product for Mediterranean wares, and that in this way the spiral ornament found its way to North Germany and Scandinavia. But the answer to this is that the Bronze Age culture and ornament of this northern province stands in a much more intimate relation with that of Hungary, and that the arrival of the spiral ornament over the Brenner Pass would involve its early occurrence in Northern Italy, where it non-existent in

is as Bronze Age remains as in Gaul and Britain."

Figs. 37 and 38.-Bronze Sword-Hilts-Hungary.

Dr. Naue brings down the introduction of the spiral motive in Greece to the fifteenth century B.C., "probably through Phoenician agency." Here Mr. Evans again joins issue, raising the question of the pre-Mycenaean spiral motive in the Ægean, with possible Hungarian extension, discussed in the preceding pages. He concludes that, "whether through the earlier or later agency, there seems, then, every reason for believing that the spiral motive was introduced into the Danubian basin from the Ægean side, and replenished from the same quarter."

The distribution of spiral, undoubtedly, as Mr. Evans says, points to the Egean and Hungary as giving the line of march to the North. The presence of the spiral in the eastern districts of Germany is naturally

accounted for by lateral extensions from the main route. In Upper Bavaria, we are still within reach of the Danube and Elbe connexions.

The views, stated by Mr. Evans, which refer the spiral decoration of the Hungarian and northern regions to a south-eastern line of communication with the Egean have been steadily gaining ground for some years, and may now be regarded as practically accepted in Archæology. As far back as 1881, in an important

Fig. 39.-Denmark.

Fig. 40.-Jutland.

Fig. 41.-Scania.

Paper on the Ornamentation of the Bronze Age in the North, Professor Oscar Montelius published a series of illustrations of spiral and false-spiral

Fig. 43.-Denmark.

ornaments, showing the connexions of the Mycenae group with those of Hungary, and the Scandinavian and North

German region. Having pointed out that from Italy we have scarcely any trace of the spiral prior to the Iron Period, he states the conclusion that the spiral reached the north from the south-east, namely from Greece, by the Danube valley, and probably by way of the Elbe.1 Figures 39 to 43-details from bronze axe-heads, diadems, &c., are reproduced from Professor Montelius's Paper, where the references will be found.

Figure 442-details from a bronze celt of the Danish "paalstab" type, is of unusual interest, as showing the survival in the North of the associated lotus and spiral motive: compare figs. 3 and 4.

Fig.
3. 44.
Denmark.

1" Kgl. Vitterhets Historie och Antiquitets Akademiens Månadsblad," 1881, pp. 34 and 67.

2 "Memoires des Antiquaires du Nord," 1887, p. 258.