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CHAPTER XXII (a) - THE EXPANSION OF MYCENAEAN CIVILIZATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Carl W. Blegen
Edited by
I. E. S. Edwards ,
C. J. Gadd ,
N. G. L. Hammond  and
E. Sollberger
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Summary

THE ECLIPSE OF THEBES

The destruction of the Minoan palace centres about 1400 B.C., whatever its cause, left the leadership of the Aegean world thenceforth to Mainland Greece; and for nearly two centuries the Mycenaean civilization was free to develop and enjoy a remarkable prosperity, founded in part on the heritage of Minoan culture which it had already absorbed, in part on new opportunities, vigorously exploited, of commercial and cultural relations with all parts of the eastern Mediterranean. The chronology of the period is based on the typological sequence of Mycenaean pottery styles; and that a reliable dating sequence can be established is due to the remarkable degree of uniformity of style throughout the area in which Mycenaean pottery occurs, a uniformity obviously bound up with the frequent and easy communications that characterize the period. Absolute dating, in turn, depends on the occurrence of Mycenaean pottery in datable contexts in Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, which is evidence of regular traffic with those parts. In these two centuries of maturity Mycenaean Greece becomes, as we shall see, part of a much larger cultural area, comprising the whole eastern Mediterranean, and exists on virtually the same level as the older civilizations in that area. It is, until well into the thirteenth century, a period of prosperity and of peace. There is no observable major event, natural or political, that separates Myc. III a from Myc. Ill b; the two phases may be treated as a continuum. Some hostile encounters abroad the Mycenaean Greeks must surely have had; but we shall find but little trace of them either in the written history of their neighbours or in the archaeological record.

Keywords

PelopidsMycenaean civilizationMycenaean societyThebes
Type
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The Cambridge Ancient History , pp. 165 - 187
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1975

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