Lesson 8: Art and Architecture
The Origins of Greek Art
In the nineteenth century, it was generally believed that Greek art had developed by itself with little or no outside influence. Like almost everything else in Ancient History, this view has been challenged in recent years, and the topic is now hotly debated.
We now know for certain that the Mycenaeans who lived in Greece during the Bronze Age spoke a language that was similar to Greek. This language is probably the one from which the Greek language itself is descended.
It is therefore very likely that 'Greek' art, which is usually taken to mean the art of Greece after the eighth century BC, was directly descended from Mycenaean art.
Mycenaean civilisation as a whole was strongly influenced by the earlier Minoan civilisation based in Crete. In fact, in many ways the early Mycenaean civilisation can be considered to have been no more than a provincial version of the Minoan one.
During the Late Bronze Age, trading and cultural links spanned the entire Eastern Mediterranean region.
Minoan style frescoes (some showing the 'bull-dancers' for which the Minoans are famed) have been unearthed in excavations in the city of Avaris in the Nile Delta region. Avaris was originally the capital of the Hyksos, who were Syro-Palestinian invaders who conquered northern Egypt early in the second millenium BC.
Even some of the weapons found in the tomb of the Egyptian queen Ahhotep (the mother of the pharoah Ahmose, who founded the New Kingdom) have been described as showing ‘Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean’ motifs.
It may even be possible that Queen Ahhotep was herself a Mycenaean princess who had married the ruler of the Egyptian city of Thebes.
It is only logical then, to imagine that there must have been Egyptian and Near Eastern influences moving in the opposite direction, that is, into the Aegean region.
This is all the more likely because Egypt and the Near East were, at that time, far more advanced than the Aegean cultures, and therfore probably more dominant.
This theory is not accepted by all scholars, many of whom still believe that the Minoan and Mycenaean civilisations had only minimal external cultural influences.
