July–December 1936

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number of petty principalities. This is in perfect agreement with the picture in Homer, of princes who have a vague feeling of realty but who are in reality independent. That the break-up in Greece and retreat from abroad should come during the reign of Ramses II fits in beautifully with that monarch's agressive nature and specifically with his repulsion of the peoples of the north.

Of course, as I said before there are parts of this which I haven't yet had time to work out in detail, so that there may well be some alterations before I am through. How serious they will be I cannot tell yet, but I think that the main structure will hold together. I am extremely anxious to hear what you think of it, and although I like praise I will certainly be very grateful for any criticism you may have to make. It is a pretentious job and I was perhaps foolish to undertake it, but success is not for the timid. In any case I shall not express myself publicly on the matter until it is all worked out. A job of this sort should either be done well or not at all, and I don't intend to make any of it public until it is all ready. In fact I haven't told anyone about it here for the double reason that I am afraid that somebody may seize the idea and publish it before I can (such things have been known to happen) and secondly that it is still in a flexible state and I don't want to say things now that I will want to take back next year.

To return now to our Tarsus material. My main reason for thinking that our bulla date cannot be applied directly to our Granary Style is that there simply isn't time for a development between the objects found in Egypt securely dated to the reign of Ramesses II, and therefore at the very least as new as 1256, and Granary Style in the middle of the same century. Even if we base our conclusions even on the same date for the Mykenai finds, the same applies. The false-necked jar from Tell el Amarna, and is not which must date after 1366 has the middle period shape, but the decoration is still early. It is very common in Tell el Amarna, and yet it is derostrably 15th in late contexts in Mycenae. I therefore feel certain that my L.H.III, and at the very beginning of my L.H.III grew almost to its last days century. The possibility that my L.H.III grew almost to its last days in less than 50 years is to my mind absolutely out of the question.

Wace in his publication of the Lion Gate deposit makes a serious mistake in calling the lower strata "Tell el Amarna style". In the first place the false-necked jar fig. 6a bears a floral pattern which is not to be found in Tell el Amarna or any other surely dated 14th century context. An ancestor of its is common in Tell el Amarna. but not it itself. I have made a list of examples of that particular stylization of the flowers and discovered that it never occurs on shapes to false-necked jars of the high angular and squat shapes, which are early. It is clearly wedded are of my L.H.III period. This particular piece does not have the lowswung globular shape of the 14th century, but is of a big tall type which is closely related to the Rhodian octopus jars of my L.H.III and of which the earliest examples is dated to the reign of Ramesses II. Thus Wace was wrong in claiming an early 14th century date for this pot, which must be moved up a full century. Furthermore the most common shape in his deposit from the first stratum on up is the bell-shaped bowl. I have already shown that this is not known from Egypt where it has never been reported in dated 14th century deposits; in fact it has never been reported in Egypt where the latest importation is of Ramesses II and only very rarely in Cyprus in the very latest tombs which contained imported Mycenean, and which there is very good reason to date to the middle of the 13th century. Once more, the most common decoration of these … continues