7 - LIFE IN MYCENAEAN GREECE

Summary

The glimpse we have suddenly been given of the account books of a long-forgotten people raises at once hopes that through this means we can now gain an insight into life in the Mycenaean age. Just as the Domesday Book is a vivid social document of life in eleventh-century England, so too the tablets cast fitful beams of light on the domestic institutions of prehistoric Greece. But there is of course a vast difference between these two sources. The Domesday Book is not an isolated document, it can be explained and interpreted by contemporary historical records. In Greece an impenetrable curtain separates the fragmentary tablets from the more complete records of the historical period; during the Dark Age which followed the eclipse of the Mycenaean civilization, the recollection of the former ways of life dimmed to vanishing point or survived, if at all, transmuted and confused in folk-memory.

Thus no apology is necessary if the picture which we attempt to give of Mycenaean life is incomplete, distorted and in many respects conjectural. Further research and discoveries will, it is to be hoped, do much to clarify the details; but we may feel confident that the outlines at least are broadly visible. All the same I feel obliged to protest against the facile guesswork which builds far-reaching hypotheses on slender evidence, and I shall risk trying my readers' patience by indicating from time to time the dangers of going too far beyond the meagre facts.