Greek pottery. We need not stop here to study the rude, unpainted,
mostly hand-made vases from the earliest strata at Troy and
Tiryns, nor the more developed, yet still primitive, ware of the
island of Thera. But the Mycenaean pottery is of too great
importance to be passed over. This was the characteristic ware of
the Mycenaean civilization. The probability is that it was
manufactured at several different places, of which Mycenae may
have been one and perhaps the most important. It was an article of
export and thus found its way even into Egypt, where specimens
have been discovered in tombs of the Eighteenth Dynasty and later.
The variations in form and ornamentation are considerable, as is
natural with an article whose production was carried on at
different centers and during a period of centuries. Fig. 42 shows
a few of the characteristic shapes and decorations; some
additional pieces may be seen in Fig. 43. The Mycenaean vases are
mostly wheel-made. The decoration, in the great majority of
examples, is applied in a lustrous color, generally red, shading
to brown or black. The favorite elements of design are bands and
spirals and a variety of animal and vegetable forms, chiefly
marine. Thus the vase at the bottom of Fig. 42, on the left, has a
conventionalized nautilus; the one at the top, on the right, shows
a pair of lily-like plants; and the jug in the middle of Fig. 43
is covered with the stalks and leaves of what is perhaps meant for
seaweed. Quadrupeds and men belong to the latest period of the
style, the vase-painters of the early and central Mycenaean
periods having abstained, for some reason or other, from those
subjects which formed the stock in trade of the gem-engravers.

The Mycenaean pottery was gradually superseded by pottery of an
essentially different style, called Geometric, from the character