at Medinet Habu. 'The isles were restless, disturbed among
themselves,' and it was one of the later waves of that storm which
broke itself against the armed strength of Egypt about 1200 B.C.
Probably the process of migration had been going on for several
generations. The rude but vigorous tribes of the North had been
pressing down upon the races which had created that remarkable
Bronze Age civilization of the Danubian area, whose relics have
been coming to light of late years; and these in their turn, under
the pressure from the North, had been moving down towards the
Mediterranean, driving before them the peoples, probably of kindred
stock to themselves, who had occupied the lands of the Mycenaean
civilization.
We know that long before the Homeric poems took shape the Achaeans
had established themselves as the ruling caste in the Argolid,
in Laconia, and elsewhere; and that the pressure had begun even
while Mycenae was at the height of its power is suggested by the
figures on one of the steles of the Circle-Graves, where a Mycenaean
chieftain in his chariot is pursuing an enemy whose leaf-shaped
sword shows that he was one of the Danubian race. The Mycenaean
was the victor in the first shock; but the steady pressure of the
tribes from the North was not to be permanently resisted, and the
end was the establishment of an alien race in power at Mycenae.
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