Definition of bce

(Nathan Rapport, ""I've Been Here before!"...)

Dr._H._V._Hilprecht , Professor of Assyrian at the University_of_Pennsylvania , dreamed that a Babylonian priest , associated with the king Kurigalzu , ( 1300 B.C. . ) escorted him to the treasure chamber of the temple of Bel , gave him six novel points of information about a certain broken relic , and corrected an error in its identification .

(Chester G. Starr, The Origins of Greek Civili...)

Whenever artists , indeed , turned_to actual representations or molded three-dimensional_figures , which were rare down to 800 B.C. , they tended to reflect reality ( see Plate 6a , 9b ) ; a schematic , abstract treatment of men and animals , by intent , rose only in the late eighth century .

From even a cursory inspection of its many aspects , however , the historian can deduce several fundamental conclusions about the progress of the Aegean world down to 800 B.C.

One can take a vase of about 800 B.C. and , without any knowledge of its place_of_origin , venture to assign it to a specific area ; imitation and borrowing of motifs now become ascertainable .

By 800 B.C. the Aegean was an area of common tongue and of common culture .