Plate XVI 1A FLIGHT OF THE QUADRUPLE STAIRCASE (p.85)Plate XVI 2WALL WITH DRAIN (p.98)
A FLIGHT OF THE QUADRUPLE STAIRCASE (p.85)
Plate XVI 2
WALL WITH DRAIN (p.98)
More important, however, is the suggestion of Egyptian influence in the grouping of the figures. No one familiar with the details of the ceremony of 'opening the mouth' of the deceased, so continually represented in Egyptian funerary scenes, can fail to recognize the original inspiration of the scene on the Hagia Triada sarcophagus. The tomb in the background, the stiff swathed figure propped like a log in front of it, the leafy branch before the dead man, taking the place of the bunches of lotus-blooms, the offerings of meat, and the sacrifice of the bull—this is an Egyptian funeral with the mourners dressed in Cretan clothes. We havealready seen a priest from the banks of the Nile brandishing his sistrum in the Harvest Procession; and the sarcophagus suggests that Egyptian religious influence was telling, if not on the actual views of the Cretans as to the state of man after death, at all events upon the ceremonial by means of which these views were expressed. Phæstos and Hagia Triada, we must remember, owing to their position, would be more exposed to Egyptian influence than even Knossos, where traces of it are not lacking.
The villa at Hagia Triada showed the same attentive care for sanitary arrangements which has been already noticed at Knossos. Mosso has noted an illustration of the honesty with which the work had been executed. 'One day, after a heavy downpour of rain, I was interested to find that all the drains acted perfectly, and I saw the water flow from sewers through which a man could walk upright. I doubt if there is any other instance of a drainage system acting after 4,000 years.'
The excavations at Knossos, Phæstos, and Hagia Triada have yielded, in the main, evidence of the splendour of the Minoan Kings; but other sites in the island, while presenting perhaps nothing so striking, have added largely to our knowledge of the common life of the Minoan race. At Gournia an American lady, Miss Harriet Boyd (now Mrs. Hawes), made the remarkable discovery of a whole town, mainly dating from the close of the Middle Minoan period, though the site had been occupied from the beginning of the Bronze Age. Gourniahad had its modest palace, occupying an area of about half an acre, with its adaptation, on a diminutive scale, of the Knossian Theatral Area, its magazines, and its West Court, where palace and town met, as at Knossos, for business purposes. But the main interest of the little town centred in its shrine and in the houses of the burghers, with their evidences of a wonderfully even standard of comfortable and peaceful life, by no means untinged with artistic elegance.
The shrine, discovered in 1901, stood in the very heart of the town, and was reached by a much-worn paved way. The sacred enclosure was only some 12 feet square, and Mrs. Hawes is inclined to believe that its rough walls never stood more than 18 inches high, forming merely a littletemenos, in which stood a sacred tree, and the small group of cult objects which were still huddled together in a corner of the shrine. 'It is true that they are very crude, made in coarse terra-cotta, with no artistic skill; nevertheless, they are eloquent, for they tell us that the Great Goddess was worshipped in the town-shrine of Gournia, as in the Palace of Knossos. Here were her images twined with snakes, her doves, the "horns of consecration," the low, three-legged altar-table, and cultus vases. To complete the list, a potsherd was found with the Double Axe moulded upon it, an indication, perhaps, that some who claimed kin with the masters of Crete paid their devotions at this unpretentious shrine.'[*] Thesmallness of the shrine at Gournia may be compared with the smallness of the sacred rooms at Knossos, and seems to have been characteristic of the Minoan worship.
[Footnote *: 'Crete the Forerunner of Greece,' p. 98.]
The 5-feet-broad roadways of the town, neatly paved, are conclusive evidence of the infrequent use of wheeled vehicles. Flush with their borders stand the fronts of the houses. Two-storey houses were common, some of them with a basement storey beneath the ground-floor when the slope of the hill admitted of such an arrangement. In all likelihood the general appearance of the homes was much like that of the comfortable-looking houses depicted on the faïence plaques of Knossos, already referred to. Even ordinary craftsmen's houses have six to eight rooms, while those of the wealthier burghers have perhaps twice as many. Here and there evidences of the former occupations of the inhabitants came to light—a complete set of carpenter's tools in one house, a set of loom weights in another, the block-mould in which a smith had cast his tools in a third. That the citizens of the little town were not entirely ignorant of letters was evidenced by the presence of a tablet bearing an inscription in the linear script of Knossos, Class A, and the beauty of their painted pottery shows that they were by no means lacking in refinement and artistic feeling. The town was sacked and burned about 1500 B.C., as its discoverer thinks, perhaps a century before the fall of the great palace at Knossos. Partially reoccupied, like other Cretan sites, during the Third Late Minoan period,it has since then lain tenantless, waiting the day when its ruined houses should be revealed again to testify to the quiet and peaceful prosperity that reigned under the ægis of the great sea-power of the House of Minos.
At Palaikastro another town of closely-packed houses, covering a space of more than 400 by 350 feet, has been revealed. Its existing remains are of somewhat later date than those of Gournia, and the houses are, on the whole, rather larger, but their general style is much the same. Near the town, at Petsofa, Professor J. L. Myres has unearthed, among a wealth of other votive offerings, a number of curious clay figurines, interesting as being among the earliest examples of polychrome decoration (they belong to Middle Minoan I., and are painted in a scheme of black and white, red and orange), but still more interesting—'with their open corsage, wide-standing collars, high shoe-horn hats, elaborate crinolines, and their general impression of an inaccurate attempt at representing Queen Elizabeth'—as evidence of how utterly unlike was the costume of prehistoric woman in the Ægean area to the stately and simple lines of the classic Greek dress.
The Cretan discoveries have tended as much as any work of recent years to reduce the extravagant claims which used to be put forward on behalf of the Phœnicians as originators of many of the elements of ancient civilization, and evidence is now forthcoming to show that originality in even their most famous and characteristic industry, the dyeing ofrobes with the renowned 'Tyrian purple,' must be denied to them and claimed for the Minoans. In 1903, Messrs. Bosanquet and Currelly found on the island of Kouphonisi (Leuke), off the south-east coast of Crete, a bank of the pounded shell of the murex from which the purple dye was obtained, associated with pottery of the Middle Minoan period; and in 1904 they discovered at Palaikastro two similar purple shell deposits, in either case associated with pottery of the same date.
Plate XVII 1(1) HALL OF THE DOUBLE AXES (p.86)Plate XVII 2(2) GREAT STAIRCASE, KNOSSOS (p.86)
Plate XVII 1
(1) HALL OF THE DOUBLE AXES (p.86)
Plate XVII 2
(2) GREAT STAIRCASE, KNOSSOS (p.86)
At Zakro, on the eastern coast of the island, Mr. Hogarth has excavated the remains of what must have been an important trading-station. In one single house of one of its merchants he came upon 500 clay seal-impressions, with specimens of almost every type of Cretan seal design, which had evidently been used for sealing bales of goods. Some of the Zakro pottery also was of extreme beauty, one specimen in particular, conspicuous from the fact that its delicate decoration had been laid on subsequent to the firing of the vessel, and could be removed by the slightest touch of the finger, showing evident traces of Egyptian influence in its adaptation of the familiar lotus design of Nilotic decorative art (Plate XXIX. 2).
On the tiny island of Mokhlos, only some 200 yards off the northern coast of Crete, to which it was probably united in ancient days, Mr. Seager has excavated, in 1907 and 1908, an Early Minoan necropolis, from which have come some remarkable specimens of the skill with which the ancient Cretanworkmen could handle both stone and the precious metals. Scores of beautiful vases of alabaster, breccia, marble, and soapstone, wrought in some cases to the thinness of a modern china cup, suggest at once the protodynastic Egyptian bowls of diorite and syenite, and show that if the Cretan took the idea from Egyptian models, he was not behind his master in the skill with which he carried it out. Not less surprising is the work in gold, which includes 'fine chains—as beautifully wrought as the best Alexandrian fabrics of the beginning of our era—artificial leaves and flowers, and (the distant anticipation, surely, of the gold masks of the Mycenæ graves) gold bands with engraved andrepousséeyes for the protective blinding of the dead.'[*][**]
[Footnote *: A. J. Evans, theTimes, August 27, 1908.]
[Footnote **: For Mr. Seager's work on the Island of Pseira, see 'Excavations on the Island of Pseira, Crete,' by R. B. Seager. Philadelphia, 1910.]
Excavating outside the area of the palace at Knossos, Dr. Evans opened, on a hill known as Zafer Papoura, about half a mile north of the palace, a large number of Minoan tombs dating from the Third Middle Minoan period onwards. They revealed a civilization still high, though giving evidence of gradual decline in its later stages. The earlier tombs provided, what had been singularly lacking at Knossos, a number of fine specimens of the 'stirrup-' or 'false-necked' vase. There was also a number of bronze vessels and weapons, including swords, some of which were nearly a metre in length. In one tomb, which had evidently belonged to a chieftain, there was found a shortsword of elaborate workmanship, with a pommel of translucent agate, and a gold-plated hilt, on which was engraved a scene of a lion chasing and capturing one of the Cretan wild-goats. The occurrence in some of the tombs of a long rapier and a shorter sword or dagger is unexpected, as there are no representations of the two weapons being worn together in Minoan warfare. Mr. Andrew Lang has made the picturesque suggestion that we may have here an anticipation of the duelling custom of the Elizabethan age, in which the dagger was held in the left hand, and used for parrying thrusts, or for work at close quarters, as in the savage encounter between Sir Hatton Cheek and Sir Thomas Dutton at Calais in 1610.
On the hill of Isopata, between Knossos and the sea, Dr. Evans also discovered a stately sepulchre, whose occupant had evidently been some Minoan King of the Third Middle period. The tomb consisted of a rectangular chamber measuring about 8 by 6 metres, and built of courses of limestone blocks, which projected one beyond the other until they met in a high gable, forming a false arch similar to those of the beehive tombs at Mycenæ. The back wall of the chamber had a central cell opposite to its blocked entrance, and the portal, also false-arched, led into a lofty entrance-hall, in the side walls of which, facing one another, were two cells, which had been used for interments. The whole was approached by an imposing avenue cut in the solid rock. The tomb had been rifled in ancient days, but there still remained a golden hair-pin,parts of two silver vessels, and a large bronze mirror; while among the stone vessels found a diorite bowl again recalled the hard stone vessels of the Early Egyptian dynasties.
The Dictæan Cave has already been mentioned as being peculiarly associated with the legends about the birth of Zeus and his relationship with Minos. Hesiod states that Rhea carried the new-born Zeus to Lyttos, and thence to a cavern in Mount Aigaios, the north-west peak of Dicte. Lucretius, Virgil, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus all knew of a story in which the whole childhood of Zeus had been passed in a cave on Dicte, and Dionysius assigns to the Dictæan Cave that finding of the law by Minos which presents so curious a parallel to the giving of the tables of the law to Moses on Mount Sinai. Minos, he says, went down into the Sacred Cave, and reappeared with the law, saying that it was from Zeus himself. And the last legend, related by Lucian, places in the same cave that union of Zeus with Europa from which Minos sprang. The Dictæan Cave, then, is of special interest in connection with the origins of the Minoan civilization, or, rather, with the fancies which later minds wove around some of the sacred conceptions of the Minoan civilization. It is a large double cavern, south-west of Psychro, and some 500 feet above the latter place. Its exploration by Mr. Hogarth revealed ample evidence of its early connection with the cult of that divinity upon whom the Greeks foisted their own ideas of Zeus.
A scarped terrace overlooking the slope of the hill gives access to the shallow upper grotto, in which were found the remains of an altar, and close by a table of offerings, while the ground beneath the floor of the cave yielded, in regular stratification, Kamares ware, immediately above the virgin soil; then glazed ware, with cloudy brown stripes on a creamy slip; then regular Mycenæan ware, with the familiar marine and plant designs; and, uppermost, bronze. The lower grotto has at first a sheer fall from the upper one, then slopes away for some 200 feet to an icy pool surrounded with a forest of stalagmites; and in this gloomy cavern the evidence was manifest of an ancient cult of a divinity to whom the Double Axe was sacred. There was a great mass of votive offerings of all sorts—engraved gems, bronze statuettes (including a Twenty-second-Dynasty figure of the Egyptian god Amen-Ra), and an abundance of common rings, pins, brooches, and knives; but the chief feature of the find was the Double Axe, of which numerous specimens were found embedded in the stalagmites around the dark pool at the foot of the cavern, some of them still retaining their original shafts. It is evident that the cave on Dicte was the seat of a very ancient worship, connected with that worship whose emblems were the Double Axe Pillars in the Palace of Knossos, and that this worship, as revealed by the character of the remains in the grotto, goes back to the early days of the Minoan civilization.
Throughout all these explorations, covering aconsiderable portion of the island, one common feature presents itself—a feature already noted and commented on in connection with Knossos. Nowhere have we met with anything in the remotest degree resembling the colossal citadel walls which are the most striking feature of Mycenæ and Tiryns. Phæstos and Hagia Triada are as devoid of fortification as Knossos. Gournia and Palaikastro are open towns. Everything points to the existence of a strong and peaceful rule, allowing the natural bent of the island race to develop quietly and steadily during long periods in those lines of work, alike useful and artistic, whose remains excite our admiration to-day, and resting for generation after generation on the sea-power which kept all enemies far from the shores of the fortunate island and guarded the trade-routes of the Ægean.
CRETE AND EGYPT
The question of the relationship between the Minoan civilization and the other great civilizations of the ancient world, particularly those of Babylonia and Egypt, is not only of great intrinsic interest, but also of very considerable importance to the attempt at a reconstruction of the outlines of Minoan history and chronology. For it is only by means of synchronisms with the more or less satisfactorily, established chronology of one or other of these kingdoms that even the most approximate system of dating can be arrived at for the various epochs of the great civilization which the Cretan discoveries have revealed. Had it been possible to establish synchronisms with both Babylonian and Egyptian chronology, the result would not only have been satisfactory as regards our knowledge of the Minoan periods, but might have proved to have a secondary outcome of the very greatest importance in the settlement of the acute controversy which at present rages round the chronology of ancient Egypt from the earliest period down to the rise of the NewEmpire. As it is, this has so far proved to be impossible by reason of the absence from the chain of the Babylonian link.
It may be held as reasonably certain that for many centuries there was no lack of intercourse and interchange of commodities and ideas between Crete and Asia; indeed, it is beginning to be more and more manifest that in that ancient world there was infinitely more intercommunication between the different peoples than had been suspected. Far from the prehistoric age being a time of stagnation, it was rather a time of ceaseless movement. Perhaps the most striking example of the distance across which communication could take place in almost incredibly early times is afforded by the discovery on the site of ancient Troy—the Second City, roughly contemporary with Early Minoan III.—of a piece of white jade, a stone peculiar to China. By what long and devious routes it had reached the coast of Asia Minor who can say? Yet the fact of its occurrence there proves the fact of communication.
Plate XVIIITHE KING'S GAMING-BOARD (p.87)
THE KING'S GAMING-BOARD (p.87)
Up to the present time it cannot be said that any object unquestionably Mesopotamian has been found on any Ægean site, nor any object unquestionably Ægean on a Mesopotamian one. But it has been suggested that certain carved ivories found by Layard at Nimrûd in the Palace of Sennacherib show manifest traces of Ægean influence; and in Southern Syria, at all events—at Gezer, Tell-es-Safi, and elsewhere—indisputably Ægean potteryand weapons have been discovered in sufficient quantity to show that there was certainly communication between the Minoan civilization and the shores of Asia. Intercourse is suggested also by the obvious communities of religious conception existing between Crete and Asia. In both places the divine spirit is believed to associate itself with sacred pillars, such as the Double Axe pillars at Knossos; in both it is personified as a Woman Goddess, the mother of all life, to whom is added a son, who is also a consort; while the emblems of the ancient cults—the guardian lions of the goddess on the hill, the Double Axe, and the triple pillars with perching doves—are property common to both Crete and Asia. This may not point, however, to a continued intercourse, but only to community at some early point of the history of both races.
Of actual traces of Mesopotamian influence singularly few are to be found in Crete. Dr. Evans has shown the correspondence of a purple gypsum weight found during the second season's excavations at Knossos, with the light Babylonian talent, while the ingots of bronze from Hagia Triada represent the same standard of weight. It may be that the drainage system so highly developed at Knossos and Hagia Triada found its first suggestion in the terra-cotta drain-pipes discovered at Niffur by Hilprecht, though it is by no means obvious that copying should be necessary in such a matter. The clay tablets engraved with hieroglyphic and linear script suggest at once the corresponding and universal useof the clay tablet for the cuneiform script of Babylonia; and that is practically all that can be said of any connection between the cultures of Crete and Mesopotamia.
The case is quite different, however, when we come to the relations between Crete and the great civilization of the Nile Valley. In this case there is, if not abundance, at all events a sufficiency of evidence as to an intercourse which extended through practically the whole duration of the Minoan Empire. For the Early Dynastic period of Egyptian history the evidence is somewhat slight, and the interpretation of it not always certain. When we come to the Middle Kingdom of Egypt—a period contemporaneous with Middle Minoan II. and III.—it becomes both more abundant and more unquestionable in meaning; while with the New Empire (Eighteenth Dynasty) and Late Minoan II. we reach absolutely firm ground, the correspondence of art motives, and the actual proofs of intercourse, especially on the Egyptian side, being indisputable. Our object, then, in this chapter is to exhibit the evidence of the relationship between Crete and Egypt, and to inquire to what conclusion it leads us concerning the dates of the various periods of Minoan history.
For the earliest period we are left with somewhat scanty evidence. Professor Petrie has found in some of the First Dynasty graves at Abydos vases of black hand-burnished ware, which are very closely allied, both inform and colour, to the primitive'bucchero' discovered immediately above the Neolithic deposit in the West Court at Knossos; and he has suggested that, as the pottery is not Egyptian in style, it may have been imported from Crete. On various sites in the palace at Knossos there have been found stone vessels of diorite, syenite, and liparite, exquisitely wrought. Now, such work is eminently characteristic of the Early Egyptian Dynastic period, the artists of that time taking a pride in turning out bowls of these intensely hard stones, wrought sometimes to such a degree of fineness as to be translucent. The chances are against these bowls having been imported in later days, as the taste for them gradually died out in Egypt, and 'no ancient nation had antiquarian tastes till the time of the Saïtes in Egypt and of the Romans still later.' The stone vessels discovered by Mr. Seager at Mokhlos, though wrought out of beautiful native materials, betray, according to Dr. Evans, the strong influence of protodynastic Egyptian models. Coming down a little farther, to Early Minoan III., there is evidence of Egyptian influence in the fact that the ivory seals of this period seem to derive their motives from the so-called 'button-seals' of the Sixth Egyptian Dynasty. Mr. H. R. Hall believes that the derivation was the other way about. 'It would seem very probable that this decidedly foreign decoration motive was adopted by the Egyptians from the Ægeans about the end of the Old Kingdom (=Early Minoan III.), so that the Egyptian seal designs are copied from those of the Cretan seal-stones,rather than the reverse. Egyptian designs were very ancient, and had the spiral been Egyptian, we should have found it in the art of the Old Kingdom. It was a foreign importation, and its place of origin is evident.'[*] Whether in this case the Minoan borrowed from the Egyptian or the Egyptian from the Minoan is, however, immaterial; either way the fact of intercourse is established.
[Footnote *: Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, vol. xxxi., part v., p. 222.]
We may assume, then, that, in all probability, there was intercourse of some kind between Crete and Egypt as early as the time of the First Egyptian Dynasty, and that by the time of the Sixth Dynasty, which marks the close of the great period of the Old Kingdom in Egypt—the period of the Pyramid Builders (Third to Sixth Dynasty)—intercourse was common. In fact, it may be said that, from the origin of both peoples, the likelihood is that they were in contact. It is possible enough that both the Nilotic and the Minoan civilization sprang from a common stock, and that the Neolithic Cretans and the Neolithic Egyptians were alike members of the same widespread Mediterranean race.
Plate XIX 1Plate XIX 2IVORY FIGURES AND HEADS FROM KNOSSOS (p.76)From 'Annual of the British School of Athens,' by permission
Plate XIX 1
Plate XIX 2
IVORY FIGURES AND HEADS FROM KNOSSOS (p.76)
From 'Annual of the British School of Athens,' by permission
How was the connection between Crete and Egypt maintained at this extremely early period? Professor Petrie believes that it was by the natural and direct sea-route across the Mediterranean. The representations of vessels painted on pre-dynastic Egyptian ware show that the Neolithic Egyptians were familiar, to some extent, with the building andthe use of ships, and Professor Petrie supposes that galleys such as those represented were the ships by means of which the Egyptians and Cretans maintained their intercourse. Mr. Hall, on the other hand, maintains that this is impossible, and that the boats of the pre-dynastic ware are merely small river-craft, totally unfitted for seafaring work.[*] In his 'Oldest Civilization of Greece' he roundly asserts 'that these boats were the ships which plied between Crete and Egypt some 4,000 years B.C. Nothing can ever prove'; and he therefore believes that the communication was kept up by way of Cyprus and the Palestinian coast. But the evidence either way is of so extremely slight a character, and the delineations in question are so rude, that it might as well be said that nothing can ever prove that these boats werenotthe ships which plied between Crete and Egypt. It does not seem obvious why the voyage between Crete and Egypt should be impossible to navigators who could accomplish that between Crete and Cyprus; and if communication were maintained by way of Cyprus, it seems strange that that island should show practically no trace of having been influenced by Minoan civilization until a comparatively late date. 'It was not till the Cretan culture had passed its zenith and was already decadent that it reached Cyprus.'[**] That the Homeric Greeks were by no means daring navigators does not necessarilyimply that an island race, whose whole tradition throughout its history was of sea-power, should have been equally timid. When it is remembered in what type of vessel the Northmen risked the Atlantic passage, one would be slow to believe that even in immediately post-Neolithic times the Cretans could not have evolved a type of boat as adequate to the run between Crete and the Nile mouths as the 'long serpents' were to face the Atlantic rollers.
[Footnote *: 'Egypt and Western Asia,' p. 129.]
[Footnote **: H. R. Hall, Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, vol. xxxi., part v., p. 227.]
But however the case may stand with regard to the pre-dynastic period, there can be no question that by the end of the Third Dynasty even Egypt had developed a marine not inadequate to the requirements of the Cretan passage. We know that Sneferu, the last King of the Third Dynasty, sent a fleet of forty ships to the Syrian coast for cedar-wood, and that in his reign a vessel was built of the very respectable length of 170 feet. Coming farther down, we know also that Sahura of the Fifth Dynasty sent a fleet down the Red Sea as far as Punt or Somaliland. And if the Egyptians, by no means a great seafaring race, were able to do such things at this period of their history, surely an island race, whose sole pathway to the outer world lay across the sea, would not be behind them. There can scarcely be any question that, by the time of the Pyramid builders at latest, Cretan galleys were making the voyage to the Nile mouths, and unloading at the quays of Memphis, under the shadow of the new Pyramids, their primitive wares,among them the rude, hand-burnished black pottery, in return for which they carried back some of the wonderful fabric of the Egyptian stone-workers.
But supposing that the connection between the primitive Minoan civilization and the earliest Dynasties of Egypt is a thing established, what does this enable us to assert as to the date to which we are to ascribe the dawn of the earliest culture that can be called European? Here, unfortunately, we are at once involved in a controversy in which centuries are unconsidered trifles, and a millennium is no more than a respectable, but by no means formidable, quantity. Egyptian chronology may be regarded as practically settled from the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty downwards. There is a general consent of authority that Aahmes, the founder of that Dynasty, began to reign about 1580 B.C., and the dates assigned by the various schools of chronology to the subsequent Dynasties differ only by quantities so small as to be practically negligible. But when we attempt to trace the chronology upwards from 1580 B.C., the consent of authorities immediately vanishes, and is replaced by a gulf of divergence which there is no possibility of bridging. The great divergence occurs in the well-known dark period of Egyptian history between the Twelfth and the Eighteenth Dynasties, where monumental evidence is extremely scanty, almost non-existent, and where historians have to grope for facts with no better light to guide them than is afforded by the History of Manetho, and the tornfragments of the Turin Papyrus. The traditional dating used to place the end of the Twelfth Dynasty somewhere around 2500 B.C., allowing thus some 900 odd years for the intervening dynasties before the rise of the Eighteenth. The modern German school, however, represented by Erman, Mahler, Meyer, and the American, Professor Breasted, arguing from the astronomical evidence of the Kahun Papyrus, cuts this allowance short by over 700 years, allowing only 208 years for the great gap, and proposing to pack the five Dynasties and the Hyksos domination into that time. Professor Petrie, finally, accepting, like the German school, the astronomical evidence of the Kahun Papyrus, interprets it differently, and pushes back the dates by a complete cycle of 1,460 years, allowing 1,666 years for the gap between the Twelfth Dynasty and the Eighteenth. Thus, even between the traditional and the German dating there is a gulf of 700 years for all dates of the Twelfth Dynasty, while as between the German dating and that of Professor Petrie the gulf widens to over 1,400 years.
Into the question of which system of dating should be adopted it is impossible to enter, though it may be said that if 1,666 years seems a huge allowance for the five Dynasties, 208 years seems almost incredibly small. The result is what concerns us here, and we are faced with the fact that, while the traditional dating places the First Egyptian Dynasty at about 4000 B.C., the German school would bring it down to 3400 B.C., and Professor Petrie thrusts itback to 5510 B.C. Dr. Evans, in provisionally assigning dates to the periods of Minoan history, formerly drew nearer to the traditional than to either the German dating or that of Professor Petrie; but he has gradually modified this position, and now dates his Middle Minoan II., which synchronizes with the Twelfth Egyptian Dynasty, at 2000 B.C., thus practically accepting the chronology of the German school. This would place Early Minoan I., which must be equated with the First Dynasty, about 3400 B.C. Practically, all that can be said with a moderate amount of certainty is that the earliest civilization of Crete, like that of Egypt, was in existence at a period not much later than 3500 B.C., while it is not impossible that it may be 1,500 years older. Even accepting the lower figure, the antiquity of man's first settlements on the hill of Kephala becomes absolutely staggering to the mind. If the growth of deposit on the hill was at the rate of something like 3 feet in a millennium—a reasonable supposition—it follows that we must place the earliest habitations of Neolithic man at Knossos not later than 10000, perhaps as early as 12000 B.C.
It is not till many centuries after the Sixth Egyptian Dynasty had passed away that we come upon fresh evidence of the connection between the two countries. The earlier palaces at Knossos and Phæstos had been built, and the first period of Middle Minoan, with its beginnings of polychrome decoration and its Queen Elizabeth figurines from Petsofa, had come and gone in Crete, while inEgypt the corresponding period had been marked by the troublous times between the Seventh and the Eleventh Dynasties. But the rise of the Twelfth Dynasty in Egypt marked the beginning of a more stable state of affairs in the Nile Valley, and in this period, which corresponds with Dr. Evans's Middle Minoan II., there are again evidences of touch between the two kingdoms. With regard to absolute dating, we are of course as much in the dark as ever, and may choose between 2000, 2500, and 3459 B.C. In any case, at this point, put it provisionally at 2000 B.C., the Egypt of the Senuserts and Amenemhats and the Crete of Middle Minoan II. are manifestly contemporaneous, and in well-established connection. In Crete this was the period when the beautiful polychrome Kamares ware was at the height of its popularity, and at Kahun, close to the pyramid of Senusert II., Professor Petrie some years ago discovered some unquestionable specimens of this fine ware, which had certainly been imported from Crete, as the fabric is one quite unknown to native Egyptian ceramic art. Even more conclusive was Professor Garstang's discovery, in an untouched tomb at Abydos, of a polychrome vessel in the latest style of the period, in company with glazed steatite cylinders, which bear the names of Senusert III. and Amenemhat III., the last great Kings of the Twelfth Dynasty.
But the most interesting link between the two countries is found in the fact that in this period there was erected in Egypt the building which came to belooked on as the parallel to the Cretan Labyrinth, and which, with a curious inversion of the actual facts, was long supposed to be the original from which the Cretan Labyrinth was derived. The pyramid of Amenemhat III., the greatest King of the great Twelfth Dynasty, and indeed one of the greatest men who ever held the Egyptian sceptre, stood at Hawara, near the mouth of the Fayum. Not far from it Amenemhat erected a huge temple, such as had never been built before, and never was built again, even in that land of gigantic structures. The great building was erected, in a taste eminently characteristic of the Middle Kingdom, of great blocks of fine limestone and crystalline quartzite. It has long since disappeared, having been used as a quarry for thousands of years; but the size of the site, which can still be traced, shows that in actual area the temple covered a space of ground within which Karnak, Luqsor, and the Ramesseum, huge as they all are, could quite well have stood together.
Even in the time of Herodotus enough was still remaining of this vast building to excite his profound wonder and admiration, and it seemed to him a more remarkable structure than even the Pyramids. 'It has,' he says, 'twelve courts enclosed with walls, with doors opposite each other, six facing the north, and six the south, contiguous to one another, and the same exterior wall encloses them. It contains two kinds of rooms, some under ground, and some above ground over them, to the number of 3,000, 1,500 of each.' He was not allowed to inspect the undergroundchambers. 'But the upper ones, which surpass all human works, I myself saw; for the passages through the corridors, and the windings through the courts, from their great variety, presented a thousand occasions of wonder as I passed from a court to the rooms, and from the rooms to halls, and to other corridors from the halls, and to other courts from the rooms. The roofs of all these are of stone, as also are the walls; but the walls are full of sculptured figures. Each court is surrounded with a colonnade of white stone, closely fitted.'[*] Herodotus believed that the building belonged to the time of Psamtek I., in which, of course, he was ludicrously far astray, but otherwise there seems no reason to question that his description actually represents what he saw, though no doubt his lively mind somewhat multiplied the number of the rooms.
[Footnote *: Herodotus II. 148.]
Pliny the elder, judging from his description, evidently saw much the same thing at Hawara as Herodotus had seen, though time must have somewhat diminished the splendour of the building. Now, to this temple there was already applied in the time of Herodotus the name Labyrinth. It used to be believed that the Hawara Labyrinth gave its name to the Cretan one, and an Egyptian etymology was arranged for the word 'labyrinth,' according to which it would have meant 'the temple at the mouth of the canal.' The Egyptian form of the title, however, is 'a mere figment of the philological imagination.' Probably originality lies in theother direction. The first palace at Knossos dates from a period certainly as early as, probably somewhat earlier than, the Hawara temple; and since the derivation of the word 'labyrinth' from the Labrys or Double Axe, making the palace the House or Place of the Double Axe, seems quite satisfactory, the Egyptian Labyrinth in all likelihood derived its name from the House of Minos at Knossos. Apart, however, from any mere question of names, there appears the interesting parallel that the two most famous Labyrinths, the first palace at Knossos, and the great Hawara temple, actually belong to the same period—a period when, as we know from the other evidence, there was certainly active intercourse between the two nations.
Mr. Hall has pointed out[*] the resemblance between the actual building at Knossos and the descriptions left to us of its Egyptian contemporary. The literary tradition of the Labyrinth of Minos is that it was a place of mazy passages and windings, difficult to traverse without a guide or clue, and the actual remains at Knossos show that the palace must have answered very well to such a description, while the feature of the Hawara temple which struck both Herodotus and Pliny was precisely the same. 'The passages through the corridors and the windings through the courts, from their great variety, presented a thousand occasions of wonder.' The resemblance extended to the material of which the buildings were erected. The fine white limestoneof Hawara must have closely resembled the shining white gypsum of Knossos, and though the Egyptian Labyrinth has passed away too completely for us to be able to judge of its masonry, yet the splendid building work of the Eleventh Dynasty temple of Mentuhotep Neb-hapet-Ra at Deir-el-Bahri, with its great blocks of limestone beautifully fitted and laid, affords a good Middle Kingdom parallel to the great gypsum blocks of the Knossian palace. Of course we cannot attribute to Cretan influence the style of the Egyptian building in this respect. For hundreds of years the Egyptians had been past masters in the art of great construction with huge blocks of stone, so that, if there is to be any derivation on this point, it may rather have been Crete which followed the example of Egypt. But it may not be altogether a mere coincidence that, in a period of Egyptian history which we know to have been linked with an important epoch of Cretan development, there should have been erected in Egypt a building absolutely unparalleled, so far as we know, among the architectural triumphs of that nation, but bearing no distant resemblance, if the descriptions are to be trusted, to the great palace which the Minoan Sovereigns had newly reared, or were, perhaps, still rearing, for themselves at Knossos. Is it permissible to fancy that the envoys of Amenemhat III. may have brought back to Egypt reports and descriptions of the great Cretan palace which may have fired that King with the desire to leave behind him a memorial, unique among Egyptian buildings, butinspired by the actual achievements of his brother monarchs in Crete? Whether the idea of this relation between the two buildings be merely fanciful or not, their resemblances add another illustration to the proofs of the close connection between the Minoan and the Egyptian cultures in the third millennium B.C.
[Footnote *:Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1905, part ii.]
With the succeeding Cretan epoch, Middle Minoan III., we come into touch with the dark age of Egyptian history, the great gap covering Dynasties XIII.-XVII., towards the close of which is to be placed the Hyksos domination. As the age was so troubled in Egypt, it is scarcely probable that we shall find much evidence there of any connection between the two lands; but the evidence found on Cretan soil, though slight, is conclusive as to the fact that communication was maintained. For the earlier part of the period we have the statuette, already mentioned as having been found at Knossos, bearing the name of 'Ab-nub's child, Sebek-user, deceased, born of the lady Sat-Hathor.' 'Who Sebek-user was,' as Mr. Hall remarks, 'and how his statuette got to Crete, we have no means of knowing.' But the 'deceased' in the inscription shows that the statuette was a funerary or memorial one, and it is hardly likely that such an object was imported merely for its own sake or for its artistic value, which is slight enough. May it not be that either Ab-nub, the father, or Sebek-user, the son, or both, may have been Egyptians resident at the Court of Knossos, eitheras representatives of Egyptian interests or as skilled artificers, and that the statuette is the memorial of one who died far from his native land, but not without friends to see that he did not lack the funerary attentions which would have been his at home? No doubt there was interchange of persons as well as of commodities between the two lands; some of the artists and craftsmen of both countries would naturally go to where there was a demand arising for their work, or where instructors were being sought to teach the new arts; and Ab-nub and his son Sebek-user may have drifted to Knossos in this manner, and found at last their graves there. Were they conceivably responsible for the 'imported alabaster vases dating from the Middle Kingdom of Egypt,' which were found in the royal tomb at Isopata?
Towards the close of this epoch the ceramic art of Knossos shows features which are directly attributable to Egyptian influence. The art of glazing pottery was not a native Cretan, but an Egyptian art; it is in full use in Egypt from the very beginnings of the First Dynasty. But now we find it appearing in a high state of development in Crete in the beautiful faïence reliefs of the wild-goat and kids, the vases with the wild-rose in relief on the lip, and the figurines of the Snake Goddess and her votaresses. The Cretan artists, however, though they borrowed the process, adapted it to their own tastes. In Egypt the native faïence of the time is of strictly conventional type, with black design onblue; but the Cretan emancipated himself from these limits, and made his faïence reliefs in the polychrome style, which still persisted, though now no longer so prevalent as it had once been.
The disastrous period of the Hyksos domination in Egypt has left but one trace at Knossos, but that is of peculiar interest, for it is the lid of an alabastron bearing the name of the Hyksos King Khyan. It cannot be said that we know any of the Hyksos Kings, but Khyan is the one whose relics are the most widely distributed and have the most interest. The finding of the lid at Knossos, his farthest west, is balanced by the lion, bearing his cartouche, found many years ago at Baghdad, his farthest east, while in his inscriptions he calls himself 'Embracer of territories.' So it has been suggested that the Knossos lid and the Baghdad lion are the scanty relics of a great Hyksos empire which once extended from the Euphrates to the First Cataract of the Nile, and possibly also held Crete in subjection. In all likelihood, however, the idea is merely a dream; certainly so far as regards Crete it is most improbable. In the palmiest days of the Egyptian navy the Pharaohs never held any dominion over Crete, and even Cyprus was never really under their rule. It is much less likely still that a King of the Hyksos race, whose whole tradition is of the land and the desert, should have succeeded in establishing any suzerainty over a race whose whole tradition is of the sea, and which was then in the full pride of its strength.
Another era of history has passed away before we again find Crete and Egypt in close touch with one another. In Crete the last period of Middle Minoan had been succeeded by the first of Late Minoan, in which the great palace of the Middle period was being gradually transformed into a still larger and more magnificent structure, which was not to be completed until the succeeding period. In Egypt the Seventeenth Dynasty had at last, after long hesitation, picked up the gauntlet thrown down by the Hyksos conquerors, and the War of Independence had resulted in the expulsion of the Desert Princes and their race. The conquering Dynasty had been succeeded by the Eighteenth, the Dynasty of Queen Hatshepsut, Tahutmes III., and Amenhotep III., and Egypt was in the full tide of a great revival, alike in world-influence, in trade, and in art. Queen Hatshepsut, who states in one of her inscriptions that 'her spirits inclined towards foreign peoples,' had sent out her squadron to Somaliland, and Tahutmes III. had organized a war-fleet on the Mediterranean coast-line. The ancient Empire of the Nile was opening its arms in every direction to outside influences, and was drawing into the ports of the great river the commercial and artistic products of every known people.
Among the races who are most prominent in the Egyptian records of the period are the Keftiu, who are frequently represented in the paintings of the time, and always with the same characteristic features, the same dress and bearing, the sameproducts of commerce and art. Who, then, were the Keftiu? The word means the people or the country 'at the back of'—in other words, at the back of 'the Very Green,' as the Egyptians called the Mediterranean. So that the Keftians with whom the merchants and courtiers of Egypt grew familiar in the times of Hatshepsut and Tahutmes III. Were to them the men 'from the back of beyond'—the farthest distant people with whom they had any dealings. But what race could correspond to these 'back of beyond' men? In Ptolemaic times the word 'Keftiu' was unquestionably applied to the Phœnicians, who had for long been the great seafarers and carriers of the Mediterranean; and till recent years it was generally believed that the Keftiu of the Eighteenth Dynasty were Phœnicians also, though their faces, as depicted on the Egyptian wall-paintings, did not bear the slightest trace of Semitic cast. But the discoveries of the last few years have demolished that idea for ever, along with many other beliefs as to the influence of the overrated Phœnicians upon the culture of the Mediterranean area, and the pictures of the Minoans of Knossos have made it certain that the Keftiu of the Eighteenth Dynasty were none others than the ambassadors, sailors, and merchants of the Sea-Kings of Crete. Fortunately, the tomb-painting which has preserved so many interesting details of Egyptian life, was never more assiduously practised or more happily inspired than at this period. In all the chief tombs there are pictured processions of Northerners,Westerners, Easterners, and Southerners, the North being represented by Semites, the East by the men of Punt, the South by negroes, and the West by the Keftiu; and we can compare the men of the Knossos frescoes with their fellow-countrymen as depicted on the tomb-walls of the Theban grandees, and be certain that, allowing for the differences in the style of art, they are essentially the same people. The tombs which preserve best the figures of the Keftiu are those of Sen-mut and Rekh-ma-ra. That of Sen-mut is the earlier, though only by a generation, or perhaps rather less. He was the architect of Queen Hatshepsut, the man who planned and executed the great colonnaded temple at Deir-el-Bahri, and who set up Hatshepsut's gigantic obelisks. His tomb at Thebes overlooks the temple which he built at his Queen's command to be 'a paradise for Amen,' and on its walls we can see 'the men from the back of beyond' walking in procession, each with his offering to present to the Pharaoh. There can be no question as to who they are. The half-boots and puttees, the decorated girdle compressing the waist, not quite so tightly as in the Minoan representations, the gaily adorned loin-cloth, which is the only article of attire, all are practically identical with the type of such a fresco as that of the Cupbearer at Knossos. The conscientious Egyptian artists have carefully represented also the elaborate coiffure which was characteristic of the Minoans, who allowed their hair to fall in long tails down their shoulders, doing part of it up in a knotor curl on the top of the head. The tribute-bearers carry in their hands or upon their shoulders great vessels of gold and silver, some of them exactly resembling in shape the Vaphio cups, though much larger than these, some of them of the type of the bronze ewer found in the north-west house at Knossos.