CHAPTER XV
Onthe map of the world, Great Britain is small. That men should go forth from this little island and win their way in so many distant lands, that this island people should wield such power over the earth, that they should venture into the unknown places and bring vast areas under the dominion of England, seems incredible. If we were not aware that this is the literal truth, we should find it hard to believe, we might even feel inclined to doubt it. The fact that the mighty British Empire has all sprung from this little island in the North Sea is one of the most astounding things in the world.
In olden times it was thought that all the world centred round the Mediterranean Sea, that the earth consisted only of those lands bordering the Mediterranean. In bygone days, long before the dawn of history, it is possible that Crete dominated the known world of that day just as the Island of Great Britain dominates the world of our own day.
The British Empire is tangible proof of whatone little island can do. There is no reason why Crete should not have done the same in the past, why that little island set in the vivid blue of the Mediterranean should not have influenced all the lands on the Mediterranean shore. We do not know. We cannot say. We have learned much, but more remains to be unravelled from the tangled skein that Time has woven in Crete.
As already mentioned, Schliemann, bringing all the knowledge he had gained in his amazing excavations at Troy, at Mycenæ and other places, to bear on the subject of the origin of the Mediterranean civilization, placed his finger on Knossos as the centre whence it sprang. His uncanny instinct was once more right. He wandered about the lonely places of Crete, still with faith in the Homer who led him to discover Troy, feeling sure that at Knossos he would find the fabled palace of King Minos, but death prevented him from making the biggest discovery of all.
The work that the German excavator left undone was taken up by Sir Arthur Evans. Unfolding his tent on the barren site of Knossos, Sir Arthur Evans set his diggers to work. They dug diligently, scanning every spadeful of earth for traces of man. They excavated a yard of soil, 6 feet, 10 feet, wielding pick and shovel, carrying the debris away in baskets. They found many things, broken jars,decorated pottery, but most important of all were the clay tablets inscribed with the puzzling writing of the Minoans.
By courtesy of the British School at AthensA GENERAL VIEW OF THE RUINS OF THE PALACE OE KNOSSOS IN CRETE, WHERE SIR ARTHUR EVANS HAS DISCOVERED A NEW AND HIGHLY DEVELOPED CIVILIZATION, WITH A WRITING WHICH CANNOT YET BE READ
By courtesy of the British School at AthensA GENERAL VIEW OF THE RUINS OF THE PALACE OE KNOSSOS IN CRETE, WHERE SIR ARTHUR EVANS HAS DISCOVERED A NEW AND HIGHLY DEVELOPED CIVILIZATION, WITH A WRITING WHICH CANNOT YET BE READ
By courtesy of the British School at Athens
A GENERAL VIEW OF THE RUINS OF THE PALACE OE KNOSSOS IN CRETE, WHERE SIR ARTHUR EVANS HAS DISCOVERED A NEW AND HIGHLY DEVELOPED CIVILIZATION, WITH A WRITING WHICH CANNOT YET BE READ
Still they went on, getting deeper and deeper, until the pick of a digger struck a paving stone. They shovelled the rubbish away and disclosed another stone, then another. At last Sir Arthur Evans had reached the stone pavement of a palace.
Excavations were continued, and gradually the throne-room of the Palace of Knossos was bared once more to human eyes, after lying under the debris for countless generations. Here were the stone seats arranged round the walls for the councillors, here was the throne on which sat the king who laid tributary on all the lands about the Mediterranean, a stone throne, hollowed in the seat to give comfort, with a stone back carved in a series of six curves rising to a half-circle at the top, the solid block comprising the seat carved at the front to indicate legs. Here in this ancient palace he held audiences, sent his messengers forth in their galleys to claim tribute at Athens, issued his decrees.
“Go,” he said, and they went.
And when after feasting he desired amusement and relaxation, he would beckon his henchman. “Fetch me maidens to dance and sing,” he would say, and there would be the sound of twanging strings and the pitter-patter of little naked feet on the stonefloor, feet with toes pink as rosebuds, lithe limbs, flowing draperies.
And the king, feasting his eyes on the beauty of his dancers, would dream of the youths and maidens even then aboard his galleys on their way from Athens to Crete, the youths and maidens who were the yearly tribute.
The hot sun, beating down on the well-tended vineyards, drew the nectar of the earth to the grapes, brushed them with a delicate bloom ere they fell beneath the feet of the winepressers to yield the juice that made the feasters merry. The blossom of the olive groves was succeeded by tiny green olives which swelled in the heat until they were ready to yield their rich oil which was so welcome to the people of other lands. Artists worked happily on the plaster walls, laying on their colours to delight the eye, potters kneaded their clay until it was as butter under the ball of the thumb. The people spun and sewed and draped their bodies in comely garments. But most of all they valued health, realized the necessity for adequate drainage.
Did they become too civilized, these ancient people? Did they grow lazy in their luxury, disinclined to work? Who knows! Perhaps it was so. At any rate, desolation swept over them and blotted them out, just as the cities on the site of Troy were blotted out again and again.
We can imagine the galleys of the invadersapproaching the rocky coasts, the cries of alarm running through the palaces and over the island, the invaders springing ashore, fierce, strong, hard, not softened by too much civilization, relying on their own strength and weapons for sustenance, not upon the tribute exacted from other lands. Muscular arms that had thrust the galleys through the Mediterranean, dropped the sweeps and caught up weapons as the keels grounded. The sea curled about the legs of the invaders as they dropped over the prow and swarmed ashore. Fighters, every one, asking no quarter, giving none, seeking plunder with the sword, valuing other lives not at all and their own but little.
See the women shrinking into the corners of the palaces, eyes full of fear, sensing approaching doom; men shouting and gasping, the invaders sweeping forward and cutting them down. A semi-barbarous people conquering a civilized people, cold iron superseding bronze, uncultured men with superior weapons triumphing over culture with inferior weapons.
Long, long ago something like this happened in Crete; the palaces of the ancient people were toppled about their ears and palaces and people vanished into oblivion.
Gaze on another scene thousands of years later. Absolute desolation on the hill of Kephala. No sound of music nor pitter-patter of pink feet onnaked stones, only the song of the breeze; no sign of palaces, conquered and conquerors alike swept into the gulf of Time; only the same blue sea a mile or two away singing its eternal song on the same rocky coast.
Men are swinging picks into the bosom of the earth, making great gashes and gaps in the hill, picking over the loosened rubbish, throwing it into baskets and carrying it away. An easy movement of the arm sends the contents of the basket sliding down the face of the dump, and the black-haired labourer turns back for another load.
Suddenly a digger glimpses something amid the heap of rubbish loosened by the point of the pick. He stoops like a hawk to its prey and brushes aside the soil with his fingers, scrapes carefully about the object, and in a minute has it free.
It is merely a piece of yellow pottery with red decorations. Almost before the finder has had time to look at the fragment, a man scrambles down to him and, taking the fragment, carefully removes all traces of soil.
Keen eyes scrutinize the little piece of pottery, and thoughts go crowding through the brain. Visions of Egypt leap up, of a similar fragment found in a tomb far over the blue sea to the south, past the age-old Pyramids and the modern wonder of Assouan. Back and back thoughts fly through the ages, back to the earliest kings who swayedthe earliest communities in the Nile Valley, all because of a fragment of burnt earth, bits of pottery, links in the Eternal Chain of Time, binding together in some unknown way Egypt and Crete. Most of the links are missing, but who knows how and when the pick and shovel of the seeker after truth may come across them?
By courtesy of the British School at AthensONE OF THE MAGAZINES UNCOVERED BY SIR ARTHUR EVANS AT KNOSSOS IN CRETE. THE MIGHTY STORE JARS, BIG ENOUGH TO CONTAIN A MAN, ARE SEEN IN THEIR ORIGINAL POSITIONS AND THE SIDE OF THE TRENCH INDICATES HOW DEBRIS COMPLETELY COVERED THEM IN THE COURSE OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS
By courtesy of the British School at AthensONE OF THE MAGAZINES UNCOVERED BY SIR ARTHUR EVANS AT KNOSSOS IN CRETE. THE MIGHTY STORE JARS, BIG ENOUGH TO CONTAIN A MAN, ARE SEEN IN THEIR ORIGINAL POSITIONS AND THE SIDE OF THE TRENCH INDICATES HOW DEBRIS COMPLETELY COVERED THEM IN THE COURSE OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS
By courtesy of the British School at Athens
ONE OF THE MAGAZINES UNCOVERED BY SIR ARTHUR EVANS AT KNOSSOS IN CRETE. THE MIGHTY STORE JARS, BIG ENOUGH TO CONTAIN A MAN, ARE SEEN IN THEIR ORIGINAL POSITIONS AND THE SIDE OF THE TRENCH INDICATES HOW DEBRIS COMPLETELY COVERED THEM IN THE COURSE OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS
Once more let us glimpse that hill in Crete. The diggers are gesticulating, running about. Carefully they dig and loosen the soil about another object. A band of carved stone comes to light; it is a curved band, and as they work about it ever so carefully, they find it is part of a cylinder buried deep in the earth. They work excitedly, removing the earth, digging down until they reveal a mighty stone jar, a jar big enough for a man to stand upright in, a jar which the ancients used as a store. It is the giant forerunner of those tiny canisters to be found in the modern pantry, canisters for storing tea and coffee and sugar and rice.
Deeper yet dug Sir Arthur Evans, until he had penetrated to nearly twice the depth of the floor of the Palace of Knossos, until he was nearly 40 feet below the surface. Here were stone implements, the scrapers and knives of the unknown people who first dwelt in this island in the Mediterranean. And through all the different strata he found relics of man, relics by which it was possible to trace the rise of civilization in Crete,from stone to copper, and copper to bronze and bronze to iron.
But the biggest find of all are the stones and clay tablets and seals with their hieroglyphic and script writing. For years Sir Arthur Evans has puzzled over them, tried to solve the mystery of this strange writing. The finest scholars of the world have racked their brains for the clue to the mystery writing. There is the writing, but we cannot read it. The key is lost.
Still the search for it goes on, and some day Sir Arthur Evans will surely achieve his crowning triumph and solve the riddle of the pictographs and script of Crete. What we may learn then about the origins of our own civilization, nobody can foretell. The inscribed stones and clay tablets of Crete have yet to yield up their secret.
For years Sir Arthur Evans has laboured in Crete, finding the money to move mountains of soil so that light may be thrown on the past. Discoveries of the highest importance have followed his excavations, for he has proved with pick and spade that here in this little island flourished a civilization almost undreamed of till the present century, a civilization maybe as old as that of Egypt and Mesopotamia, a civilization that flourished at least five thousand years ago, that endured for ages before the Phœnicians launched their galleys on the Mediterranean.
Perhaps in the years to come the researches of those who are working in the desert places will make the origin of these early civilizations clearer, and we may be able to assign to each its proper place in the Story of Mankind.
THE END
Transcriber’s NotesNew original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.