434 THE PALACE OF MINOS. 



Vases of marble and other stones abounded, some exquisitely carved. 

 Among these was one cut out of alabaster in the shape of a great 

 Triton shell, every coil and fold of which was accurately reproduced. 

 A porphyry lamp, supported on a quatrefoil pillar, with a beautiful 

 lotus capital, well illustrates the influence of an Egyptian model. 

 But the model was here surpassed. 



Among the more curious arts practiced in prehistoric Knossos was 

 that of miniature painting on the back of plaques of crystal. A gal- 

 loping bull thus delineated on an azure background is a little master- 

 piece in its way. A small relief on a banded agate, representing a 

 dagger in an ornamental sheath resting on an artistically folded belt, 

 to a certain extent anticipates by many centuries the art of cameo 

 carving. A series of clay seals were also discovered, exhibiting 

 impressions of intaglios in the tine bold Mycenam style; one of these, 

 with two bulls, larger than any known signet gem of the kind, may 

 well have been a royal seal. The subjects of some of these intaglios 

 show the development of a surprisingly picturesque style of art. We 

 see fish naturalistic-ally grouped in a rocky pool, a hart beside a water 

 brook in a mountain glen, and a grotto, above which some small 

 monkey-like creatures are seen climbing the overhanging crags. 



Hut manifold as were the objects of interest found within the palace 

 walls of Knossos, the crowning discovery — or, rather, series of dis- 

 coveries — remains to be told. On the last day of March, not far 

 below the surface of the ground, a little to the right of the southern 

 portico, there turned up a clay tablet of elongated shape, bearing on 

 it incised characters in a linear script, accompanied by numeral signs. 

 My hopes now ran high of finding entire deposits of clay archives, 

 and they were speedily realized. Not far from the scene of the first 

 discovery there came to light a clay receptacle containing a hoard of 

 tablets. In other chambers occurred similar deposits, which had orig- 

 inally been stored in coffers of wood, clay, or gypsum. The tablets 

 themselves are of various forms, some fiat, elongated bars, from about 

 2 to Ti inches in length, with wedge-like ends; others, larger and 

 squarer, ranging in size to small octavo (fig. S). In one particular 

 magazine tablets of a different kind were found — perforated bars, cres- 

 cent and scallop-like "labels," with writing in the same hieroglyphic 

 style as that on the seals found in eastern Crete. But the great mass, 

 amounting to over a thousand inscriptions, belonged to another and 

 more advanced system with linear characters. It was, in short, a 

 highly developed form of script, with regular divisions between the 

 words, and for elegance hardly surpassed by any later form of writing. 



A clue to the meaning of these clay records is in many cases sup- 

 plied by the addition of pictorial illustrations representing the objects- 

 concerned. Thus we find human figures, perhaps slaves; chariots and 

 horses; arms or implements and armor, such as axes and cuirasses; 





