ORIGINS OF CIVILIZATION IN EUROPE — EVANS. 443 



very mannerisms as seen on the frescoes, pointing their conversation 

 with animated jestures — how strangely out of place would it all 

 appear in a classical design. Nowhere, not even at Pompeii, have 

 more living pictures of ancient life been called up for us than in the 

 Minoan Palace of Knossos. The touches supplied by its closing 

 scene are singularly dramatic — the little bathroom opening out of 

 tlie Queen's parlor, with its painted clay bath, the royal draught- 

 board flung down in the court, the vessels for anointing and the 

 oil jar for their filling ready to hand by the throne of the priest- 

 king, with the benches of his consistory round and the sacred griffins 

 on either side. Religion, indeed, entered in at every turn. The 

 palaces were also temples, the tomb a shrine of the great mother. It 

 was perhaps owing to the religious control of art that among all the 

 Minoan representations — now to be numbered by thousands — no sin- 

 gle example of indecency has come to light. 



A remarkable feature of this Minoan civilization can not be 

 passed over. I remember that at the Liverpool meeting of this asso- 

 ciation in 1896 — just before the first results of the new discoveries in 

 Crete w^ere known — a distinguished archeologist took as the subject 

 of an evening lecture " Man before writing," and, as a striking ex- 

 ample of a high culture attained by "Analfabeti," singled out that 

 of Mycense — a late offshoot, as we know now, from Minoan Crete. 

 To such a conclusion, based on negative evidence, I confess I could 

 never subscribe — for had not even the people of the Reindeer Age 

 attained to a considerable proficiency in expression by means of 

 symbolic signs? To-day we are able to trace the gradual evolution 

 on Cretan soil of a complete system of writing from its earliest 

 pictographic shape, through a conventionalized hieroglyphic to a 

 linear stage of great perfection. In addition to inscribed sealings 

 and other records some 2,000 clay tablets have now come to light, 

 mostly inventories or contracts; for though the script itself is still 

 undeciphered the pictorial figures that often appear on these docu- 

 ments supply a valuable clue to their contents. The numeration 

 also is clear, with figures representing sums up to 10,000, The in- 

 scribed sealings, signed, countermarked, and countersigned by con- 

 trolling officials, give a high idea of the elaborate machinery of gov- 

 ernment and administration under the Minoan rulers. 



The minutely organized legal conditions to which this points con- 

 firm the later traditions of Minos, the gi-eat lawgiver of prehistoric 

 Crete, who, like Hammurabi and Moses, was said to have received 

 the law from the God of the Sacred Mountain. The clay tablets 

 themselves were certainly due to oriental influences, which make 

 themselves perceptible in Crete at the beginning of the late Minoan 

 Age, and may have been partly resultant from the reflex action of 



