MINOAN AND MYCENAEAN ELEMENT EVANS. 621 



while on the one hand the history of the great Minoan structures is 

 more complicated than was at first realized, on the other hand the 

 unity of that history, from their first foundation to their final over- 

 throw, asserts itself with ever-increasing emphasis. The periods of 

 destruction and renovation in the different palaces do not wholly 

 correspond. Both at Knossos and at Phaestos, where the original 

 buildings go back well nigh to the beginning of the middle Minoan 

 age, there was a considerable overthrow at the close of the second 

 middle Minoan period. Another catastrophe followed at Knossos at 

 the end of the third middle Minoan period. At Phaestos, on the 

 other hand, the second, and in that case the final, destruction took 

 place in the first late Minoan period. The little palace of Hagia 

 Triada, the beginnings of which perhaps synchronize with those of 

 the second palace of Phaestos, was overthrown at the same time, but 

 the Minoan sovereigns who dwelt in the later palace of Knossos seem 

 to have thriven at the expense of their neighbors. Early in the 

 second late Minoan period, when the rival seats -were in ruins, the 

 Knossian Palace was embellished by the addition of a new facade, on 

 the central court of which the room of the throne is a marvelous sur- 

 viving record. At the close of this second late Minoan age the palace 

 of Knossos was finally destroyed. But the tombs of Zafer Papoura 

 show that even this blow did not seriously break the continuity of 

 local culture, and the evidence of a purely Minoan revival in the 

 third late Minoan age is still stronger in the new^ settlement of Hagia 

 Triada, w^hich may claim the famous sarcophagus as its chief glory. 

 There is no room for foreign settlement as yet in Crete.^ though the 

 reaction of mainland Mycenaean influences made itself perceptible 

 in the island - toward the close of the third late Minoan period. 



Here then we have a story of ups and downs of insular life and of 

 internecine struggles like those that ruined the later cities of Crete, 

 but with no general line of cleavage such as might have resulted from 

 a foreign invasion. The epochs of destruction and renovation by no 



1 There is no foundation for the view that the later oblong structure at Hagia Triada is 

 a megaron of mainland type. The mistake, as was pointed out by Noack (Ovalhaus und 

 Palast in Kreta. p. 27, n. 24) and. as I had independently ascertained, was due to the 

 omission of one of the three cross walls on the Italian plan. By the close of the Minoan 

 age In Crete (L. M. Ill, ft) the mainland type of house seems to have been making its way 

 in Crete. An example has been pointed out by Dr. Oelmann (Ein Achiiisches Herrenhaus 

 auf Kreta, Jahrb. d. Arch. Inst, xxvii (1912), p. 38, seqq.) in a house of the reoccupatioa 

 period at Gournia, though there is no sufficient warrant for calling it "Achaean." It is 

 also worth observing that one of the small rooms into which the large " megaron " of the 

 " Little Palace " at Knossos was broken up in the reoccupation period has a stone-built 

 oven or fireplace set up in one corner. This seems to represent a mainland innovation. 



2 This concluding and very distinctive phase may be described as late Minoan III, ft (see 

 preceding note) and answers at Knossos to the period of reoccupation, L. M. Ill, a, being 

 represented there by the cemetery of Zafer Papoura, which fills a hiatus on the palace 

 site. Judging from figures on very late lentold bead seals in soft material (steatite), the 

 long tunic of mainland fashions was coming in at the very close of the Minoan age 

 in Crete. 



