DISCOVERY 



247 



it to the most profitable account. Her geographical 

 position as a sea-girt isle was such that, while being 

 exempt from the dominating and overshadowing influence 

 of Egypt, she profited by both of the fertilising streams 

 of inspiration that had their source in Egypt." ' Neither 

 did Crete owe the origins of her culture entirely to Egypt, 

 for, as the same authority shows, she " was also affected 

 in a most intimate way by the eastern (nortliern) stream 

 of culture from Asia ISIinor, where the influences of 

 Mesopotamia and S\Tia were blended with that of 

 Egypt." 



Let us for a moment examine some of the features of 

 Cretan culture. The palace unearthed at Knossos is 

 an amazing structure. In reality the ruins consist of 

 three palaces built up one on top of the other. The 

 topmost palace, in which the Cretans reached the height of 

 their architecture, was " a square building covering about 

 five acres, or as big an area as Buckingham Palace, and 

 had a flat roof. In shape it was a hollow rectangle, with 

 a central court, measuring nearly two hundred feet from 

 north to south, and not quite half as much in breadth. 

 . . . Beyond the west wing there was another court — 

 the meeting-place for the people of the town and the 

 people of the palace ; and out to the north-west a smaller 

 building — the Little Palace — connected with the palace 

 proper by what Sir Arthur Evans has called ' the oldest 

 paved road in Europe,' while a little to the north-east was 

 the Royal Villa." Near the palace was a theatre, whose 

 rising tiers of steps and raised platform have been brought 

 to the light of day. The palace walls were built of 

 gypsvim coated with lime-plaster. The palace's systena 

 of draining was extremely elaborate. Into the many 

 details of its architecture we cannot enter here. The 

 contemporary palace at Phsestos, excavated by the Italian 

 Archaeological Mission, must in many ways have equalled 

 the magnificence of that at Knossos. It was built on a 

 smaller scale but, like Knossos, " consisted roughly of 

 a system of buildings grouped round a central court." 

 Passing over the ruins of humbler dwellings, with their 

 interesting equipment of lamps and other furniture, 

 mention must be made of the pottery, which has been 

 of great use for determining dates. It displays a wonder- 

 ful sense of beauty, even amongst the Stone Age prede- 

 cessors of Crete's Golden Age ; the pottery of the Middle 

 Minoan Period (around 2000 B.C.), with its brilliant 

 colourings and beautiful curves, could not be bettered 

 on to-day, even if it was imitated. Many specimens of 

 fresco-painting and relief work on the lime-plaster of the 

 outer walls of buildings have been found. In the case 

 of fresco-painting brilliant colours were used ; these 

 specimens do not equal the Egyptian methods for elabo- 

 rateness of detail, but they give a more vivid impression 

 of movement. 



Lack of space forbids us to describe the religion, cloth- 

 ing, and social customs of this wonderful island race. 

 The Minoan ladies wore open necks and flounced skirts, 

 and of them a certain French scholar, on seeing some 

 art relics, exclaimed, " Mais ce sont des Parisiennes." 



1 The Ancient Egyptians. New and revised edition. 

 (Harper Bros., 6s.) 



The Minoans, it naay be assumed with fairly considerable 

 certainty, belonged to what archaeologists term the 

 " Mediterranean " race ; they, therefore, had " long " 

 heads, oval faces, dark skins, hair and eyes, and, in 

 general, small, but well-developed bodies. 



STRAT.A. SECTION FROM PAI,.\CE OF KNOSSOS. 



'■•>t)nMr->if'^P>l ,/ ,' ■"»); "!ife»!!r>!^W)y>"S'^ «"- SURMCE LEVEL 



PERIOD Of PARTIAL OCCUPATION 



(late minoan III) 



„„^s^ LATER PALACE 11 



2^^^^^ (LATE MINOAN lill) 



LATER PALACE I. 

 KNOBBED PITHOS (MIDDLE MINOAN III .) 



EARLIER PALACE 

 (middle MINOAN Itll.) 



^'^" i-^ r ~i PIT 



_J ^- ...,- _^ (PROBABLY DESCENDS 7m .) 

 ^ ' ^. A EARTH FILLING 



■^'■■" 



_ A/" 



k I METRE 



(From R. M. Burrows's Discoveries in Crete.) 



Many questions remain to be cleared up in this field of 

 archaeology. We have very scanty details of the rela- 

 tions, commercial and cultural, between Egypt and 

 Crete. We have still less knowledge of how the Minoan 

 civilisation reached Greece. There is a gap of 600 years 

 between the fall of Knossos and the first recorded Greek 

 history, about 800 b.c. Most exciting question of all, 

 " Will the writing of this island race, preserved on hun- 

 dreds of clay tablets, be solved ? " Its solution would 

 not merely go far to answer the preceding questions ; 

 it would throw new light on the early history of civilisa- 

 tion and result in as amazing revelations as those effected 

 by the discovery of the famous trilingual Rosetta Stone 

 in Egypt in 1799. Solutions turn up in weird, unexpected 

 ways ; it is, for instance, within the realms of possibility 

 that a stone or papjrrus giving ancient Egyptian and 

 Cretan equivalents in writing might be found in Tutankh- 

 amen's tomb in the autumn, or that some chance traveller 

 in Greece might find a clue from a Greek-Minoan inscrip- 

 tion. Who Icnows ? 



Edward Liveing. 



THE PROBLEM OF CANCER 



Theories and Problems of Cancer. By Charles Edward 

 Walker, D.Sc, M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P. 



There can be no question but that the widest possible 

 dissemination of knowledge on problems of public health 

 is in the best interests both of the medical profession 

 and the community. It used to be said that every man 

 over forty was a fool or a doctor ; it might be added 



