DISCOVERY 



33 



to bury the body of the dead in a doubled-up position, 

 the knees being drawn up to the breast. In later 

 times the body was laid out at full length. It is not 

 clear whether or not there w;is any particular signifi- 

 cance in this choice of position. There were various 

 kinds of tombs and graves, all of which were used 

 contemporaneously, and of which, perhaps, the most 

 interesting were the tholoi. The word tholos properly 

 means a domed building or rotunda, and the par- 

 ticular kind of tomb to which it is applied is a vaulted 

 chamber to which entrance is effected through an 

 underground tunnel, or droinos. It is conceivable, 

 indeed almost certain, that in form these tholoi were 

 based upon the huts used — at some period — by the 

 living. There are both round and square tholoi found 

 in Crete. The tholos of Hagia Triada has a circular 

 ground plan, while the Royal Tomb at Isopata and 

 other elaborate tombs of the great palace-periods are 

 rectangular. The principle of the tholos-tomb was 

 most in use in Mycenaean times, on the mainland of 

 Greece, where the " beehive tombs " almost all re- 

 tained the original round formation. The hilly 

 character of Crete led the people to cut out their tholoi 

 in the side of the rocky hills, the dromos, or tunnel, 

 in this case being driven into the hillside almost hori- 

 zontally. 



Another style of grave was the shaft- or pit-grave, 

 which consisted of a pit sunk into the ground, at the 

 bottom of which was the grave itself, closed over with 

 slabs of stone. Still another kind was a combination 

 of the first two, and is known as the " pit-cave." 

 This was made by first sinking a pit and then cutting 

 out the tomb in the form of a side-recess from the 

 bottom of the pit. A simpler form of burial, known 

 as the " pot-burial," was effected by trussing up the 

 body, placing it under an inverted jar, and then 

 burying it in the earth. A sixth form was that of the 

 simple grave, like our own. Cremation was not prac- 

 tised in Minoan times, although it was introduced into 

 Crete from Greece in the Iron Age. Clay coffins were 

 first used in the Middle Minoan period, being made in 

 the form of deep boxes with sloping tops resembling 

 the roofs of houses. 



Such were the physical conditions of burial. We 

 knew practically nothing of the cult of the dead until 

 Sir Arthur Evans published some new and enlighten- 

 ing disclosures six years ago.^ It was known before 

 that the dead in their spacious tombs were honoured 

 with gift-offerings, which included weapons, jewellery, 

 and objects closely associated with them in their 

 life ; that food and drink offerings were made and 

 coals of fire lighted, possibly with the naive or sym- 

 bohc object of cheering the traveller on his mysterious 

 way. Now, however, a new series of tombs has been 

 * Archceologia, 2nd series, vol. xv, 1913-14. 



found at Isopata, one of which, called by Sir Arthur 

 Evans " the Tomb of the Double Axes," is proved to 

 be not only a tomb, but a shrine of the Minoan Great 

 Mother. In this tomb were found libation vessels, 

 including a rhyton (or drinkingcup) in the shape of a 

 bull's head made of steatite, and a pair of double 

 axes ; the grave which received the body is cut out 

 in the form of a double axe. " The cult of the dead," 

 says Sir Arthur Evans, " is thus brought into direct 

 relation with the divinity or divinities of the Double 

 Axes, and we may infer that in the present tomb 

 the mortal remains had been placed in some ceremonial 

 manner under divine guardianship." 



X 



When Knossos fell, Crete ceased to be the pre- 

 eminent power in the Near East. The island itself 

 was overrun by military or naval adventurers, and 

 the centre of Mediterranean life shifted over to the 

 mainland of Greece, whence, indeed, those adventurers 

 came. The striking thing, however, was that Cretan 

 culture went with it, and neither for the last, nor prob- 

 ably for the first, time " the captive led captive her 

 savage conqueror," as Horace wrote centuries after- 

 wards. Crete stooped to conquer Greece, just as 

 Greece in her turn stooped to conquer Rome. 



The Cretans as a race were quite distinct from the 

 contemporary inhabitants of Greece. Physical types 

 were sharply divided by the shores of the mainland. 

 The critical reader may ask : " Is it worth while to 

 speculate as to the physical characteristics of a people 

 which flourished 4,000 years ago, whose very existence 

 was obscured by the Dark Age that comes before 

 Greek history, and whose existence was not redis- 

 covered until, so to speak, the other day ? " And 

 vet archa;ology works wonders. It is true that in this 

 particular field, in which archaeology is chiefly depen- 

 dent upon portrait-paintings and bones, there is more 

 controversy and less certitude than in the others ; 

 and that craniology, or the study of skulls, with their 

 much - disputed classification into " brachycephalic " 

 or broad-headed, " dolichocephalic " or long-headed, 

 and " mesocephalic," midway between the two, is a 

 fruitful source of confusion; that the "cephalic" 

 index— that is, the breadth of the skull above the 

 ears expressed in a percentage which gives the pro- 

 portion of this breadth-measurement to the measure- 

 ment of the length of the same skull from the forehead 

 to the occiput — is a very poor index of anything at 

 all. Still, there is ground for assuming that from the 

 later Stone Age onwards the islands of the ^gean 

 were mainly peopled by members of the " Mediter- 

 ranean " race, small of stature, with oval faces, with 

 perhaps rather long heads — if that means anything — 



