NA TURE 



[May 



1901 



•Greece, and there were ships and sailors in those days as 

 bold and venturesome as any of the time of Elizabeth. 

 We know from the Egyptian State archives of the'reign 

 of Kiny Akhunaten (r..c. 1430 : date determined by 

 synchronism with Burraburiyash of Babylonia, n.c. 1430) 

 that in the Wth century li.c. the Phit-nician cities already 

 traded with many lands across the seas, with Egyptian 

 Thebes, with Alashiya or Cyprus (?), and with Keftiu. 

 The people of Kejftiti came to the court of King 

 Thothmes III. of Egypt (li.c. 1550) with gifts. 



Where was Kef tint Mr. A. J. Evans tells us this in 

 this sixth volume of the Annual of the British School at 

 Alliens. 



Mr. Evans's excavations at Kephala, the site of Kn">ssos, 

 in Crete, are the culmination of many attempts, pursued 

 during several years past under difficulties of all kinds, to 

 elucidate the early history of Greek civilisation in Crete. 

 The traditions of the island point to its having occupied 

 a position of especial prominence in the Mycen;oan world, 

 and Mr. Evans's hopes of great results from Cretan ex- 

 ploration have not been disappointed. He has not only 

 ■discovered at Knossos a Mycen;uan palace of the first 



" Kamdrais-period," continued to be occupied down to the 

 period of its sudden sack and destruction by fire towards 

 the end of the Mycenaean age, at which time only vessels 

 of the later type were in use, while in the town we have 

 two strata of settlement, the one containing the vases of 

 the earlier period, the other those of the later jjenerations 

 of inhabitants. There need be no question of a change 

 of race here, though Mr. Hogarth seems to suggest it. 

 Alteration of style in art is no proof of racial change. 

 Such changes are simply due to an alteration of fashion, 

 suddenly started by some artist. We have an example of 

 a sudden alteration of the kind in Egypt in the early 

 years of the .Wlllth Dynasty. But we do not therefore 

 in this case assume the violent substitution of one race of 

 inhabitants by another. Even alteration of burial 

 customs is no clear proof of change of race. 



Important as the relics of the " Kamarais-period " from 

 the Knossian town are, however, they pale before the im- 

 portance of the discoveries made in the palace itself. 

 The excavation of this, probably the most important 

 Mycenaean building yet discovered, is only begun, and 

 we know not how Mr. Kvans may increase our knowledge 



-Protoinyc 



probatfle date befori 



rank, which is very probably identical with the legendary 

 " Labyrinth" of Minos, but has also discovered that the 

 Mycen;eans of Crete were in all probability the same 

 people as the " Men of Keftiu and of the Isles in the 

 midst of the \'ery Green" (/'.(■. the Mediterranean), who 

 make their appearance in Egyptian history a 1550 11. c, 

 Ihus giving the earliest trustworthy date for the Mycenajan 

 civilisation. 



Not only the palace, but also the Mycenrean town of 

 Knossos was discovered in the course of these excava- 

 tions The exploration of the town ruins was carried on 

 by Mr. D. G. Hogarth, late Director of the British 

 School at Athens, Mr. Evans busying himself more 

 especially with the exploration of the palace. It is note- 

 worthy that vases and fragments of vases found in the 

 town ruins were of the early Mycena'an or " Kaniilrais " 

 type, while those found in the palace mostly belonged to 

 the fully-developed Mycen.uan types so well known to 

 students of early Greek art from the great work of Messrs. 

 Furtw;ingler and Ltischcke. This does not necessarily 

 mean that the town-ruins are all older than the palace ; 

 all that is implied is that the palace, which from various 

 indications was evidently already in existence in the 

 ^O. 1644, VOL. 64] 



of the older civilisation of Greece m the course of his 

 diggings this year. What he found last year, however, 

 gi\es us material enough to think about 1 The plan of 

 the palace shows a vast labyrinth of chambers, halls, 

 corridors and passages ; a true labyrinth indeed, for it is 

 the only genuine and original Labyrinth itself, as the 

 constantly-recurring symbol of the double-axe, the emblem 

 of the later Zeus of \a{-i\mv-vha, which is etymologically 

 the same word as \aiiv(>i.-v6oi . " The Place of the Xliiifivi 

 or Double-.\xe " (for the earliest Mycen^eans of 

 Knossos and elsewhere were not Aryan Hellenes, but 

 " Pelasgians " allied to the non-Aryan peoples of Asia 

 Minor), the emblem of the Knossian Zeus, ZfOs >iva^, 

 WiKaiTyiKw, shows. This is the labyrinth of Minds : is 

 the bull-headed ^linotaur, child of Zeus, of whom legends 

 passed to the succeeding Hellenic inhabitants of the 

 land, the recollection of some Mycensan deity to whom 

 human sacrifice was offered at Knossos? We know the 

 love of the Mycen;i;ans for bulls, we see \.\\t protoinae of 

 bulls at Myceniu and among the gifts of the Keftiu, we 

 find pictures of TavptiKaOai^na, bull-catching, at Tiryns and 

 elsewhere, we have the splendid life-sized relief of a bull's 

 head in painted .^cw<7 duro from Knossos itself (Fig. 10 



