SEPTEMBER 7, I916| 
NATURE 15 
self, fully panoplied from the head of Zeus. The 
indebtedness to Oriental sources was either regarded 
as comparatively late or confined to such definite borrow- 
ings as the alphabet or certain weights and measures. 
Egypt, on the other hand, at least until Alexandrine 
times, was looked on as something apart, and it must 
be said that Egyptologists on their side were only too 
anxious to preserve their sanctum from profane con- 
tact. 
A truer perspective has now been opened out. It 
has been made abundantly clear that the rise of Hel- 
lenic civilisation was itself part of a wider economy 
and can be no longer regarded as an isolated pheno- 
menon. Indirectly, its relation to the greater world 
and to the ancient centres to the south and east has 
now been established by its affiliation to the civilisa- 
tion of prehistoric Crete and by the revelation of the 
extraordinarily high degree of proficiency that was 
there attained in almost all departments of human art 
and industry. That Crete itself—the ‘t Mid-Sea land,” 
a kind of half-way house between three continents— 
should have been the cradle of our European civilisa- 
tion was, in fact, a logical consequence of its geo- 
graphical position. An outlier of mainland Greece, 
almost opposite the mouths of the Nile, primitive 
intercourse between Crete and the further shores of the 
* Libyan Sea was still further facilitated by favourable 
winds and currents. In the eastern direction, on the 
other hand, island stepping-stones brought it into easy 
communication with the coast of Asia Minor, with 
which it was actually connected in late geological 
times. 
But the extraneous influences that were here opera- 
tive from a remote period encountered on the island 
itself a primitive indigenous culture that had grown 
up there from immemorial time. In view of some 
recent geological calculations, such as those of Baron 
De Geer, who by counting the number of layers of 
mud in Lake Ragunda has reduced the ice-free period 
in Sweden to 7ooo years, it will not be superfluous 
to emphasise the extreme antiquity that seems to be 
indicated for even the later Neolithic in Crete. The 
Hill of Knossos, upon which the remains of the bril- 
liant Minoan civilisation have found their most strik- 
ing revelation, itself resembles in a large part of its 
composition a great mound or Tell—like those of Meso- 
potamia or Egypt—formed of layer after layer of 
human deposits. But the remains of the whole of the 
later ages represented down to the earliest Minoan 
period (which itself goes back to a time contemporary 
with the early dynasties of Egypt—at a moderate esti- 
mate to 3400 B.c.) occupy considerably less than a half 
—1g ft., that is, out of a total of more than 45. Such 
calculations can have only a relative value, but, even 
if we assume a more rapid accumulation of débris for 
the Neolithic strata and deduct a third from our calcula- 
tion, they would still occupy a space of more than 
3400 years, giving a total antiquity of some qooo years 
from the present time.* No Neolithic section in Europe 
can compare in extent with that of Knossos, which 
itself can be divided by the character of its contents 
into an Early, Middle, and Late phase. But its earliest 
stratum already shows the culture in an advanced 
stage, with carefully ground and polished axes and 
finely burnished pottery. The beginnings of Cretan 
Neolithic must go back to a still more remote antiquity. 
The continuous history of the Neolithic age is car- 
ried back at Knossos to an earlier epoch than is repre- 
sented in the deposits of its geographically related 
areas on the Greek and Anatolian side. But sufficient 
materials for comparison exist to show that the Cretan 
5 For a fuller statement I must refer to my forthcoming work ‘The Nine 
Minoan Periods " (Macmillan), vol. i. : Neolithic Section. 
NO. 2445, VOL. 98] 
branch belongs to a vast province of primitive culture 
that extended from southern Greece and the A®gean 
islands throughout a wide region of Asia Minor and 
probably still further afield. y 
An interesting characteristic is the appearance in the 
Knossian deposits of clay images of squatting female 
figures of a pronouncedly steatopygous conformation 
and with hands on the breasts. These in turn fit on 
to a large family of similar images which recur 
throughout the above area, though elsewhere they are 
generally known in their somewhat developed stage, 
showing a tendency to be translated into stone, and 
finally—perhaps under extraneous influences both from 
the north and east—taking a more extended attitude. 
These clearly stand in a parallel relationship to a 
whole family of figures with the organs of maternity 
strongly developed that characterise the Semitic lands, 
and which seem to have spread from there to Sumeria 
and to the seats of the Anau culture. 
At the same time this steatopygous family, which 
in other parts of the Mediterranean basin ranges from 
prehistoric Egypt and Malta to the north of mainland 
Greece, calls up suggestive reminiscences of the simi- 
lar images of Aurignacian man. It is especially in- 
teresting to note that in Crete, as in the Anatolian 
region where these primitive images occur, the wor- 
ship of a mother goddess predominated in later times,, 
generally associated with a divine Child—a worship 
which later survived in a classical guise and influenced 
all later religion. Another interesting evidence of the 
underlying religious community between Crete and 
Asia Minor is the diffusion in both areas of the cult of 
the Double Axe. This divine symbol, indeed, or 
‘Labrys,’”’ became the special emblem of the palace 
sanctuary of Knossos itself, which owes to it its tradi- 
tional name of Labyrinth. I have already directed 
attention to the fact that the absorptive and dis- 
seminating power of the Roman Empire brought the 
cult of a male form of the divinity of the Double Axe 
to the Roman Wall and to the actual site on which 
Newcastle stands. 
The fact should never be left out of sight that the 
gifted indigenous stock which in Crete eventually took 
to itself on one hand and the other so many elements 
of exotic culture was still deep-rooted in its own. It 
had, moreover, the advantages of an insular people in 
taking what it wanted and no more. Thus it was 
stimulated by foreign influences but never dominated 
by them, and there is nothing here of the servility of 
Phoenician art. Much as it assimilated, it never iost 
its independent tradition. 
It is interesting to note that the first quickening 
impulse came to Crete from the Egyptian and 
not, from the Oriental side—the Eastern  fac- 
tor, indeed, is of comparatively late appear- 
ance. My own researches have led me to the 
definite conclusion that cultural influences were already 
reaching Crete from beyond the Libyan Sea before the 
beginning of the Egyptian dynasties. These primitive 
influences are attested, amongst other evidences, by 
the forms of stone vessels, by the same zsthetic tradi- 
tion in the selection of materials distinguished by their 
polychromy, by the appearance of certain symbolic 
signs, and the subjects of shapes and seals which go 
back to prototypes in use among the ‘‘old race” of the 
Nile Valley. The impression of a very active agency 
indeed is so strong that the possibility of some actual 
immigration into the island of the older Egyptian 
element, due to the conquests of the first Pharaohs, 
cannot be excluded. 
The continuous influence of dynastic Egypt from its 
earliest period onwards is attested both bv objects of 
import and their indigenous imitations, and an actual 
