392 
Mycenzean site at Zakro; his results are described in | 
the present number of the “Annual.” 
The operations carried on at Knossos in 1901 are 
summatised by Mr. Evans on pp. 1, 2. Space forbids 
us to do more than select for description and discussion 
some of the more important results of his excavations. 
The underlying Neolithic settlement was further inves- 
tigated, and a report of the results obtained was made 
by Mr. Evans to the Anthropological Section of the 
British Association (Glasgow meeting, September, 1991 ; 
see NATURE, Ixiv. p. 615). 
The “Kaselles” (kaceAXats), stone cists or receptacles 
beneath the floors of the Magazines (see NATURE, lxiv. 
p. 13, Fig. 2), have been proved tobe chiefly safes for 
the keeping of treasure (‘ Annual,” pp. 44 77). 
The housing-over of the Throne Room has already 
been referred to. This work was urgently needed to 
protect the throne, &c., from the weather. 
“In order to support the roof it was necessary to 
place some kind of pillars in the position formerly occu: 
Fic. 1.—Egyptian alabastron-lid, inscribed with the name of the Hyks6s King Khyan iG. 
B.C. 1800). Found at Knossos. 
(c. 
pied by the Mycenzean columns, the burnt remains of 
which were found fixed in the sockets of the stone bench 
opposite the throne.” 
Accordingly pillars of Mycenaean design were erected, 
and the whole roofed over. This necessary work of con- 
servation is analogous to that at Dér el-Bdheri ; no 
attempt at ‘‘ restoration,” as it is understood on the Con- 
tinent, has been made. All who have seen the result 
can testify that it is entirely successful. 
One of the chief results of the excavation is the 
inkling it gives of the great extent of the palace, which 
seems, in fact, to have not only covered the whole of the 
knoll on which it stands, but to have descended ina 
series of several-storied halls and towers down the eastern 
side of the hill to the bank of the stream which runs 
below. And now that Mr. Evans has announced the 
discovery at Knossos this year of contemporary repre- 
sentations of Mycenzean houses we may perhaps b2 able 
NO. 1712, VOL. 66] 
NATURE 
[AUGUST 21, 1902 
soon to acquire some idea of what the palace may have 
looked like when seen from the opposite eastern downs 
or from the way leading up from the sea. Mr. Fyfe’s 
restored longitudinal section and plan (Fig. 33) give a 
very good idea of how the palace descended the eastern 
slope. On the left is seen one of the most sensational 
of Knossian discoveries, the quadruple staircase which 
descended from the Central Court to the Hall of the 
Colonnades, a hall which reminds one more of a court 
with /ogeze in an Italian palace than anything else! At 
the point of the staircase the palace was certainly three 
and probably four stories high ; in fact, three flights of 
steps still remain. Originally the staircase “ consisted 
of fifty-two stone steps, of which thirty-eight, and the 
indications of five more, are preserved.” The exca- 
vation of the lowest flight ‘‘was of extraordinary 
difficulty, owing to the constant danger of bringing 
down the stairway above. It was _ altogether 
miners work, necessitating a constant succession of 
wooden arches” (p. 104). 
Down the greater part of this staircase it is 
now possible to walk, and in doing so the 
visitor gets a very good idea of the difficulties, 
already alluded to, which have beset Mr. 
Evans’s work at Knossos, and of the suc- 
cessful way in which he has overcome them. 
But this heavy kind of work needs money, if it 
is to be properly carried out: the reader of 
NATURE who has a guinea or two to spare 
for archzeological purposes could hardly do 
better than devote them to the Cretan 
Exploration Fund. 
Mr. Evans is of opinion that “the whole 
result of the most recent excavations has 
been more and more to bring out the fact 
that, vast as is the area it embraces, the 
Palace of Knossos was originally devised on a 
single comprehensive plan. The ground 
scheme of a square building, with a central 
court approached at right angles by four main 
avenues, dividing the surrounding buildings 
into four quarters, is a simple conception which, 
as we now know, long before the days of the 
later Roman Cas¢ra, was carried out in the 
Terremare of Northern Italy. The 
Minoan architect may claim the credit of 
adapting the same root idea to an organic 
whole, and fitting it in to a complicated 
arrangement of halls, chambers, galleries, and 
magazines, forming parts of a single build- 
ing” (p. 100). 
Further confirmation of the generally ac- 
cepted date for the earlier parts of the palace, 
. 1700 B.C. and later, was found in 1901 by 
the discovery in the “early Palace stratum,” 
a deposit “containing a large proportion 
of charcoal, and representing the burnt remains of an 
earlier structure,” and situated “immediately under 
the Mycenzean wall-foundations, at a depth of 4o centi- 
metres below the later floor-level,” of “tthe lid of an 
Egyptian alabastron, upon the upper face of which was 
finely engraved a cartouche containing the name and 
| divine titles of the Hyksés King Khyan” (see Fig. 1), 
who reigned somewhere about 1800 to 1700 B.c. The style 
of the hieroglyphs and phraseology of the inscription 
show us that this object is contemporary with the king 
whose name it bears. Therefore the discovery of this 
object of c. 1800-1700 B.C. may be taken to confirm the 
weaker evidence of the. thirteenth dynasty statuette of 
Abnub, son of Sebek-user (date c. 2000 B.C.), which was 
discovered in the course of the excavations of 1900, and 
with this to indicate roughly the date of the beginnings 
of the great Palace of Knossos, which is undoubtedly, as 
its excavator maintains, the veritable Labyrinth of Minos. 
