22 fEESlDENT's ADDRESS. 



religious control of art that among all the Minoan representations — 

 now to be numbered by thousands — no single example of indecency 

 has come to light. 



A remarkable feature of this Minoan civilisation cannot be passed 

 over. I remember that at the Liverpool Meeting of this Association in 

 1896 — just before the first results of the new discoveries in Crete were 

 known — a distinguished archaeologist took as the subject of an evening 

 lecture ' Man before Writing,' and, as a striking example of a high cul- 

 ture attained by ' Analfabeti,' singled out that of Mycenae — a late off- 

 shoot, as we know now, from Minoan Crete. To such a conclusion, 

 based on negative evidence, I confess I could never subscribe — for had 

 not even the people of the Eeindeer Age attained to a considerable profi- 

 ciency in expression by means of symbolic signs ? To-day we are able 

 to trace the gradual evolution on Cretan soil of a complete system of 

 writing from its earliest pictographic shape, through a conventionalised 

 hieroglyphic to a linear stage of great perfection. In addition to inscribed 

 sealings and other records some two thousand clay tablets have now 

 come to light, mostly inventories or contracts; for though the script 

 itself is still undeciphered the pictorial figures that often appear on 

 these documents supply a valuable clue to their contents. The numera- 

 tion also is clear, with figures representing sums up to 10,000. The 

 inscribed sealings, signed, counter -marked, and counter-signed by con- 

 trolling officials, give a high idea of the elaborate machinery of Govern- 

 ment and Administration under the Minoan rulers. 



The minutely organised legal conditions to which this points con- 

 firm the later traditions of Minos, the great law-giver of prehistoric 

 Crete, who, like Hammurabi and Moses, was said to have received the 

 law from the God of the Sacred Mountain. The clay tablets them- 

 selves were certainly due to Oriental influences, which make themselves 

 perceptible in Crete at the beginning of the Late Minoan Age, and may 

 have been partly resultant from the reflex action of Minoan colonisation 

 in Cyprus. From this time onwards Eastern elements are more and 

 more traceable in Cretan culture, and are evidenced by such phenomena 

 as the introduction of chariots — themselves perhaps more remotely of 

 Aryan-Iranian derivation — and by the occasional use of cylinder seals. 



Simultaneously with its Eastern expansion, which affected the coast 

 of Phoenicia and Palestine as well as Cyprus, Minoan civilisation now 

 took firm hold of Mainland Greece, while traces of its direct influence 

 are found in the West Mediterranean basin — in Sicily, the Balearic 

 Islands, and Spain. At the time of the actual Conquest and during 

 the immediately succeeding period the civilisation that appears at 

 Mycenge and Tiryns, at Thebes and Orchomenos, and at other centres 

 of Mainland Greece, though it seems to have brought with it some 

 already assimilated Anatolian elements, is still in the broadest sense 



