20 
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 
THE king's gaming-board (see; pages 8-9) 
Their vast walls, 57 feet thick in some 
parts at Tiryns, 46 feet at Mycense, 
towering still, after so many centuries of 
ruin, to a height of 24 1/^ feet in the case 
of the smaller citadel, and of 56 feet at 
the great stronghold of Agamemnon ; 
their massive gateways, and the ingen- 
ious devices by which the assailant was 
obliged to subject himself in his ap- 
proach to a destructive fire on his un- 
shielded side — everything 
about them points to a land 
and a time in which life 
and property were continu- 
ally exposed to the dangers 
of war, and the only secu- 
rity was to be found within 
the gates of an impregna- 
ble stronghold. 
But Knossos, far richer, 
far more splendid than 
either Tiryns or Mycense, 
lies virtually unguarded, 
its spacious courts and pil- 
lared porticoes open on 
every side: Plainly the 
Minoan kings lived in a 
land where peace was the 
rule and where no enemy 
was expected to break 
rudely in upon their luxu- 
rious calm. And the rea- 
son for their confidence 
and security is not far to 
seek, if we remember the 
statements of Thucydides 
and Herodotus. 
"The first king known to 
us by tradition as having 
established a navy is Mi- 
nos," says the great Athe- 
nian historian. The Mi- 
noan Empire, like our own, 
rested upon sea power. Its 
great kings were the sea- 
kings of the ancient world, 
the first sea-kings known 
to history — over-lords of 
the ^gean long before the 
grave Tyrian trader had 
learned "the way of a ship 
in the sea" or the land- 
loving Egyptian had ven- 
tured his timid squadrons, 
at the command of a great 
queen, so far as Punt. 
And so the fortifications of their capi- 
tal and palace were not of the huge 
gypsum blocks which they knew so well 
how to handle and work. They were 
the wooden walls, the long, low, black 
galleys, with the vermilion bows and the 
square sail and the greeping rows of 
oars, that lay moored or beached at the 
mouth of the Kairatos River, or cruised 
