22 
THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 
THE HARVESTER VASE : HAGIA TRIADA 
The king- and his courtiers were served 
in costly vessels of gold, silver, and 
bronze repousse work. The empire of 
the sea-kings was at its apogee, and on 
every hand there were the evidences of 
security and luxury. 
But, as in the contemporary Egypt of 
Amenhotep III, a similar development in 
all the comforts and luxuries of civilized 
life was swiftly followed by the down- 
fall under Akhenaten, so in Crete the 
luxury of the late Minoan II was only 
the prelude to its great and final disaster. 
Exactly when the catastrophe came we 
cannot tell. 
That there was a huge disaster about 
1400 B. C. which broke forever the 
power of the sea-kings is unmistakable. 
The Minoan kingdom did not fall from 
over-ripeness and decay, as was the case 
with so many other empires. The latest 
relics of its art before the catastrophe 
show no signs of decadence ; the latest 
specimens of its linear writing show a 
marked advance on those of preceding 
periods. 
A civilization in full strength and 
growth was suddenly and fatally ar- 
rested. Everywhere throughout the pal- 
ace at Knossos there are traces of a vast 
conflagration. The charred ends of 
beams and pillars, the very preservation 
of the clay tablets with their enigmatic 
records, a preservation due probably to 
the tremendous heat to which they were 
exposed by the furious blazing of the oil 
in the stone jars of the magazines, the 
traces of the blackening of fire upon the 
walls — everything tells of an overwhelm- 
ing tragedy. 
Nor was the catastrophe the result of 
an accident. There is no mistaking the 
significance of the fact that in the palace 
scarcely a trace of precious metal, and 
next to no trace of bronze, has been dis- 
covered. Fire at Knossos was accom- 
