September 29, 191G] 



SCIENCE 



453 



tion of the domestic arrangements, the 

 staircases story above story, the front 

 places given to the ladies at shows, their 

 fashionable flounced robes and jackets, the 

 gloves sometimes seen on their hands or 

 hanging from their folding chairs, their 

 very mannerisms as seen on the frescoes, 

 pointing their conversation with animated 

 gestures — how strangely out of place would 

 it all appear in a classical design! No- 

 where, not even at Pompeii, have more liv- 

 ing pictures of ancient life been called up 

 for us than in the Minoan Palace of 

 Knossos. The touches supplied by its clos- 

 ing scene are singularly dramatic — the 

 little bath-room opening out of the Queen's 

 parlor, with its painted clay bath, the royal 

 draught-board flung down in the court, the 

 vessels for anointing and the oil-jar for their 

 filling ready to hand by the throne of the 

 Priest-King, with the benches of his Con- 

 sistory round and the sacred griffins on 

 either side. Religion, indeed, entered in 

 at every turn. The palaces were also 

 temples, the tomb a shrine of the Great 

 Mother. It was perhaps owing to the re- 

 ligious control of art that among all the 

 Minoan representations— now to be num- 

 bered by thousands — no single example of 

 indecency has come to light. 



A remarkable feature of this Minoan civ- 

 ilization can not be passed over. I remem- 

 ber 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 archeologist took 

 as the subject of an evening lecture "Man 

 before "Writing," and, as a striking ex- 

 ample of a high culture attained by 

 " Analfabeti," singled out that of My- 

 cenae — a late offshoot, 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 peo- 

 ple of the Reindeer Age attained to a con- 

 siderable proficiency 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 conventionalized hieroglyphic to 

 a linear stage of great perfection. In addi- 

 tion to inscribed sealings and other records 

 some two thousand clay tablets have now 

 come to light, mostly inventories or con- 

 tracts; 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 nu- 

 meration also is clear, with figures repre- 

 senting sums up to 10,000. The inscribed 

 sealings, signed, counter-marked and coun- 

 ter-signed by controlling officials, give a 

 high idea of the elaborate machinery of 

 government and administration under the 

 Minoan rulers. 



The minutely organized legal conditions 

 to which this points confirm the later tra- 

 ditions of Minos, the great law-giver of pre- 

 historic Crete, who, like Hammurabi and 

 Moses, was said to have received the law 

 from the God of the Sacred Mountain. The 

 clay tablets themselves were certainly due 

 to Oriental influences, which make them- 

 selves perceptible in Crete at the begin- 

 ning of the Late Minoan Age, and may 

 have been partly resultant from the reflex 

 action of Minoan colonization in Cyprus. 

 From this time onwards eastern elements 

 are more and more traceable in Cretan cul- 

 ture, and are evidenced by such phenom- 

 ena as the introduction of chariots — them- 

 selves perhaps more remotely of Aryan- 

 Iranian derivation — and by the occasional 

 use of cylinder seals. 



Simultaneously with its eastern expan- 

 sion, which affected the coast of Phoenicia 

 and Palestine as well as Cyprus, Minoan 

 civilization 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. 



