CHAPTER IV

THE PALACE OF 'BROAD KNOSSOS'

In the revival of interest in the origins of Greek civilization it was manifest that Crete could not long be left out of account, for the traditions of Minos and his laws, and of the wonderful works of Dædalus, pointed clearly to the fact that the great island must have been an early seat of learning and art. Most of these traditions clustered round Knossos, the famous capital of Minos, where once stood the Labyrinth, and near to which was Mount Juktas, the traditional burying-place of Zeus. The remains apparent on the site of the ancient capital were by no means imposing. In 1834 Pashley found that 'all the now existing vestiges of the ancient metropolis of Crete are some rude masses of Roman brick-work'; and Spratt in 1851 saw very little more, mentioning only 'some scattered foundations and a few detached masses of masonry of the Roman time,' though in the time of the Venetian occupation there was evidently more to be seen, as Cornaro speaks of 'a very large quantity of ruins, and in particular a wall, many paces long and very thick.' But expectation still fixed on Knossos as the most probable site for any Cretan discoveries.

A MAGAZINE WITH JARS AND KASELLES, KNOSSOS (p. [69])

The attention of Schliemann and Stillman had been drawn to a hill called 'Kephala,' overlooking the ancient site of Knossos, on which stood ruined walls consisting of great gypsum blocks engraved with curious characters; but attempts at exploration were defeated by the obstacles raised by the native proprietors. In 1878 Minos Kalochærinos made some slight excavations, and found a few great jars or pithai, and some fragments of Mycenæan pottery; but up to the year 1895, when Dr. A. J. Evans secured a quarter of the Kephala site from one of the joint proprietors, nothing of any real moment had been accomplished. Dr. Evans had been attracted to Crete by the purchase at Athens of some seal-stones found in the island, engraved with hieroglyphic and linear signs differing from Egyptian and Hittite characters. In the hope that he might be led to the discovery of a Cretan system of writing, and relying upon the ancient Cretan tradition that the Phœnicians had not invented letters, but had merely changed the forms of an already existing system, he began in 1894 a series of explorations in Central and Eastern Crete. On all hands more or less important evidence of the existence of such a script came to light, especially from the Dictæan Cave, where a stone libation-altar was found, inscribed with a dedication in the unknown writing. But Dr. Evans was persuaded that Knossos was the spot where exploration was most likely to be rewarded, and his purchase of part of the site of Kephala in 1895 was the beginning of a series of campaigns which have had results not less romantic than those of Schliemann, and even more important in their additions to our knowledge of the prehistoric Ægean civilization.

The political troubles of the time were unfavourable to exploration. Fighting was going on in the island, and religious prejudices ran very high. When the new political order came into being with the appointment of Prince George of Greece as Commissioner, an obstacle was still found in the way in the shape of a French claim to prior rights of excavation. This, however, was finally withdrawn on the advice of Prince George, and in the beginning of 1900 Dr. Evans was at last able to secure the remainder of the site, and on March 23 in that year excavation began, and was carried on with a staff of from 80 to 150 men until the beginning of June.

Almost at once it became apparent that the faith which had fought so persistently for the attainment of its object was going to be rewarded. The remains of walls began to appear, sometimes only a foot or two, sometimes only a few inches below the surface of the soil, and by the end of the nine weeks' campaign of exploration about two acres of a vast prehistoric building had been unearthed—a palace which, even at this early stage in its disclosure, was already far larger than those of Tiryns and Mycenæ. On the eastern slope of the hill, in a deposit of pale clay, were found fragments of the black, hand-made, polished pottery, known as 'bucchero,' characteristic of neolithic sites, some of it, as usual, decorated with incised patterns filled in with white. This pottery was coupled with stone celts and maces, obsidian knives, and a primitive female image of incised and inlaid clay. All over the palace area, as the excavations went farther and farther down, the neolithic deposit was found to overlie the virgin soil, sometimes to a depth of 24 feet, showing that the site had been thickly populated in remote prehistoric times.

But the neolithic deposit was not the most striking find. On the south-west side of the site there came to light a spacious paved court, opening before walls faced with huge blocks of gypsum. At the southern corner of this court stood a portico, which afforded access to this portion of the interior of the palace. The portico had a double door, whose lintel had once been supported by a massive central column of wood. The wall flanking the entrance had been decorated with a fresco, part of which represented that favourite subject of Mycenæan and Minoan art—a great bull; while on the walls of the corridor which led away from the portal were still preserved the lower portions of a procession of life-size painted figures. Conspicuous among these was one figure, probably that of a Queen, dressed in magnificent apparel, while there were also remains of the figures of two youths, wearing gold and silver belts and loin-cloths, one of them bearing a fluted marble vase with a silver base. At the southern angle of the building, this corridor—the 'Corridor of the Procession'—led round to a great southern portico with double columns, and in a passage-way behind this portico there came to light one of the first fairly complete evidences of the outward fashion and appearance of the great prehistoric race which had founded the civilization of Knossos and Mycenæ. This was the fresco-painting, preserved almost perfectly in its upper part, of a youth bearing a gold-mounted silver cup ([Plate VI.]). His loin-cloth is decorated with a beautiful quatrefoil pattern; he wears a silver ear-ornament, silver rings on the neck and the upper arm, and on the wrist a bracelet with an agate gem.

'The colours,' says Dr. Evans in teat brilliant article in the Monthly Review which first gave to the general public the story of his first season's discoveries, 'were almost as brilliant as when laid down over three thousand years before. For the first time the true portraiture of a man of this mysterious Mycenæan race rises before us. The flesh-tint, following, perhaps, an Egyptian precedent, is of a deep reddish-brown. The limbs are finely moulded, though the waist, as usual in Mycenæan fashions, is tightly drawn in by a silver-mounted girdle, giving great relief to the hips. The profile of the face is pure and almost classically Greek.... The lips are somewhat full, but the physiognomy has certainly no Semitic cast.... There was something very impressive in this vision of brilliant youth and of male beauty, recalled after so long an interval to our upper air from what had been, till yesterday, a forgotten world. Even our untutored Cretan workmen felt the spell and fascination. They, indeed, regarded the discovery of such a painting in the bosom of the earth as nothing less than miraculous, and saw in it the icon of a Saint! The removal of the fresco required a delicate and laborious piece of under-plastering, which necessitated its being watched at night, and old Manolis, one of the most trustworthy of our gang, was told off for the purpose. Somehow or other he fell asleep, but the wrathful saint appeared to him in a dream. Waking with a start, he was conscious of a mysterious presence; the animals round began to low and neigh, and "there were visions about"; "φανταζε&iota," he said, in summing up his experiences next morning, "the whole place spooks!"'[*]