[Footnote *: Monthly Review, March, 1901, pp. 124, 125.]
MAGAZINE WITH JARS AND KASELLES
GREAT JAR WITH TRICKLE ORNAMENT
The Southern Portico gave access to a large court which turned out, from later investigation, to have been really the Central Court of the palace, the focus of the life of the whole huge building. The block of building between the West and the Central Courts was divided into two by a long gallery ([Plate VII.]), 3.40 metres in breadth, running almost the whole length of the structure, and paved with gypsum blocks. Between this gallery and the western wall of the palace lay a long range of what had evidently been magazines for the storage of oil, and perhaps of corn. They were occupied by rows of huge earthenware jars, or pithoi, sufficiently large to have held the Forty Thieves, or to have accommodated the soldiers of Tahuti in their venture on Joppa ([Plates VIII.] and [IX.]). In one of the magazines no fewer than twenty of these jars were found. They were all ornamented, some of them very elaborately, with spiral and rope-work patterns; one of them, found, not in a magazine, but in a small room near the Central Court, was particularly elaborate in its adornment, and stood almost five feet in height ([Plate X. 2]). Down the centre line of each magazine ran a row of small square openings in the floor—'kaselles,' as they came to be called—which at one time had evidently been receptacles, some of them, perhaps, for oil, but some of them certainly for valuables. They were carefully lined with lead, and in some cases the slabs of stone covering them could not be removed without lifting the whole pavement. In spite of such precautions, however, they had been well rifled in ancient days, and little was left to tell of what their contents may once have been. The magazines were well fitted to convey a strong impression, not only of the size, but also of the splendour of the palace which needed such storerooms. There was no meanness or squalor about the domestic offices of the House of Minos. The doorways leading into the magazines from the Long Corridor were of fine stone-work, and the side-walls, both of the gallery and the magazines, had been covered with painted plaster, presenting a white ground on which ran a dado of horizontal bands of red and blue, further bands of the same colours forming a frieze below the ceiling level. This, of course, had been merely the basement of the palace, and had been surmounted by another storey or storeys, of which nothing was left except fragments of the painted plaster which had once decorated the walls.
To the rooms composing the block of building between the Long Gallery and the Central Court, access had been given from the latter area; and it was in these rooms that, as the excavations progressed, some of the most remarkable features of the palace began to disclose themselves. About halfway along the court were found two small rooms, connected with one another, in the centre of each of which stood a single column composed of four gypsum blocks, each block marked with the sign of the Double Axe; and these pillars suggested a connection with ancient traditions about Minos and his works ([Plate XI.]). They were apparently sacred emblems connected with the worship of a divinity, and the Double Axe markings pointed to the divinity in question. For the special emblem of the Cretan Zeus (and also apparently of the female divinity of whom Zeus was the successor) was the Double Axe, a weapon of which numerous votive specimens in bronze have been found in the cave-sanctuary of Dicte, the fabled birthplace of the god. And the name of the Double Axe is Labrys—a word found also in the title of the Carian Zeus, Zeus of Labraunda. But tradition linked the names of Minos and Knossos with a great and wonderful structure of Dædalus which went by the name of the Labyrinth; and the coincidence between that name and the Labrys marks on the sacred pillars and on many of the blocks in the palace at once suggested that here was the source of the old tradition, and here the actual building, the Labyrinth, which Dædalus reared for his great master. 'There can be little remaining doubt,' says Dr. Evans, 'that this vast edifice, which in a broad historic sense we are justified in calling the "Palace of Minos," is one and the same as the traditional "Labyrinth." A great part of the ground-plan itself, with its long corridors and repeated successions of blind galleries, its tortuous passages and spacious underground conduit, its bewildering system of small chambers, does, in fact, present many of the characteristics of a maze.'[*] The connection thus suggested even by the first year's excavations has grown more and more probable with the work of each successive season.
[Footnote *: Monthly Review, March, 1901, p. 131.]
Passing farther north along the line of the Central Court, access was given by a row of four steps to an ante-chamber, which opened upon another room, of no great size in itself, but of surpassing interest from the character of its appointments. 'Already, a few inches below the surface, freshly preserved fresco began to appear. Walls were shortly uncovered, decorated with flowering plants and running water, while on each side of the doorway of a small inner room, stood guardian griffins with peacock's plumes in the same flowery landscape. Round the walls ran low stone benches, and between these, on the north side, separated by a small interval, and raised on a stone base, rose a gypsum throne with a high back, and originally covered with decorative designs. Its lower part was adorned with a curiously carved arch, with crocketed mouldings, showing an extraordinary anticipation of some most characteristic features of Gothic architecture. Opposite the throne was a finely wrought tank of gypsum slabs—a feature borrowed perhaps from an Egyptian palace—approached by a descending flight of steps, and originally surmounted by cypress-wood columns, supporting a kind of impluvium. Here truly was the council chamber of a Mycenæan King or Sovereign Lady.'[*] The discovery of the very throne of Minos, for such we may fairly term it, was surely the most dramatic and fitting recompense for the explorer's patience and persistence. No more ancient throne exists in Europe, or probably in the world, and none whose associations are anything like so full of interest ([Plate I.]).
[Footnote *: Monthly Review, March, 1901, pp. 123, 124.]