The Sea-Kings of Crete

by James Baikie

The frescoes of the previous year were supplemented by the discovery of a number of others, representing zones of human figures, about one-third of life-size, set out on blue and yellow fields with triple borders of black, red, and white bands. One well-preserved figure is that of a girl with very large eyes, lips of brilliant red, and curling black hair. Her high-bodied dress is looped up at the shoulder with a bunch of blue, with red and black stripes, and fringed ends. A border of the same robe, adorned with smaller loops, crosses the bosom, and between its blue and red bands the white tint of the skin displays itself, showing that the material of the robe was diaphanous. Relief work in stucco was represented by fragments of a life-sized figure, since pieced together by M. Gilliéron, which must have been that of some Minoan King. The head wears a fleur-de-lys crown and peacock plumes, and round the neck of the finely modelled torso there runs a collar of fleur-de-lys ornament.

Again the connection of Knossos with Egypt was evidenced, and this time in most interesting fashion. Near the wall of a bathroom which was unearthed by the north-west side of the North Portico, there was found the lid of an Egyptian alabastron, bearing the cartouche of a King, which reads, 'Neter nefer S'user-en-Ra, sa Ra Khyan.' These are the names of one of the most famous Kings of the enigmatical Hyksos race—Khyan—'the Embracer of the Lands,' as he called himself, one of whose memorials, in the shape of a lion figure, carved in granite, and bearing his cartouche upon its breast, was found as far east as Baghdad, and is now in the British Museum. The statuette of Sebek-user, son of Ab-nub, evidenced a connection between Knossos and Egypt in the time of the later Middle Kingdom. This cartouche of Khyan shows that the connection was maintained in that dark period of Egyptian history which lay between the fall of the Middle Kingdom and the rise of the Empire. The intercourse between Crete and Egypt, however, goes much farther back than either the domination of the Hyksos or the Middle Kingdom. The discovery of various stone vessels in translucent diorite, and other hard materials familiar to the student of Early Egyptian work as characteristic of the taste of the earliest dynasties, shows that for the beginning of the connection between the two great Empires we must go back to the early days of the Old Kingdom in Egypt. The two civilizations, as we shall see later, can be equated period by period from the earliest times until the catastrophe of Knossos.

Among the seal impressions in clay, which were found in considerable numbers this season, were two worthy of attention: the one of great importance, the other scarcely of importance, but at least of interest. The first was an impression of the figure of a female divinity, dressed in the usual flounced garb of the Mycenæan period, standing upon a sacred rock on which two guardian lions rest their forefeet, the arrangement of the design being very much the same as that of the relief on the Lion Gate at Mycenæ, only with the figure of the goddess taking the place of the sacred pillar. In her hands the goddess holds something which may be either a weapon or a sceptre, and before her stands a male votary in an attitude of adoration. In the background is a shrine with sacred columns, in front of which rise the 'horns of consecration,' which were characteristic of Minoan temples, as apparently also of other Eastern religious structures. The second discovery was a clay matrix, formed from the impression of an actual seal, and evidently designed for the purpose of providing counterfeit impressions. In fact, we have here an evidence, brought to light after three millenniums, of some very ancient attempt at forgery in the very palace of the great law-giver.

The main result of the season of 1902 was the practical reconstruction of a large part of the Eastern or Domestic Quarter of the palace. The chief room in this part of the building was the Queen's Megaron, an inner chamber divided transversely by a row of pillars, along whose bases ran a raised seat, where, no doubt, the maids of honour of the Minoan Court were wont to sit and gossip. The pillared portico opened upon another elongated area, a characteristic feature of Minoan architecture, which served the purpose of a light-shaft, illuminating the inner room. The light-well had been covered with a brilliant white plaster, on which were the remains of a bird fresco—a long, curving wing, with feathers of red, blue, yellow, white, and black. Adjacent to the Queen's Megaron was a small bathroom, constructed for a portable bath—a fragment of which, in painted terra-cotta, was found in the portico of the adjoining hall.

The fresco of the bull-fight, already referred to, was paralleled in subject, and more than matched in artistic quality, by the discovery, in a small secluded room which had apparently served as a treasury, of a deposit of ivory figurines of the most exquisite workmanship. The height of the best preserved specimen is about 11½ inches, and it is hard to say whether the boldness of the design or the precision with which the details of the tiny figure are wrought out is the more admirable. The attitude is that of a man flinging himself forth in the abandon of a violent leap, with legs and arms extended. His straining muscles are indicated with perfect faithfulness, and even the veins in the diminutive hand and the nails of the tiny fingers are clearly marked. The hair had been formed by curling strands of thin gold wire inserted in the skull. There can be no doubt that these figures formed part of a scene like that of the toreador fresco, for the violent motion suggested is consistent with nothing but some desperate feat of agility like bull-grappling. Probably the leaping figures were suspended by thin gold wires over the backs of ivory bulls, and thus presented a realistic miniature reproduction of the Minoan bull-ring. The extraordinary multiplication of such scenes, in painting, in the round, on gems and seal impressions, helps one to realize the hold which the passion of bull-fighting, or, rather, bull-grappling, had upon the Cretan mind, a hold no doubt connected with the important part which the bull appears to have played in the Minoan religion ([Plate XIX.]).

MINOAN PAVED ROAD (p. [110])

NORTH ENTRANCE, KNOSSOS (p. [75])

One of the season's finds was peculiarly useful and interesting, as having yielded a considerable mass of material for reconstructing the appearance of a Minoan town. A great chest of cypress wood—in which perhaps some Knossian Nausicaa once kept her store of linen—had been decorated with a series of enamelled plaques, depicting a Minoan town, with its towers and houses, its fields and cattle and orchards. The chest itself had perished in the conflagration of the palace, leaving only a charred mass of woodwork; but the plaques survived. Some of them represent houses, evidently of wood and plaster fabric, for the round ends of the beams show in the frontage. On the ground-floor are the doors, in some cases double; above are second and third storeys, with rows of windows fitted with some red material, which may have been oiled and tinted parchment, while some of the houses have an attic storey with windows above the third floor. It is evident that the houses of the Minoan burghers were not the closely-packed mud hovels, separated from one another only by narrow alleys, which characterize the plan of the Egyptian town discovered by Petrie at Illahun, but were substantial structures, giving accommodation which, even to modern ideas, would seem respectable. Of course, one must suppose that the poorer quarters of the town would scarcely be represented on a fabric designed for use in the palace; but the actual remains of a Minoan town, unearthed at Gournia by Mrs. H. B. Hawes, show that that town, at least, was largely composed of houses which must have pretty closely resembled those on the porcelain plaques of Knossos.