For the earliest period we are left with somewhat scanty evidence. Professor Petrie has found in some of the First Dynasty graves at Abydos vases of black hand-burnished ware, which are very closely allied, both inform and colour, to the primitive 'bucchero' discovered immediately above the Neolithic deposit in the West Court at Knossos; and he has suggested that, as the pottery is not Egyptian in style, it may have been imported from Crete. On various sites in the palace at Knossos there have been found stone vessels of diorite, syenite, and liparite, exquisitely wrought. Now, such work is eminently characteristic of the Early Egyptian Dynastic period, the artists of that time taking a pride in turning out bowls of these intensely hard stones, wrought sometimes to such a degree of fineness as to be translucent. The chances are against these bowls having been imported in later days, as the taste for them gradually died out in Egypt, and 'no ancient nation had antiquarian tastes till the time of the Saïtes in Egypt and of the Romans still later.' The stone vessels discovered by Mr. Seager at Mokhlos, though wrought out of beautiful native materials, betray, according to Dr. Evans, the strong influence of protodynastic Egyptian models. Coming down a little farther, to Early Minoan III., there is evidence of Egyptian influence in the fact that the ivory seals of this period seem to derive their motives from the so-called 'button-seals' of the Sixth Egyptian Dynasty. Mr. H. R. Hall believes that the derivation was the other way about. 'It would seem very probable that this decidedly foreign decoration motive was adopted by the Egyptians from the Ægeans about the end of the Old Kingdom (=Early Minoan III.), so that the Egyptian seal designs are copied from those of the Cretan seal-stones, rather than the reverse. Egyptian designs were very ancient, and had the spiral been Egyptian, we should have found it in the art of the Old Kingdom. It was a foreign importation, and its place of origin is evident.'[*] Whether in this case the Minoan borrowed from the Egyptian or the Egyptian from the Minoan is, however, immaterial; either way the fact of intercourse is established.
[Footnote *: Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, vol. xxxi., part v., p. 222.]
We may assume, then, that, in all probability, there was intercourse of some kind between Crete and Egypt as early as the time of the First Egyptian Dynasty, and that by the time of the Sixth Dynasty, which marks the close of the great period of the Old Kingdom in Egypt—the period of the Pyramid Builders (Third to Sixth Dynasty)—intercourse was common. In fact, it may be said that, from the origin of both peoples, the likelihood is that they were in contact. It is possible enough that both the Nilotic and the Minoan civilization sprang from a common stock, and that the Neolithic Cretans and the Neolithic Egyptians were alike members of the same widespread Mediterranean race.
IVORY FIGURES AND HEADS FROM KNOSSOS (p. [76])
From 'Annual of the British School of Athens,' by permission
How was the connection between Crete and Egypt maintained at this extremely early period? Professor Petrie believes that it was by the natural and direct sea-route across the Mediterranean. The representations of vessels painted on pre-dynastic Egyptian ware show that the Neolithic Egyptians were familiar, to some extent, with the building and the use of ships, and Professor Petrie supposes that galleys such as those represented were the ships by means of which the Egyptians and Cretans maintained their intercourse. Mr. Hall, on the other hand, maintains that this is impossible, and that the boats of the pre-dynastic ware are merely small river-craft, totally unfitted for seafaring work.[*] In his 'Oldest Civilization of Greece' he roundly asserts 'that these boats were the ships which plied between Crete and Egypt some 4,000 years B.C. Nothing can ever prove'; and he therefore believes that the communication was kept up by way of Cyprus and the Palestinian coast. But the evidence either way is of so extremely slight a character, and the delineations in question are so rude, that it might as well be said that nothing can ever prove that these boats were not the ships which plied between Crete and Egypt. It does not seem obvious why the voyage between Crete and Egypt should be impossible to navigators who could accomplish that between Crete and Cyprus; and if communication were maintained by way of Cyprus, it seems strange that that island should show practically no trace of having been influenced by Minoan civilization until a comparatively late date. 'It was not till the Cretan culture had passed its zenith and was already decadent that it reached Cyprus.'[**] That the Homeric Greeks were by no means daring navigators does not necessarily imply that an island race, whose whole tradition throughout its history was of sea-power, should have been equally timid. When it is remembered in what type of vessel the Northmen risked the Atlantic passage, one would be slow to believe that even in immediately post-Neolithic times the Cretans could not have evolved a type of boat as adequate to the run between Crete and the Nile mouths as the 'long serpents' were to face the Atlantic rollers.
[Footnote *: 'Egypt and Western Asia,' p. 129.]
[Footnote **: H. R. Hall, Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, vol. xxxi., part v., p. 227.]