[Footnote **: Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology, vol. xxxi., part 5, pp. 221, 222.]
[Footnote ***: 'Scripta Minoa,' p. 126.]
The fact that the seals of this period show motives derived from the Egyptian Sixth Dynasty 'button-seals' suggests that Early Minoan III. is to be equated with the end of the Old Kingdom in Egypt. This, however, is but a slight help as to the positive date of the Minoan period, owing to the huge gap between the different systems of Egyptian chronology. All that can be said is that on Petrie's system of dating the Minoan period which is contemporary with the end of the Sixth Dynasty would date about 4000 B.C., and on the Berlin system about 2475 B.C. Though the two cultures are contemporaneous, it is, of course, by no means to be inferred that the art of Early Minoan III. has left us any relics which are worthy of being placed on a level with the wonderful work of the Egyptian Old Kingdom artists. The primitive pictographs on the bead-seals of this period mark the beginnings of this form of Minoan script, which persisted until Late Minoan I., when it was at last superseded by the linear form of writing which had made its appearance in Middle Minoan III.
Middle Minoan I.—With this period we have distinct advance in more directions than one. The Minoan artist is beginning to feel his way towards that polychrome style of decoration which reached such a remarkable development in the Kamares vases of the succeeding stage. In the decoration of his ware, which does not exhibit any marked advance in form upon that of Early Minoan III., he has begun to supplement the familiar white on the dark slip by adding yellow, orange, red, and crimson. The Petsofa figurines, already alluded to, which belong to this period, have a colour scheme of black and white, red and orange. Along with this development of the use of colour goes a corresponding advance in design. The motives of the former period are continued, but are much more developed, and more freely handled. Instead of being stiffly disposed in bands round the vessel, they are now frequently grouped with the idea of covering the ground of the vases in a graceful manner without any attempt at formal definition of the limits of each article of the design, the artist's idea being simply to fill, in a manner satisfying to the eye, the space upon which he had to work. The zonal system still persists side by side with the freer style, and is often very skilfully handled as a means of decoration. One of the characteristic features of Middle Minoan ceramic art—the use of relief to enhance the effect of the polychrome decoration through the addition of contrasts of light and shade—is seen coming into use in the earliest part of the period.
Decoration is still geometric, and was to continue so for long. Not until Middle Minoan III. do we get a really naturalistic style of decorative art. But in Middle Minoan I. there are indications which, though slight, seem to point to a striving after realism on the part of some of the artists of the period. This tendency is apparent even in some of the geometric designs, which are so disposed as to form an approach to naturalistic patterns. But the most remarkable example of the tendency is seen in a fragment of a vase from Knossos, figured by Dr. Mackenzie,[*] on which the figures of three of the Cretan wild goats are followed by that of a gigantic beetle with a tail. 'The subject of the design,' says Dr. Mackenzie, 'in its naturalistic character is so advanced that, were it not for the company in which the fragments occur, we should be tempted to assign it to a much later age.' It is unfortunate that only a part of the design has survived, and that no parallel to it has ever been found. Was it merely a sport, the freak of some ancient potter who was weary of the conventional designs of his time, and tried his hand at something new, combining the wild life that he could see from the window of his workshop with that which crawled upon its floor, without ever dreaming of the problem he was setting for the students of 4,000 years later to exercise themselves upon? The style of the goat and beetle fragment is dark upon light. The goats are surrounded by an incised outline, and filled in with lustrous black glaze; the beetle is drawn freely in the black glaze, without incision, almost as though it had been a humorous afterthought of the potter.
[Footnote *: Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. xxvi., part I, plate ix. 3.]
Middle Minoan I. has no surviving link with Egyptian art, a fact which may be explained by the consideration that from the end of the Sixth Dynasty to the establishment of the Eleventh, Egypt appears to have been passing through a time of great confusion. The period is practically a Dark Age so far as Egyptian history is concerned.
(1) KNOSSOS VALLEY
