The boundaries which Plato assigns to the Empire of the lost State are practically identical with those over which Minoan influence is now known to have spread, while the description of the island itself is such as to make it almost certain that Crete was the original from which it was drawn. 'The island was the way to other islands, and from these islands you might pass to the whole of the opposite continent which surrounded the true ocean.' So Plato describes Atlantis; and when you set beside his sentence a modern description of Crete—'a half-way house between three continents, flanked by the great Libyan promontory, and linked by smaller island stepping-stones to the Peloponnese and the mainland of Anatolia'—there can be little doubt that the two descriptions refer to the same island.
The only difficulty in the way of accepting the identification is that it is stated that the lost Atlantis lay beyond the Pillars of Hercules; but doubtless this statement is due to Solon's misinterpretation of what was said by his Egyptian informant, or to the Saite priest's endeavour to accommodate his ancient tradition to the wider geographical knowledge of his own time. The old Egyptian conception of the universe held that the heavens were supported on four pillars, which were actual mountains; and probably the original story placed the lost island beyond these pillars as a metaphorical way of stating that it was very far distant, as indeed it was to voyagers in those early days. But by Solon's time the limits of navigation were extended far beyond those of the early seafarers. The Phœnician trader had pushed at least as far west as Spain; Necho's fleet had circumnavigated Africa; and so 'the island farthest west,' which naturally meant Crete to the Egyptian of the Eighteenth Dynasty who first recorded the catastrophe of the Minoan Empire, had to be thrust out beyond the Straits of Gibraltar to satisfy the wider ideas of the men of Solon's and Necho's time.
Almost certainly then, Plato's story gives the Saite version of the actual Egyptian records of the greatness and the final disaster of that great island state with which Egypt so long maintained intercourse. Doubtless to the men of the latter part of the Eighteenth Dynasty the sudden blotting out of Minoan trade and influence by the overthrow of Knossos seemed as strange and mysterious as though Crete had actually been swallowed up by the sea. The island never regained its lost supremacy, and gradually sank into the insignificance which is its characteristic throughout the Classical period. So, though neither the priest of Sais nor his Greek auditor, and still less Plato, dreamed of the fact, the wonderful island State of which the Egyptian tradition preserved the memory, was indeed Minoan Crete, and the men of the Lost Atlantis whose portraits Produs saw in Egypt were none other than the Keftiu of the tombs of Sen-mut and Rekh-ma-ra.
CHRONOLOGICAL SUMMARY
Prior to 1580 B.C. the dates in the summary must be regarded as merely provisional, and the margin of possible error is wide. The tendency on the part of the Cretan explorers has been to accept in the main the Berlin system of Egyptian dating in preference to that advocated by Professor Flinders Petrie ('Researches in Sinai,' pp. 163-185), on the ground that the development of the Minoan culture can scarcely have required so long a period as that given by the Sinai dating. It must be remembered, however, that the question is still unsettled, and that the longer system of Professor Petrie must be regarded as at least possible.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
In the following short list will be found the volumes on the Minoan and Mycenæan civilizations which are most accessible to the ordinary reader:
Annual of the British School at Athens, vols. vi.- . (Reports of excavations by Evans, Hogarth, and others, and many articles of interest on the results of discovery. Well illustrated.)
Journal of Hellenic Studies, vols. xx.- . (Articles by Evans, Hall, Mackenzie, Rouse, and others. Admirable illustrations.)