The first two paintings are representative of a very common style of fresco-pictures in these tombs. The care with which the animals are depicted is remarkable. Possibly one of the finest Egyptian representations of an animal is the fresco of a goat in the tomb of Gen-Amen, discovered by Mr. Mond. There is even an attempt here at chiaroscuro, which is unknown to Egyptian art generally, except at Tell el-Amarna. Evidently the Egyptian painters reached the apogee of their art towards the end of the XVIIIth Dynasty. The third, the representation of tribute-bearers, is of a type also well known at this period. In all the chief tombs we have processions of Egyptians, Westerners, Northerners, Easterners, and Southerners, bringing tribute to the Pharaoh. The North is represented by the Semites, the East by the Punites (when they occur), the South by negroes, the West by the Keftiu or people of Crete and Cyprus. The representations of the last-named people have become of the very highest interest during the last few years, on account of the discoveries in Crete, which have revealed to us the state and civilization of these very Keftiu. Messrs. Evans and Halbherr have discovered at Knossos and Phaistos the cities and palace-temples of the king who sent forth their ambassadors to far-away Egypt with gifts for the mighty Pharaoh; these ambassadors were painted in the tombs of their hosts as representative of the quarter of the world from which they came.
The two chief Egyptian representations of these people, who since they lived in Greece may be called Greeks, though their more proper title would be “Pe-lasgians,” are to be found in the tombs of Rekhmarâ and Senmut, the former a vizier under Thothmes III, the latter the architect of Hatshepsu’s temple at Dêr el-Bahari. Senmut’s tomb is a new rediscovery. It was known, as Rekhmarâ’s was, in the early days of Egyptological science, and Prisse d’Avennes copied its paintings. It was afterwards lost sight of until rediscovered by Mr. Newberry and Prof. Steindorff.
The tomb of Rekhmarâ (No. 35) is well known to every visitor to Thebes, but it is difficult to get at that of Senmut (No. 110); it lies at the top of the hill round to the left and overlooking Dêr el-Bahari, an appropriate place for it, by the way. In some ways Senmut’s representations are more interesting than Rekhmarâ’s. They are more easily seen, since they are now in the open air, the fore hall of the tomb having been ruined; and they are better preserved, since they have not been subjected to a century of inspection with naked candles and pawing with greasy hands, as have Rekhmarâ’s frescoes. Further, there is no possibility of mistaking what they represent. From right to left, walking in procession, we see the Minoan gift-bearers from Crete, carrying in their hands and on their shoulders great cups of gold and silver, in shape like the famous gold cups found at Vaphio in Lakonia, but much larger, also a ewer of gold and silver exactly like one of bronze discovered by Mr. Evans two years ago at Knossos, and a huge copper jug with four ring-handles round the sides. All these vases are specifically and definitely Mycenaean, or rather, following the new terminology, Minoan. They are of Greek manufacture and are carried on the shoulders of Pelasgian Greeks. The bearers wear the usual Mycenaean costume, high boots and a gaily ornamented kilt, and little else, just as we see it depicted in the fresco of the Cupbearer at Knossos and in other Greek representations. The coiffure, possibly the most characteristic thing about the Mycenaean Greeks, is faithfully represented by the Egyptians both here and in Rekhmarâ’s tomb. The Mycenaean men allowed their hair to grow to its full natural length, like women, and wore it partly hanging down the back, partly tied up in a knot or plait (the kepas of the dandy Paris in the Iliad) on the crown of the head. This was the universal fashion, and the Keftiu are consistently depicted by the XVIIIth Dynasty Egyptians as following it. The faces in the Senmut fresco are not so well portrayed as those in the Rekhmarâ fresco. There it is evident that the first three ambassadors are faithfully depicted, as the portraits are marked. The procession advances from left to right. The first man, “the Great Chief of the Kefti and the Isles of the Green Sea,” is young, and has a remarkably small mouth with an amiable expression. His complexion is fair rather than dark, but his hair is dark brown. His lieutenant, the next in order, is of a different type,—elderly, with a most forbidding visage, Roman nose, and nutcracker jaws. Most of the others are very much alike,—young, dark in complexion, and with long black hair hanging below their waists and twisted up into fantastic knots and curls on the tops of their heads. One, carrying on his shoulder a great silver vase with curving handles and in one hand a dagger of early European Bronze Age type, is looking back to hear some remark of his next companion. Any one of these gift-bearers might have sat for the portrait of the Knossian Cupbearer, the fresco discovered by Mr. Evans in the palace-temple of Minos; he has the same ruddy brown complexion, the same long black hair dressed in the same fashion, the same parti-coloured kilt, and he bears his vase in much the same way. We have only to allow for the difference of Egyptian and Mycenaean ways of drawing. There is no doubt whatever that these Keftiu of the Egyptians were Cretans of the Minoan Age. They used to be considered Phoenicians, but this view was long ago exploded. They are not Semites, and that is quite enough. Neither are they Asiatics of any kind. They are purely and simply Mycenaean, or rather Minoan, Greeks of the pre-Hellenic period—Pelasgi, that is to say.
Probably no discovery of more far-reaching importance to our knowledge of the history of the world generally and of our own culture especially has ever been made than the finding of Mycenæ by Schliemann, and the further finds that have resulted therefrom, culminating in the discoveries of Mr. Arthur Evans at Knossos. Naturally, these discoveries are of extraordinary interest to us, for they have revealed the beginnings and first bloom of the European civilization of to-day. For our culture-ancestors are neither the Egyptians, nor the Assyrians, nor the Hebrews, but the Hellenes, and they, the Aryan-Greeks, derived most of their civilization from the pre-Hellenic people whom they found in the land before them, the Pelasgi or “Mycenæan” Greeks, “Minoans,” as we now call them, the Keftiu of the Egyptians. These are the ancient Greeks of the Heroic Age, to which the legends of the Hellenes refer; in their day were fought the wars of Troy and of the Seven against Thebes, in their day the tragedy of the Atridse was played out to its end, in their day the wise Minos ruled Knossos and the Ægean. And of all the events which are at the back of these legends we know nothing. The hiéroglyphed tablets of the pre-Hellenic Greeks lie before us, but we cannot read them; we can only see that the Minoan writing in many ways resembled the Egyptian, thus again confirming our impression of the original early connection of the two cultures.
In view of this connection, and the known close relations between Crete and Egypt, from the end of the XIIth Dynasty to the end of the XVIIIth, we might have hoped to recover at Knossos a bilingual inscription in Cretan and Egyptian hieroglyphs which would give us the key to the Minoan script and tell us what we so dearly wish to know. But this hope has not yet been realized. Two Egyptian inscriptions have been found at Knossos, but no bilingual one. A list of Keftian names is preserved in the British Museum upon an Egyptian writing-board from Thebes with what is perhaps a copy of a single Cretan hieroglyph, a vase; but again, nothing bilingual. A list of “Keftian words” occurs at the head of a papyrus, also in the British Museum, but they appear to be nonsense, a mere imitation of the sounds of a strange tongue. Still we need not despair of finding the much desired Cretan-Egyptian bilingual inscription yet. Perhaps the double text of a treaty between Crete and Egypt, like that of Ramses II with the Hittites, may come to light. Meanwhile we can only do our best with the means at our hand to trace out the history of the relations of the oldest European culture with the ancient civilization of Egypt. The tomb-paintings at Thebes are very important material. Eor it is due to them that the voice of the doubter has finally ceased to be heard, and that now no archaeologist questions that the Egyptians were in direct communication with the Cretan Mycenæans in the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty, some fifteen hundred years before Christ, for no one doubts that the pictures of the Keftiu are pictures of Mycenaeans.
As we have seen, we know that this connection was far older than the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty, but it is during that time and the Hyksos period that we have the clearest documentary proof of its existence, from the statuette of Abnub and the alabastron lid of King Khian, found at Knossos, down to the Mycenaean pottery fragments found at Tell el-Amarna, a site which has been utterly abandoned since the time of the heretic Akhunaten (B.C. 1430), so that there is no possibility of anything found there being later than his time. That the connection existed as late as the time of the XXth Dynasty we know from the representations of golden Bügelkannen or false-necked vases of Mycenaean form in the tomb of Ramses III in the Bibân el-Mulûk, and of golden cups of Vaphio type in the tomb of Imadua, already mentioned. This brings the connection down to about 1050 B.C.