Improved communications are much needed for the transport of agricultural produce, but the state of the treasury does not admit of more than a nominal expenditure on road-making and other public works. On these the average yearly expenditure between 1898 and 1905 was £13,404. The prosperity of the island depends on the development of agriculture, the acquirement of industrious habits by the people, and the abandonment of political agitation. The Cretans were in 1906 more lightly taxed than any other people in Europe. The tithe had been replaced by an export tax on exported agricultural produce levied at the custom-houses, and the smaller peasant proprietors and shepherds of the mountainous districts were practically exempt from any contribution to the state. The communal tax did not exceed on the average two francs annually for each family. The poorer communes are aided by a state subvention.
(J. D. B.)
Archaeology.
The recent exploration and excavation of early sites in Crete have entirely revolutionized our knowledge of its remote past, and afforded the most astonishing evidence of the existence of a highly advanced Early, Middle and Late “Minoan” periods. civilization going far back behind the historic period. Great “Minoan” palaces have been brought to light at Cnossus and Phaestus, together with a minor but highly interesting royal abode at Hagia Triada near Phaestus. “Minoan” towns, some of considerable extent, have been discovered at Cnossus itself, at Gournia, Palaikastro, and at Zakro. The cave sanctuary of the Dictaean Zeus has been explored, and throughout the whole length and breadth of the island a mass of early materials has now been collected. The comparative evidence afforded by the discovery of Egyptian relics shows that the Great Age of the Cretan palaces covers the close of the third and the first half of the second millennium before our era. But the contents of early tombs and dwellings and indications supplied by such objects as stone vases and seal-stones show that the Cretans had already attained to a considerable degree of culture, and had opened out communication with the Nile valley in the time of the earliest Egyptian dynasties. This more primitive phase of the indigenous culture, of which several distinct stages are traceable, is known as the Early Minoan, and roughly corresponds with the first half of the third millennium B.C. The succeeding period, to which the first palaces are due and to which the name of Middle Minoan is appropriately given, roughly coincides with the Middle Empire of Egypt. An extraordinary perfection was at this time attained in many branches of art, notably in the painted pottery, often with polychrome decoration, of a class known as “Kamares” from its first discovery in a cave of that name on Mount Ida. Imported specimens of this ware were found by Flinders Petrie among XIIth Dynasty remains at Kahun. The beginnings of a school of wall painting also go back to the Middle Minoan period, and metal technique and such arts as gem engraving show great advance. By the close of this period a manufactory of fine faience was attached to the palace of Cnossus. The succeeding Late Minoan period, best illustrated by the later palace at Cnossus and that at Hagia Triada, corresponds in Egypt with the Hyksos period and the earlier part of the New Empire. In the first phase of this the Minoan civilization attains its acme, and the succeeding style already shows much that may be described as rococo. The later phase, which follows on the destruction of the Cnossian palace, and corresponds with the diffused Mycenaean style of mainland Greece and elsewhere, is already partly decadent. Late Minoan art in its finest aspect is best illustrated by the animated ivory figures, wall paintings, and gesso duro reliefs at Cnossus, by the painted stucco designs at Hagia Triada, and the steatite vases found on the same site with zones in reliefs exhibiting life-like scenes of warriors, toreadors, gladiators, wrestlers and pugilists, and of a festal throng perhaps representing a kind of “harvest home.” Of the more conventional side of Late Minoan life a graphic illustration is supplied by the remains of miniature wall paintings found in the palace of Cnossus, showing groups of court ladies in curiously modern costumes, seated on the terraces and balustrades of a sanctuary. A grand “palace style” of vase painting was at the same time evolved, in harmony with the general decoration of the royal halls.
It had been held till lately that the great civilization of prehistoric Greece, as first revealed to us by Schliemann’s discoveries at Mycenae, was not possessed of the art of writing. In 1893, however, Arthur Evans observed some signs on Minoan script. seal-stones from Crete which led him to believe that a hieroglyphic system of writing had existed in Minoan times. Explorations carried out by him in Crete from 1894 onwards, for the purpose of investigating the prehistoric civilization of the island, fully corroborated this belief, and showed that a linear as well as a semi-pictorial form of writing was diffused in the island at a very early period (“Cretan Pictographs and Prae-Phoenician Script,” Journ. of Hellenic Studies, xiv. pt. 11). In 1895 he obtained a libation-table from the Dictaean cave with a linear dedication in the prehistoric writing (“Further Discoveries,” &c., J.H.S. xvii.). Finally in 1900 all scepticism in the learned world was set at rest by his discovery in the palace of Cnossus of whole archives consisting of clay tablets inscribed both in the pictographic (hieroglyphic) and linear forms of the Minoan script (Evans, “Palace of Knossos,” Reports of Excavation, 1900-1905; Scripta Minoa, vol. i., 1909). Supplementary finds of inscribed tablets have since been found at Hagia Triada (F. Halbherr, Rapporto, &c., Monumenti antichi, 1903) and elsewhere (Palaikastro, Zakro and Gournia). It thus appears that a highly developed system of writing existed in Minoan Crete some two thousand years earlier than the first introduction under Phoenician influence of Greek letters. In this, as in so many other respects, the old Cretan tradition receives striking confirmation. According to the Cretan version preserved by Diodorus (v. 74), the Phoenicians did not invent letters but simply altered their forms.
There is evidence that the use in Crete of both linear and pictorial signs existed in the Early Minoan period, contemporary with the first Egyptian dynasties. It is, however, during the Middle Minoan age, the centre point of which Earlier pictographic script. corresponds with the XIIth Egyptian dynasty, according to the Sothic system of dating, c. 2000-1850 B.C., that a systematized pictographic or hieroglyphic script makes its appearance which is common both to signets and clay tablets. During the Third Middle Minoan period, the lower limits of which approach 1600 B.C., this pictographic script finally gives way to a still more developed linear system—which is itself divided into an earlier and a later class. The earlier class (A) is already found in the temple repositories of Cnossus belonging to the age immediately preceding the great remodelling of the palace, and this class is specially well represented in the tablets of Hagia Triada (M.M. iii. and L.M. i.). The later class (B) of the linear script is that used on the great bulk of the clay tablets of the Cnossian palace, amounting in number to nearly 2000.
These clay archives are almost exclusively inventories and business documents. Their general purport is shown in many cases by pictorial figures relating to various objects which appear on them—such as chariots and horses, ingots and metal vases, arms and implements, stores of corn, &c., flocks and herds. Many showing human figures apparently contain lists of personal names. A decimal system of numeration was used, with numbers going up to 10,000. But the script itself is as yet undeciphered, though it is clear that certain words have changing suffixes, and that there were many compound words. The script also recurs on walls in the shape of graffiti, and on vases, sometimes ink-written; and from the number of seals originally attached to perishable documents it is probable that parchment or some similar material was also used. In the easternmost district of Crete, where the aboriginal “Eteocretan” element survived to historic times (Praesus, Palaikastro), later inscriptions have been discovered belonging to the 5th and succeeding centuries B.C., written in Greek letters but in the indigenous language (Comparetti, Mon. Ant. iii. 451 sqq.; R. S. Conway, British School Annual, viii. 125 sqq. and ib. xl.). In 1908 a remarkable discovery was made by the Italian Mission at Phaestus of a clay disk with imprinted hieroglyphic characters belonging to a non-Cretan system and probably from W. Anatolia.
The remains of several shrines within the building, and the religious element perceptible in the frescoes, show that a considerable part of the Palace of Cnossus was devoted to purposes of cult. It is clear that the rulers, as so Character of Minoan religion. commonly in ancient states, fulfilled priestly as well as royal functions. The evidence supplied by this and other Cretan sites shows that the principal Minoan divinity was a kind of Magna Mater, a Great Mother or nature goddess, with whom was associated a male satellite. The cult in fact corresponds in its main outlines with the early religious conceptions of Syria and a large part of Anatolia—a correspondence probably explained by a considerable amount of ethnic affinity existing between a large section of the primitive Cretan population and that of southern Asia Minor. The Minoan goddess is sometimes seen in her chthonic form with serpents, sometimes in a more celestial aspect with doves, at times with lions. One part of her religious being survives in that of the later Rhea, another in that of Aphrodite, one of whose epithets, Ariadne ( = the exceeding holy), takes us back to the earliest Cnossian tradition. Under her native name, Britomartis ( = the sweet maiden) or Dictynna, she approaches Artemis and Leto, again associated with an infant god, and this Cretan virgin goddess was worshipped in Aegina under the name of Aphaea. It is noteworthy that whereas, in Greece proper, Zeus attains a supreme position, the old superiority of the Mother Goddess is still visible in the Cretan traditions of Rhea and Dictynna and the infant Zeus.
Although images of the divinities were certainly known, the principal objects of cult in the Minoan age were of the aniconic class; in many cases these were natural objects, such as rocks and mountain peaks, with their cave sanctuaries, like those of Ida or of Dicte. Trees and curiously shaped stones were also worshipped, and artificial pillars of wood or stone. These latter, as in the well-known case of the Lion’s Gate at Mycenae, often appear with guardian animals as their supporters. The essential feature of this cult is the bringing down of the celestial spirit by proper incantations and ritual into these fetish objects, the dove perched on a column sometimes indicating its descent. It is a primitive cult similar to that of Early Canaan, illustrated by the pillow stone set up by Jacob, which was literally “Bethel” or the “House of God.” The story of the baetylus, or stone swallowed by Saturn under the belief that it was his son, the Cretan Zeus, seems to cover the same idea and has been derived from the same Semitic word.
A special form of this “baetylic” cult in Minoan Crete was the representation of the two principal divinities in their fetish form by double axes. Shrines of the Double Axes have been found in the palace of Cnossus itself, at Hagia Triada, and in a small palace at Gournia, and many specimens of the sacred emblem occurred in the Cave Sanctuary of Dicte, the mythical birthplace of the Cretan Zeus. Complete scenes of worship in which libations are poured before the Sacred Axes are, moreover, given on a fine painted sarcophagus found at Hagia Triada.