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The Little Palace yielded a somewhat more adequate representation of the Minoan marine in the shape of another seal-impression, which showed part of a vessel carrying one square sail, and propelled also by a single bank of oars, whose rowers sit under an awning.
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.
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.
These Keftiu, then, were the Minoans of the Great Palace period of Crete, the pre-Hellenic Greeks, the Pelasgi of old Greek tradition, in whose time the great civilization of the Minoan Empire reached its culminating point, and was within a little of its final disaster.
Who, then, were the invaders who, whether they remained as a ruling caste in the land which they had conquered, or merely destroyed and departed, inflicted upon the Minoan civilization a blow from which it never recovered?
The ring of Minos was destined to lie for long ages beneath the waves before the descendants of Theseus brought it up again. We must now endeavour to form some idea of the various periods into which the long enduring culture of the Minoan Empire more or less naturally falls, and to note some of the characteristic features of each period.
At Hagia Triada the very large deposits of linear writing larger, indeed, than the representation of Class A at Knossos belong to the First Late Minoan period, and are contemporary with the wonderful work of the steatite vases and the fresco of the hunting-cat; while at Phæstos the final catastrophe of the palace took place at a time when the linear writing of Class A was still in full use.
'Ab-nub's child, Sebek-user, deceased, whose statuette was found at Knossos, gives us a point of connection between the earlier part of Middle Minoan III. and the Thirteenth Egyptian Dynasty, while the alabastron of Khyan links the later portion of the period with the Hyksos domination in Egypt.
Indeed, the Minoan methods have already borne the test of having been accepted as evidence in a modern court of law. 'In 1901, says Dr. Evans, 'I discovered that certain tablets had been abstracted from the excavations, and had shortly afterwards been purchased by the museum at Athens.
On his return to Crete, some months later, he was accordingly arrested, and the evidence supplied by the Minoan formula was accepted by the Candia Tribunal as a crowning proof of his guilt. Aristides "the Unjust" was thus condemned to three months' imprisonment. Few criminals attain to the dignity of being convicted on evidence 3,500 years old.
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