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These figures of bulls, as we have already seen in connection with the Palace of Tiryns, were among the most favourite subjects of Mycenæan and Minoan art; but nothing so fine as the Knossos relief had yet been discovered. 'It is life-sized, or somewhat over, and modelled in high relief.
In the first part of this lecture I drew certain analogies between what has occurred to forms of animal life through the procession of the ages on this planet, and what has occurred and is occurring to the great artificial civilizations which have gradually spread over the world's surface, during the thousands of years that have elapsed since cities of temples and palaces first rose beside the Nile and the Euphrates, and the harbors of Minoan Crete bristled with the masts of the Ægean craft.
Before he shared the picture with his companion he told her of what was not then so widely known details of that most thrilling moment perhaps in all the romance of archæology where the excavators of Knossos came upon the first authentic picture of a man belonging to that mysterious and forgotten race that had raised up a civilization in some things rivalling the Greek a race that had watched Minoan power wane and die, and all but the dimmest legend of it vanish, before the builders of Argos and Mycenæ began laying their foundation stones.
Far from the prehistoric age being a time of stagnation, it was rather a time of ceaseless movement. Perhaps the most striking example of the distance across which communication could take place in almost incredibly early times is afforded by the discovery on the site of ancient Troy the Second City, roughly contemporary with Early Minoan III. of a piece of white jade, a stone peculiar to China.
The main result of the season of 1902 was the practical reconstruction of a large part of the Eastern or Domestic Quarter of the palace. The chief room in this part of the building was the Queen's Megaron, an inner chamber divided transversely by a row of pillars, along whose bases ran a raised seat, where, no doubt, the maids of honour of the Minoan Court were wont to sit and gossip.
Egypt was passing through the dark period between the Thirteenth and Seventeenth Dynasties, which includes the domination of the Hyksos; but the civilization of Crete, on the contrary, was continually and steadily advancing. To this age belong many of the most interesting and precious relics of the Minoan culture.
The supreme part which the sea played in the life of the Cretans is shown unmistakably by the fact that practically every Minoan site of importance is on the coast, or within easy reach of it, while the innate national delight in all the wonderful creatures of the marine world is seen in the constant use of their forms as motives in decorative work.
Perhaps some day the debt will be fully repaid by the discovery of a bilingual text in Egyptian and Minoan, giving us in hieroglyphics a version of some passage of that Minoan script which now exists only to tantalize us with records of an ancient history which we cannot read. Such a discovery is by no means beyond the bounds of possibility.
The Minoan Empire, like our own, rested upon sea-power; its great Kings were the Sea-Kings of the ancient world the first Sea-Kings known to history, over-lords of the Ægean long before 'the grave Tyrian trader' had learned 'the way of a ship in the sea, or the land-loving Egyptian had ventured his timid squadrons at the command of a great Queen so far as Punt.
In this period we come for the first time into a sphere where there is practically an absolute certainty in dating; for now we have the Keftiu appearing in the tomb frescoes of the Eighteenth Dynasty at Thebes, with their vessels of characteristic Minoan type, and their purely Minoan style of dress and general appearance.
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