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The latest discoveries in Minoan graves in Crete exhibit tools of bronze. Iron, we repeat, is in the poems a perfectly familiar metal. The poets are certainly not describing an age in which only a man of wealth might indulge in the rare and extravagant luxury of an iron ring: iron was a common commodity, like cattle, hides, slaves, bronze, and other such matters.
The metal was too precious to escape the plunderer in the evil days which fell upon the Minoan Empire; and the artistic value of the vases and bowls would seem trifling to the conquerors in comparison with the worth of the metal.
In the decoration of his ware, which does not exhibit any marked advance in form upon that of Early Minoan III., he has begun to supplement the familiar white on the dark slip by adding yellow, orange, red, and crimson. The Petsofa figurines, already alluded to, which belong to this period, have a colour scheme of black and white, red and orange.
The pillared portico opened upon another elongated area, a characteristic feature of Minoan architecture, which served the purpose of a light-shaft, illuminating the inner room. The light-well had been covered with a brilliant white plaster, on which were the remains of a bird fresco a long, curving wing, with feathers of red, blue, yellow, white, and black.
The recollections of the fallen power that survived in the Greek mind were chiefly those connected with the oppressive aspect of the dominion which the Lord of Knossos exercised over the Ægean area; but in Egypt there lingered for centuries a tradition which did more justice to the glories of Minoan Crete.
In either case the sea-power of Minoan Crete was a reality which endured, not for one reign, but for many reigns; and it is practically certain that, during a long period of history, the whole sea-borne trade of Europe, Asia, and Africa, was in the hands of these, the earliest lords of the ocean.
The colonizing movement which has left traces of Minoan culture in Anatolia, in Palestine, in Sicily, and even in Spain, began, no doubt, at an earlier period, when the Empire of the Sea-Kings was in its full strength; but it probably received a considerable impulse at this time of forced emigration.
Along with the marine designs went naturalistic representations of flowers and grasses the lily and the crocus, already familiar from earlier work, the Egyptian lotus in a form adapted to the taste of the Minoan artist, and ivy leaves and tendrils.
Whether the idea of this relation between the two buildings be merely fanciful or not, their resemblances add another illustration to the proofs of the close connection between the Minoan and the Egyptian cultures in the third millennium B.C.
It is suggested, therefore, that in the supersession of Class A by Class B we have another indication of the dynastic revolution which is supposed to have caused that ruin of the palace which closed the Middle Minoan period. The records of Class B give evidence of a very considerable advance in the art of writing. 'The characters themselves have a European aspect.
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