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Evans and other explorers incline rather to believe, Cretans from Phæstos, whose purpose was merely to overthrow the ruling dynasty, scarcely interrupted the current of Minoan development.
Thus, it is abundantly evident that the civilization of Minoan Crete, far from being dumb, had varied and perfectly adequate means of expressing itself. The old Cretan tradition that the Phnicians did not invent the letters of the alphabet, but only changed those already existing, is amply justified; for this seems to have been precisely what they did.
Evans's view, which is generally accepted, is that it was some sort of a primitive theatre, where the inhabitants of the palace gathered to witness sports and shows of some kind, the tiers of steps affording sitting accommodation for them, while the bastion at the south-east angle may have been a kind of Royal Box, from which Minoan majesty and its Court circle surveyed the games.
Fragments of Late Minoan pottery found in abundance on the site of Akhenaten's new capital at Tell-el-Amarna show that even in the reign of this King, the heretic son and successor of Amenhotep III., Crete was still trading with Egypt.
The golden mice and tumours which they sent to the Hebrews along with the ark of Jehovah recall on the one hand the skill of the Minoan goldsmiths, and on the other the votive images of animals and diseased human organs placed in the old shrine at Petsofa. The respect which was excited by their warlike prowess can easily be read between the lines of the Hebrew story.
The excavations at Knossos, Phæstos, and Hagia Triada have yielded, in the main, evidence of the splendour of the Minoan Kings; but other sites in the island, while presenting perhaps nothing so striking, have added largely to our knowledge of the common life of the Minoan race.
But when from heaven Sirius scorched the Minoan Isles, and for long there was no respite for the inhabitants, then by the injunction of the Far-Darter they summoned Aristaeus to ward off the pestilence.
One of the season's finds was peculiarly useful and interesting, as having yielded a considerable mass of material for reconstructing the appearance of a Minoan town.
But even in some of the Mycenæan tombs iron appears in the shape of finger-rings; and in East Cretan tombs of the latest Minoan period iron swords have been found.
Into this infinitely degraded residuum of a vanished race entered the new energizing force when the divine creative energy came once more into operation, in the fullness of time, and the Minoan, the Egyptian and the Greek came almost in an hour to their highest perfection.
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