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Before the true Hellenes reached Crete, an Asianic dialect must have been spoken there, and to this language the word "labyrinth" must originally have belonged. The classical labyrinth was "in the Knossian territory." The palace of Knossos was emphatically the chief seat of the worship of a god whose emblem was the double-axe; it was the Knossian "Place of the Double-Axe," the Cretan "Labyrinth."
Were they conceivably responsible for the 'imported alabaster vases dating from the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, which were found in the royal tomb at Isopata? Towards the close of this epoch the ceramic art of Knossos shows features which are directly attributable to Egyptian influence.
The Theatral Area at Phæstos to some extent resembles that of Knossos, but is simpler, lacking the tier of steps at right angles to the main tier, and lacking also the Bastion, or Royal Box, which at Knossos occupies the angle of the junction of the two tiers.
A fresco from Hagia Triada represents a curious and elaborate form of dress, consisting apparently of wide trousers of blue material dotted with red crosses on a light ground, and most wonderfully frilled and vandyked. Diaphanous material was sometimes used for part of the covering of the upper part of the body, as in the case of some of the figures from the Knossos frescoes.
At the southern angle of the building, this corridor the 'Corridor of the Procession' led round to a great southern portico with double columns, and in a passage-way behind this portico there came to light one of the first fairly complete evidences of the outward fashion and appearance of the great prehistoric race which had founded the civilization of Knossos and Mycenæ.
The tribute-bearers carry in their hands or upon their shoulders great vessels of gold and silver, some of them exactly resembling in shape the Vaphio cups, though much larger than these, some of them of the type of the bronze ewer found in the north-west house at Knossos.
For the Cretan King he wrought many wonderful works, rearing for him the Labyrinth, and the Choros, or dancing-ground, which, as Homer tells us, he 'wrought in broad Knossos for fair-haired Ariadne. But for his share in the great crime of Pasiphae Minos hated him, and shut him up in the Labyrinth which he himself had made.
It turned out, however, that in a block of building which stands between the West Court and the paved area to the north-west of the palace, a strange chance had preserved enough to testify to the art of the bronze-workers of Knossos.
Once at least in the long history of the palace at Knossos, if not twice, there had come a disastrous day when the Minoan fleet had either been defeated or eluded, when some invading force had landed and swept up the valley, had overcome what resistance could be made by the guard of the unfortified palace, and had ebbed back again to its ships, leaving death and fire-blackened walls behind it.
But it may not be altogether a mere coincidence that, in a period of Egyptian history which we know to have been linked with an important epoch of Cretan development, there should have been erected in Egypt a building absolutely unparalleled, so far as we know, among the architectural triumphs of that nation, but bearing no distant resemblance, if the descriptions are to be trusted, to the great palace which the Minoan Sovereigns had newly reared, or were, perhaps, still rearing, for themselves at Knossos.
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