The Lair of the Minotaur The Palace of Minos at
Knossos. Vol. II. By Sir Arthur Evans.: (Macmillan. Two pirts. £7 7i.) IN the last quarfer of the nineteenth century the work of the excavators had its greafest triumph ; for suddenly it revealed to us a world-power and a world-Civilization which had passed entirely from the mind of man. The discovery was startling. It showed us a culture beside which even the nineteenth century could be a little modest. The biggest shock of all, in those days, was the drainage system of Cnossus. Under the city Dr. Evans (now Sir Arthur Evans) found a system of terra-cotta pipes and stone conduits, flushed by rain-water shafts from the house-tops, of an intricacy and efficiency which had been unequalled in modern Europe till a score of years ago. " Absolutely English," it was called ; and it was now between three and four thousand years old.
Sir Arthur Evans has just published the second volume of his great record of Minoan civilization, and it is perhaps timely to recall the steps by which this " news ,of the dead " transpired. It was Schliernann, a poor man's son, who first (dead metaphor come to life !) broke open the ground. We are told that, when he was serving as a grocer's boy, a drunken miller came into the shop and spouted some lines of Homer. The sound of these unintelligible words was so magnificent in Schliernann's ears that he set himself, by any means he could manage, to learn Greek. The scenes and descriptions of Homer were more literally true to Sehliemann than to any scholar of Europe. He knew that Troy _had existed, and he resolved to find it.
By working and scraping and pinching for years he raised enough 'money to begin his search ; and in-his excavations he came across evidence which more than fulfilled his hopes. The " Mycenaean" age becarrie historic again : -Troy was uncovered : there began to be signs that an ancient, wide. spread, forgotten civilization had flourished long before the Greeks, the " yellow-haired Aehaeans," came dOwn, with barbaric strength, into the Aegean lands. Sehlierruirin's work ! was crucial.; but there were richer stores to open, and the Mycenaean .age -tinned out to be a mere decadent sub-period of a far greater civilization. Homer was jUstified, however, and it was Homer who set Sir Arthur Evans on the track of _ his own,, more astounding, discoveries. Homer had spoken of " Crete with its ninety. cities " ; but this phrase had passed for nothing but poetic 'embroidery. It was inconceivable that Crete could ever !lave been so great and so pOpulous. The " inconceivable " Proved to be fact. Homer had spoken of " broad Cnossus," but there was no sign of a site deserving the title. Sir Arthur Evans unearthed a city whose population, at its height, he now reckons at a hundred thousand. Between .3000 and 1400 B.C. Crete had been the centre of a vast commercial enipire, with fleets bf warships and trading vessels; the mistress of the Mediterra- nean Sea ; and the city of cities in Crete-wat Cnossus.
Its site was unlike the Sites of most ancient cities ; DA' most of them were . chosen for their commanding positions, and were fortresses as over much as towns. But Cnossus was ove looked by a ring of hills, and its defence must have been left to the sea. :It had other' adVantages, however ; it :was easy of access and 'it was placed in fertile country. Earthquakes shook froM time to time ; and there are clear signs that in 1500 B:c: an earthquake destroyed the whole town ; abut until the last disaster of all overtook it a new Cnossus always rose above the old.
, On a small hillock in the middle of the town, formed by the remains of settlements from Neolithic times, was the famous Palace of the Priest-Kings, the so-called House of Minos, a building as large as Buckingham Palace itself. It was the romantic interest of the Palace which drew most interest to the excavations. Here was the residence of the legendary King Minos : here was the labyrinth through which Theseus made his way to slay the Minotaur. The discoveries have made clear that the Greek myth was no mere story ; and now we can build up something of the truth underlying it.
One of the sacred sports of Cnossus was the bull-fight ; figures and paintings have survived to illustrate it. In the arena with the votive bulls bands of young men and girls took part in displaying their skill and daring. They waited for the bull to charge, caught hold of its horns, and somersaulted over to land on its back. A bronze casting reproduced in the present volume shows a youth who has accomplished the feat successfully, helped by the toss Of the bull's head, and, with his hands still on its horns, is pushing himself upright. A : more tragic painting elsewhere shows a youth who has failed and been caught on the bull's horns. It was doubtless for this purpose that the tribute of seven youth's and maidens was exacted from Athens : 'they were to be trained as acrobats for the sacred gaine.
The labyrinth was possibly the Palace itself, with its wan- dering corridors ; or there may in fact haie heen a maze leading either to the arena or to the stables of the bulls. In any case the word gives good evidence of its Cretan origin ; for one of the most recurrent motives of decoration in the Palace is the sacred double axe, the labrys. Nor was the Minotaur himself, half-man, half-bull, an invention of the Greeks ; for the bull-god was worshipped in such a form by the Cretans, and Sir Arthur Evans reproduces here a figure of a young Minotaur.
The fact that women took part in the bull-fights attests, in a curious way, what we may gather from much else—that women had a large and respected place in Cretan life. The women's quarters in the houses at Cnossus are large and luxurious, with their own bathrooms and dressing-roorris. In the frescoes we can see that they appeared in public equally with the men. And, for a last piece of evidence, the great deity of the Cretans was the divine Mother and Maiden : it was she who was supreme, in all her varying forms ; and her consort is a smaller figure, an auxiliary to the cult.
Tho town around the Palace is astonishing for the variety and convenience of its planning. Sir Arthur suggests that sumptuary laws may have been passed, settling the dimensions for the houses of each class of inhabitant, the dwellings of the prosperous, middle-class burghers are oddly uniform in size, It is plain that these burghers, in the greatest days of Crete, were men of substance and of culture. The walls of their houses are covered with frescoes and inscriptions ; and it seems that the art of reading was widely diffused.
The signs of commerce are everywhere ; in the great oil- , jars, large enough to hide Ali Baba and his forty thieves ; in the ornaments and weapons imported from other countries, and espeCially in the great clay inventories of transactions. The Cretan script- has not been deciphered yet, but we *Apr
that the Cretans had a decimal system and wrote down numbers up to 10,000. Paved ways run through the city, flagged in the middle for the pack-horses, concrete at the side. At the outside of the town is a rest-house for travellers, with elaborate bathing accommodation, " and an elegant little refectory, adorned with an appetizing frieze of partridges."
It is the days of the greatest expansion of Crete that Sir Arthur Evans mainly describes in the present volume, the end of the Middle Minoan period and the beginnings of the Late Minoan period: The tWo parts are beautifully illustrated, and it is enthralling to follow Sir Arthur through his account of the interconnexions of cultural influence in the ancient world, showing themselves in the jewellery, the painting, the bronzes and clay figures recovered from the soil of Cnossuii.
ALAN PORTER.
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