The Sea-Kings of Crete Part 9

Even at this exceedingly early stage of human progress, the various branches of industry had become fairly separated and specialized, more so, perhaps, than in the Homeric period, and a considerable variety of tools was employed in the various crafts. The carpenter was evidently a highly skilled craftsman, and the tools which have survived show the variety of work which he undertook. At Knossos a carefully hewn tomb held, along with the body of the dead artificer, specimens of the tools of his trade--a bronze saw, adze, and chisel.

'A whole carpenter's kit lay concealed in a cranny of a Gournia house, left behind in the owner's hurried flight when the town was attacked and burned. He used saws long and short, heavy chisels for stone and light for wood, awls, nails, files, and axes much battered by use; and, what is very important to note, they resemble in shape the tools of to-day so closely that they furnish one of the strongest links between the first great civilization of Europe and our own.'[*] Such tools were, of course, of bronze. Probably the chief industry of the island was the manufacture and export of olive oil. The palace at Knossos has its Room of the Olive Press, and its conduit for conveying the product of the press to the place where it was to be stored for use; and probably many of the great jars now in the magazines were used for the storage of this indispensable article. As we have seen, Dr. Evans conjectures that it was the decay of the trade in oil during the troubled days after the sack of the palaces that drove the Minoans abroad from their island home to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Besides the trade in oil, it would seem that there must have been a trade in the purple of the murex, and no doubt the Keftiu mariners found a ready market for this much-prized product long before the Ph?nicians dreamed of Tyrian purple. Minoan pottery was manifestly also an article of export--a fragile cargo for those days. The fact that two of the Keftiu envoys in the Rekh-ma-ra frescoes carry ingots of copper of the same shape as those found by Dr. Halbherr at Hagia Triada suggests that Crete may have exported copper to Egypt in the time of Tahutmes III. as Cyprus exported it in large quant.i.ties in that of Amenhotep III.

[Footnote *: C. H. and H. Hawes, 'Crete the Forerunner of Greece,'

p. 37.]

It is unfortunate that so far we have no large-scale representations of the ships in which these early masters of the ocean conducted the sea-borne commerce of the aegean world. The various seal-stones and impressions, and the gold ring from Mokhlos, are interesting, but it would have been much more satisfactory had we been able to see representations of the Minoan galleys as complete as those which Queen Hatshepsut has left of the ships of her merchant squadron.

The vessels represented are almost universally single-masted, with one bank of oars, whose number varies from five to eleven a side, a high stern, and a bow ending either in a barbed point or an open beak, which suggests resemblances to the galleys of the sea-peoples who were defeated by Ramses III. In some instances the length of the voyage undertaken appears to be indicated. A crescent moon on the forestay, and another on the backstay of a vessel with seven oars a side, may point to a two months' voyage, while a disc over the beak of another which has no oars at all may indicate one of a year's duration, or perhaps, more probably, one of a complete month. 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. No designs are so common on Minoan pottery as those derived from the sea; the octopus, the murex, the nautilus, the coral, and various forms of algae, occur continually, and are utilized with great skill, while such pictures as the Dolphin Fresco (Plate X. 1) show the fascination which marine life had upon the Minoan mind, and the care with which it was observed.

That commerce was thoroughly organized and attended to with that careful precision which seems to have been characteristic of the race is seen from the Zakro excavations, where Mr. Hogarth found 500 seal impressions in the house of a single merchant. Trade must have been very far removed indeed from primitive conditions when merchants were so careful about the security of their bales of goods.

[Ill.u.s.tration XXVIII: SARCOPHAGUS FROM HAGIA TRIADA (_p_. 127)

_G. Maraghiannis_]

So far as the evidence goes, the Minoan Empire does not appear to have been a specially warlike one. No doubt there was a good deal of fighting in its history, as was the case with all ancient empires. But the insular position of Crete, and the predominance which the Minoan navy established on the sea, saved the island Empire from the necessity of becoming a great military power, and the absence of the spirit of militarism is reflected in the national art. While an a.s.syrian palace would have been decorated from end to end with pictures of barbarous bloodshed and plunder, while even the milder Egyptians would have adorned their walls with records of the conquests of their Pharaohs, the Kings of the House of Minos turned to other and more gentle scenes for the decoration of their homes. Flower-gatherers and dancing-girls, harvest festivals and religious processions, appealed to their minds far more than the endless and monotonous succession of horrors with which the Mesopotamian monarchs delighted to disfigure their walls; and even the dangers of the bull-ring, as seen on the Knossian frescoes, are mild and gentle when compared with the abominations where Teumman has his head sawed off with a short dagger, and other unfortunates are flayed alive, or have their tongues torn out.

The archives of the palace at Knossos certainly show that a military force was kept on foot, and was thoroughly organized and well looked after. There are records of numbers of chariots, and of the issue of equipments to the charioteers of the force; and many of the tablets refer to stores of lances, swords, bows, and arrows, a store of nearly 9,000 arrows being mentioned in one of the finds; while an actual magazine, containing hundreds of bronze arrow-heads, has been discovered. We may remember that in ancient warfare the Cretan bowmen were as famous as the Balearic slingers or the archers of England. On the whole, however, the genius of the Minoans, like our own, was more commercial than military, though, no doubt, they were not devoid of the fighting spirit when occasion arose. Their kinsmen of Mycenae and Tiryns, less happily situated, were forced to develop the military side of life; but the position and the maritime power of Crete secured for the fortunate island those long centuries of tranquil growth which were so fruitful in the arts of peace. With one possible exception, no records appear to have been found as yet dealing with the Minoan marine; but it is impossible to believe that a people so methodical, who kept such careful record of their military stores, should not have had a thoroughly organized department to deal with the infinitely more important matter of their navy, and perhaps the records of the Minoan Board of Admiralty may yet come to light and be deciphered, to enable us to understand how the first great sea-power of history dealt with its fleets.

Comparatively few agricultural tools have survived, probably because few were used; but some bronze sickles have been found. These are not curved like the modern ones, but are bent at an angle, and have a longer handle, so that the peasants would not be obliged to bend down so much in the work of reaping. The figures on the Harvester Vase carry a curious implement, which has been variously described, according as those who deal with it believe the vase to represent a triumphal march of warriors returning from battle or a harvest procession. In the first case it is described as a kind of trident with a hook attached to it, for the purpose of grappling the rigging of an opponent's vessel; in the second, it is looked upon as a common hay-fork. The resemblance to a hay-fork seems satisfactory enough, though the three p.r.o.ngs are much longer than the two of the implement used nowadays, and the hook attached remains unexplained; but if the implement must be supposed to be a military weapon, it seems singularly ill-contrived and inadequate for such rough service. It might conceivably be a trident for spearing fish, but, on the whole, the hay-fork idea seems most satisfactory.

Hand-querns were used for the grinding of corn, and numbers of these and of mortars for pounding grain remain. Indeed, in some cases the actual grains of barley and the pease which were stored for future use still remain in the great jars. In a jar at Hissarlik, Schliemann found no less than 440 pounds of pease, and some of his workmen lived for a time on this food, which might conceivably have been stored against a siege of Troy earlier than that recorded in the Iliad. The olive-tree was of great importance, as yielding the staple product of the island, and the fig-tree seems also to have been in general cultivation, and was held to be sacred; but, strangely enough, though wine must have been in constant use, as is shown by the vessels for its storage and service, there is only one representation of the vine, and even in that case the ident.i.ty of the object depicted is doubtful. Weaving was an art in which the Minoans were well skilled, to judge from the fabrics which are represented in the frescoes. As in Penelope's time, it was a domestic art, and probably almost every household had its loom, where the women turned out the materials for ordinary wear. In many of the houses have been found the loom-weights, mostly of stone or clay, which took the place of the more modern weaver's beam in serving to keep the threads taut; and there are also numbers of the stone discs which were attached, in spinning, to the foot of the spindle, to keep it straight and in motion. These loom-weights and spindle-discs are frequently ornamented with spiral incisions.

But the arts in which the islanders were supreme were those of the potter and the metal-worker, the chief evidences of whose skill have been already discussed. The reputation of Crete as a centre of metal-working became legendary in ancient times, and, in all likelihood, the bronze-worker and his fellows, the gold- and silver-smiths, attained the height of their skill before their brethren the potters, since, as we have seen, many of the finest pottery specimens are obviously designed on bronze, or, at all events, on metal models, the resemblance even going so far as the copying of the seams and rivets of the metal originals. Bronze was smelted in furnaces, the remains of one of which still exist near Gournia; and was cast in moulds, many of which have survived.

The tools and weapons which were made of the metal show an average alloy of about ten per cent. of tin. For beaten work, copper in an almost pure state appears to have been used. Gold was in extensive use for the best cla.s.s of ornamental work, and the Vaphio cups, which are now held to have been imported to Laconia from Crete, are evidence of the marvellous skill which the Minoan goldsmiths had attained; while the necklaces and other articles of personal adornment found at Mokhlos and in the beehive tombs at Phaestos (Plate x.x.xII.), are only to be matched, among ancient work, by the diadems of the Twelfth Dynasty Princesses, found at Dahshur in Egypt. Silver is comparatively scarce on Minoan, as on other aegean sites, though a number of fine silver vessels have been found at Knossos and elsewhere; and this scarcity is perhaps due, not only to the greed of the plunderers, but also to the fact that, during the greater part of the period covered by the Minoan Empire, the metal itself was actually scarcer and more valuable than gold.

In Egypt, whose supplies of silver apparently came from Cilicia, it maintained a higher value than gold until the time of the Eighteenth Dynasty, or about the period of the fall of Knossos; but then and thereafter its value fell, owing to increasing supplies, below that of the more precious metal. It does not appear that the gold-silver alloy--'electrum,' of which the Egyptians were so fond--was used by the Minoans.

[Ill.u.s.tration XXIX: MINOAN POTTERY (_pp_ 198 & 204)

Reproduced from _The Journal of h.e.l.lenic Studies_, by permission of the Council of the h.e.l.lenic Society]

Of the social life of the people in these prehistoric times we know practically nothing. Only one inference, possibly precarious enough, may be made from one of the features of the architecture of Knossos. There is no attempt to seclude the life of the palace from that of the town and country around it. On the contrary, the building seems almost to have been arranged with the view of affording the citizens of the Minoan Empire every facility for intercourse with the royal household. The great West Court, with its portico and its seats along the palace wall, suggests considerable freedom of access for the populace to the immediate neighbourhood of royalty.

It is perhaps rather a large inference to conclude that 'the very architecture of the Palaces of Knossos and Phaestos may testify to the power of the democracy';[*] but at least the thoughtfulness with which the comfort of the people visiting the palace was provided for, and the general openness and lack of any jealous seclusion, testified to by the whole style of the buildings, suggest that the relations between the Kings of the House of Minos and their subjects were much more human and pleasant than those obtaining in most ancient kingdoms.

[Footnote *: Mosso, 'The Palaces of Crete,' p. 163.]

From their art one would, on the whole, conclude the people to have been a somewhat attractive race, frankly enjoying the more pleasant aspects of life, and capable of a keen delight in all the beauties of Nature. Minoan art has little that is sombre about it; it is redolent of the open air and the free ocean, and a people who so rejoiced in natural beauty and delighted to surround themselves with their own reproductions and interpretations of it can scarcely have been bowed beneath a heavy yoke of servitude, or have lived other than a comparatively free and independent life. How much the Greeks of the Cla.s.sic period imbibed of the spirit of this gifted and artistic race we can only imagine. The artistic standpoint of the h.e.l.lenic Greek is somewhat different from that of his Minoan or Mycenaean forerunner, and he has lost that keen feeling for Nature which is so conspicuous in the work of the earlier stock; but the two races are at least at one in that profound love of beauty which is the dominant characteristic of the Greek nature, and it may well be that something of that feeling formed part of the heritage which the conqueror took over from the conquered, and which, added to the virility and intellectual power of the northern race, made the historic Greek the most brilliant type of humanity that the world has ever seen.

CHAPTER XI

LETTERS AND RELIGION

Of all the discoveries yet made on Cretan soil, that which, in the end, will doubtless prove to be of the greatest importance is the discovery of the various systems of writing which the Minoans successively devised and used. As yet knowledge with regard to these systems has not advanced beyond the description of the materials and their comparison with those furnished by other scripts, a task which has so far been accomplished by Dr. Evans in the first volume of his 'Scripta Minoa.' An immense amount of material has been acc.u.mulated, and has been separated into various cla.s.ses, which have been shown to be characteristic of different periods of Minoan history. It is possible to arrive at a general understanding of the matters to which certain items of the material refer, but the actual reading of the inscribed tablets has as yet proved to be impossible. To all appearance, moreover, a considerable proportion of the material appears to be not literary, in any true sense, but to consist of inventories and accounts, perhaps also of legal doc.u.ments and other such records of purely business and practical interest. Even so it would be a matter of no small importance could it be found possible to decipher the records, let us say, of the War Office or Admiralty of Knossos, or to survey the details of royal house-keeping in those far-off days; and it may still be hoped that, when the ardently desired bilingual inscription at last turns up and makes decipherment possible, we may find that doc.u.ments of more genuinely literary interest are not altogether lacking. One thing at least is abundantly clear--that, as Dr. Evans put it in the summary of his first year's results, 'that great early civilization was not dumb,' but, on the contrary, had means of expression amply adequate to its needs.

In 1894 M. Perrot wrote:[*] 'As at present advised, we can continue to affirm that for the whole of this period, nowhere, neither in the Peloponnese nor in Greece proper, no more on the buildings than on the thousand and one objects of luxury or domestic use that have come out of the tombs, has there anything been discovered which resembled any kind of writing.' The statement was perfectly true to the facts as then known; but it was obviously unthinkable that, while the Egyptians and Babylonians had their fully developed scripts, and while ruder races, such as the Hitt.i.tes, had their systems of writing, the men who built the splendid walls and palaces of Tiryns and Mycenae, and wrought the diadems and decorations of the Shaft-Graves, should have been so far back in one of the chiefest essentials of human progress as to be unable to communicate with one another by means of writing. We have already seen how the discoveries of the first year's work at Knossos settled that question for ever, and revealed the existence of more than one form of writing. Since then the material has been rapidly acc.u.mulating, and at present the number of objects--tablets, labels, and other articles-inscribed with the various Cretan scripts can be counted by thousands.

[Footnote *: Perrot et Chipiez, 'La Grece primitive: l'Art mycenien,'

p. 985.]

The earliest form of Minoan writing that can be traced consists of rude pictographic symbols engraved upon bead-seals and gems. This primitive pictographic writing is characteristic of the Early Minoan period, and throughout the succeeding period of Middle Minoan it was gradually developed into a hieroglyphic system which is believed to present some a.n.a.logies to the Hitt.i.te form of writing. But in the latest phases of the Third Middle Minoan period there begins to appear, at Knossos and elsewhere, a series of inscriptions in a very different style. The characters are no longer hieroglyphic, but have become definitely linear, and are arranged very much as in ordinary writing. In general they are incised upon the clay tablets of which so many hundreds have been found, but there are several instances in which they have been written with ink, apparently with a reed pen, as in the case of the two Middle Minoan III. cups found at Knossos, which bear linear inscriptions executed before the clay was fired. While in the case of the hieroglyphic inscriptions the characters run indifferently from left to right, or from right to left, in this linear script their fixed direction is the usual one, from left to right. Suffixes were apparently used to indicate gender, and pictorial signs indicating the contents of the doc.u.ment are also in use, though more sparingly than they came to be in the later form of script. Such signs as occur seem to show that the doc.u.ments in which they are found mainly related to matters of business. The saffron-flower, various vessels, tripods, and balances, probably for the weighing of precious metals, occur most frequently among these determinatives.

At Knossos this form of linear writing, Dr. Evans's Cla.s.s A, appears to have had a comparatively short vogue. Doc.u.ments belonging to it are only found in the particular stratum which is connected with Middle Minoan III., and are to be dated, according to Dr. Evans's latest revision of the chronology, not later than 1600 B.C., the period at which Middle Minoan III. closes. In the Late Minoan periods which follow, the linear script of Cla.s.s A is superseded at Knossos by another form, Cla.s.s B. In other parts of the island, however, Cla.s.s A seems to have survived as a general form of writing much longer than at Knossos. At Hagia Triada the very large deposits of linear writing--larger, indeed, than the representation of Cla.s.s A at Knossos--belong to the First Late Minoan period, and are contemporary with the wonderful work of the steat.i.te vases and the fresco of the hunting-cat; while at Phaestos the final catastrophe of the palace took place at a time when the linear writing of Cla.s.s A was still in full use. At Zakro, Palaikastro, Gournia, and elsewhere, examples of this script have been found, showing that it was prevalent, at all events, throughout Central and Eastern Crete; and in all cases it is a.s.sociated with remains which belong to the close of Middle Minoan III. and the beginnings of the Late Minoan period.

But it would appear that this form of writing was not confined to Crete, but was more widely diffused. Traces of it, or of a script very closely allied with it, have been found at Thera, while at Phylakopi in Melos evidence has come to light of a whole series of marks closely corresponding to the Cretan Cla.s.s A. This would seem to suggest what in itself is entirely probable, that the language used in Minoan Crete was predominant, or at all events was understood and largely used, throughout the aegean area. The inscription on the libation table found by Dr. Evans at the Dictaean Cave belongs to this cla.s.s, and also that upon the similar object found by Mr.

Currelly at Palaikastro.

[Ill.u.s.tration x.x.x: LATE MINOAN VASE FROM MYCENae (_p_. 206)

Reproduced from _The Journal of h.e.l.lenic Studies_, by permission of the Council of the h.e.l.lenic Society]

When, at the beginning of the Late Minoan period, the Palace of Knossos was remodelled, another great change accompanied the architectural one. This was the entire supersession of the linear script, Cla.s.s A, by another similar but independent form, which has been named Cla.s.s B. Somewhat remarkably, although the specimens of the script discovered at the Palace of Knossos and its immediate dependencies are far more numerous than those of Cla.s.s A, the use of Cla.s.s B seems, so far as the evidence yet collected goes, to have been entirely confined to Knossos. The beginning of the use of this system may have been in the early part of the fifteenth century B.C., and it was in full service at the great catastrophe of Knossos, at the end of the fifteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century B.C. Its use still continued after the fall of the Minoan power, tablets inscribed with this form of writing being found in the Late Minoan III. House of the Fetish Shrine at Knossos.

According to Dr. Evans, whose 'Scripta Minoa' sums up all that is at present known of these enigmatic Cretan writings, Cla.s.s B is not a mere outgrowth of Cla.s.s A. The scripts are certainly allied, and there are indications that B is the more highly developed of the two, having a smaller selection of characters and a less complicated system of compound signs; but at the same time several of the signs found in B do not occur in A at all, and some of those which belong to both scripts are found in a more primitive form in B. The language expressed in both scripts must, however, have been essentially the same. It is suggested, therefore, that in the supersession of Cla.s.s A by Cla.s.s 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 Cla.s.s B give evidence of a very considerable advance in the art of writing. 'The characters themselves have a European aspect. They are of upright habit, and of a simple and definite outline, which throws into sharp relief the c.u.mbrous and obscure cuneiform system of Babylonia. Although not so cursive in form as the Hieratic or Demotic types of Egyptian writing, there is here a much more limited selection of types. It would seem that the characters stood for syllables or even letters, though they could in most cases also be used as words.... The s.p.a.ces and lines between the words, the _es.p.a.cement_ into distinct paragraphs, and the variation in the size of the characters on the same tablet, according to the relative importance of the text, show a striving after clearness and method such as can by no means be said to be a characteristic of Cla.s.sical Greek inscriptions.'[*] A decimal system of numbers was in use, the highest single amount referred to being 19,000, and percentages were evidently well understood, as a whole series of tablets is devoted to them.

[Footnote *: 'Scripta Minoa,' pp. 39, 40.]

The tablets themselves were originally of unburnt, but sun-dried, clay, and their preservation, as we have seen, is probably due to the excessive heat to which they were exposed during the great fire which destroyed the palace. 'Fire itself, so fatal to other libraries, has thus insured the preservation of the archives of Minoan Knossos.' Great care was plainly bestowed upon the storage of the tablets. They were stored in chests and coffers of various materials, and were evidently carefully separated according to the different departments to which their contents referred. In one deposit near the northern entrance, which was the 'Sea-Gate'

of the palace, the largest of the seatings which had secured the cases in which the tablets were stored bore a representation of a ship, possibly an indication of the fact that these tablets belonged to the Minoan Board of Admiralty. One set of tablets had been stored in a room which presents all the appearance of having been an office, and the frequent occurrence in this deposit of the figures of a horse's head, a chariot, and a cuira.s.s, suggests that the store belonged to the Minoan War Office, and refers to the equipment of the Chariot Brigade of the Knossian army.

Further evidence of the business-like methods of the Minoan officials was given by the fact that many of the seals belonging to the various stores were countermarked on the face, and had their backs countersigned and endorsed, evidently by examining officials, while they appear to have been regularly filed and docketed for reference. Indeed, the Minoan methods have already borne the test of having been accepted as evidence in a modern court of law. 'In 1901,' says Dr. Evans, 'I discovered that certain tablets had been abstracted from the excavations, and had shortly afterwards been purchased by the museum at Athens. It further appeared that one of our workmen--a certain Aristides--had left the excavation about the same time for Greece, and had been seen in Athens offering "antikas" for sale under suspicious circ.u.mstances. On examining the inscriptions on the stolen tablets I observed a formula that showed that some or all of the pieces belonged to a deposit found in Magazine XV. A reference to our daybooks brought out the fact that the same Aristides had taken part in the excavation of this particular magazine a little before the date of his hasty departure. On his return to Crete, some months later, he was accordingly arrested, and the evidence supplied by the Minoan formula was accepted by the Candia Tribunal as a crowning proof of his guilt. Aristides--"the Unjust"--was thus condemned to three months' imprisonment.' Few criminals attain to the dignity of being convicted on evidence 3,500 years old.

Certain of the tablets contain lists of persons of both s.e.xes, apparently denoted by their personal names, the signs which appear to stand for the name being followed in each case by an ideograph which is the determinative of 'man,' or 'woman,' as the case may be. It is, of course, impossible to say as yet to what rank or cla.s.s the people thus catalogued may have belonged; but the conjecture may be hazarded that these lists may be the major-domo's records of the male and female slaves of the household, or perhaps of the artisans who appear to have dwelt within the precincts of the palace.

Another type of record is given by tablets such as that represented in Plate XIV. The tablet contains eight lines of well-written inscription, and consists apparently of twenty words, divided into three paragraphs. In this case there are no determinatives and no numerals; and it is possible that the doc.u.ment may be a contract, or perhaps an official proclamation.

[Ill.u.s.tration x.x.xI: KAMARES VASES FROM PHaeSTOS AND HAGIA TRIADA (_pp_. 120 & 197)

_G. Maraghiannis_]

That such tablets were not the only form in which the Minoans executed the writing of their various doc.u.ments is evident from the fact already noticed, that inscriptions have been found executed with a reed-pen, and, though those extant are written on clay vessels, it is obvious that the reed-pen was not a very suitable instrument for writing on such materials, and that its existence presupposes some substance more adapted to the cursive writing of a pen--parchment, possibly, or papyrus, which could be readily obtained from Egypt.

Unfortunately, such materials, on which, in all probability, the real literary doc.u.ments of the Minoans, if there were any such doc.u.ments, would be written, can scarcely have survived the fire which destroyed the palace, or, if by any chance they escaped that, the subsequent action of the climate; so that whatever genuinely literary fragments may yet come to light must be looked for on the larger tablets, and at the best can scarcely be more than brief extracts. We cannot expect from Crete a wealth of papyri such as Egypt has preserved for the archaeologist.

Into quite a different category from any of the ordinary Minoan tablets comes the disc found at Phaestos in 1908. Its general character has been already described. The long inscription which covers both of its faces is written in a form of hieroglyphics which, to some extent, resembles the Minoan pictographic system, but is not the same. The crested helmets which occur frequently as signs, the round shields, the fashion of dress of both men and women, and the style of architecture depicted in the hieroglyphic rendering of a house or paG.o.da, are not Minoan; and, on the whole, the evidence seems to point to the disc being the product of some allied culture, perhaps Lycian, in which a language closely akin to that of Minoan Crete was used. The inscription on the disc is carefully balanced and arranged, and each side contains exactly the same number of sign-groups, with one additional group on face A, which is separated from the preceding part of the inscription by a dash. Certain sets of sign-groups recur in the same order, as though they const.i.tuted some kind of refrain. From these indications it has been suggested that the whole inscription is a metrical composition, a short poem or hymn--perhaps one leaf of an Anatolian Book of Psalms whose other pages have perished. It is agreed that the language and religion of the western coast of Asia Minor were closely allied to those of Crete, and it is possible that when the Minoans developed their own language on somewhat different lines from the mainlanders, they maintained in parts of their religious service the old form of the speech common to themselves and their Anatolian relatives, as a kind of sacred language.[*]

[Footnote *: See Appendix, p. 264.]

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 Ph?nicians 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. The Ph?nician mind, if not original, was at all events practical. The great stumbling-block in the way of the ancient scripts was their complexity--a fault which the Minoan users of the Linear Script, Cla.s.s B, had evidently already begun to recognize and endeavour to amend. What the Ph?nicians did was to carry the process of simplification farther still, and to appropriate for their own use out of the elements already existing around them a conveniently short and simple system of signs. The position which they came to occupy, after the Minoan empire of the sea had pa.s.sed away, as the great carriers and middlemen of the Mediterranean, gave their system a spread and a utility possible to no other system of writing; and so the Ph?nician alphabet gradually came to take its place as the basis of all subsequent scripts. Unquestionably it was a great and important service which was thus rendered by them; but, all the same, the beginnings of European writing must be traced not to them, but to their predecessors the Minoans, and the clay tablets of Knossos, Phaestos, and Hagia Triada are the lineal ancestors of all the written literature of Europe.

In attempting to deal with the Minoan religion we are met by the fact that it is as yet quite impossible to present any connected view of the subject. As in the case of their literature we have the actual records but cannot read them, so in the case of their religion a considerable ma.s.s of facts is apparent, but we have no means of co-ordinating them so as to arrive at any definite idea of a religious system. Some of the ritual we can see, and even understand something of the Divinity to whom it was addressed, but the theology is lacking. Accordingly, nothing more can be done than to present the fragmentary facts which are apparent.

The Minoans, it seems fairly clear, were never, like their successors the Greeks, the possessors of a well-peopled Pantheon; nor was the chief object of their adoration a male deity like the Greek Zeus.

There are, indeed, traces of a male divinity, who was adopted by the Greeks when they obtained predominance in the island, as the representative of their own supreme deity, and who became the Cretan Zeus. But in Minoan times this being occupied a very subordinate place, and undoubtedly the chief object of worship was a G.o.ddess--a Nature G.o.ddess, a Great Mother--[Greek: potnia thaerou], the Lady of the Wild Creatures--who was the source of all life, higher and lower, its guardian during the period of its earthly existence, and its ruler in the underworld.

The functions of this great deity, it has been aptly pointed out, are substantially those claimed for herself by Artemis in Browning's poem, 'Artemis Prologizes':

'Through heaven I roll my lucid moon along; I shed in h.e.l.l o'er my pale people peace; On earth, I, caring for the creatures, guard Each pregnant yellow wolf and fox-b.i.t.c.h sleek, And every feathered mother's callow brood, And all that love green haunts and loneliness.'

She was a G.o.ddess alike of the air, the earth, and the underworld, and representations of her have survived in which her various attributes are expressed. As G.o.ddess of the air, she is represented by a female figure crowned with doves; as G.o.ddess of the underworld, her emblems are the snakes, which we see twined round the faence figure at Knossos, or the terra-cotta in the Gournia shrine. Her figure is often seen upon seals and gems, standing on the top of the rock or mountain, with guardian lions in attendance, one on either side, and sometimes with a male votary in the background.