PHÆSTOS, HAGIA TRIADA, AND EASTERN CRETE
We have followed the fortunes of the excavations at Knossos in
considerable detail, not only as being the most important, but as
illustrating also in the fullest manner the legendary and religious
history of Crete. But they are very far from being the only important
investigations which have been carried on in the island, and it
may even be said that, had Knossos never been excavated, it would
still have been possible, from the results of the excavations made
at other sites, to deduce the conclusion which has been arrived at
as to the supreme position of Crete in the early Ægean civilization.
Both in the Iliad and the Odyssey Phæstos is mentioned along with
Knossos as one of the chief towns of Crete; and it is at and near
Phæstos that the most extensive and important remains of Minoan
culture have been discovered, apart from the work at Knossos. The
splendid valley of the Messara, on the southern side of the island,
is dominated towards its seaward end by three hills, rising in steps
one above the other, and on the lowest of the three, overlooking
the plain, stood the Palace of Phæstos, the second great seat of
the Minoan lords of Crete. As in the case of Knossos, a few blocks
of hewn stone, standing among the furrows of the cornfield which
occupied the site, were the only indications of the great structure
which had once crowned the hill, and it was the existence of these
which induced the Italian Archæological Mission to attempt the
excavation. In April, 1900, the first reconnaissance of the ground
was made, with no very encouraging results. By September of the
same year the great palace had been discovered, though, of course,
the full revelation of its features was a matter of much longer
time. The work has been carried on by Professor Halbherr, Signor
Pernier, and others, concurrently with the excavations of Dr. Evans;
and the result has been the revelation of a palace, similar in many
respects to the House of Minos at Knossos, though on a somewhat
smaller scale, and characterized, like the Labyrinth, by distinct
periods of building. At Phæstos, indeed, the remains of the earlier
palace, consisting of the Theatral Area and West Court, with the
one-columned portico at its south end, are of earlier date than the
existing important architectural features at Knossos, belonging to
the period known as Middle Minoan II., the time when the beautiful
polychrome Kamares ware was in its glory, while the main scheme
of the palace at Knossos, as at present existing, must be placed
somewhere in the following period, Middle Minoan III.
This first palace of Phæstos had been destroyed, like the early
palace at Knossos, but not at the same time, for it apparently lasted
till the beginning of the Late Minoan period, while at Knossos the
catastrophe of the first palace took place at the end of Middle
Minoan II. From this fact it has been suggested that the first
destruction of Knossos was the result of civil war, in which the
lords of Phæstos overthrew their northern brethren of the greater
palace, but the evidence seems somewhat scanty to bear such an
inference.
After the catastrophe at Phæstos, a thick layer of lime mixed with
clay and pebbles was thrown over the remains of the ruined structure
as a preparation for the rebuilding of the palace, and thus the
relics of the earlier building, which are now unveiled in close
connection with the later work, though on a rather lower level,
were completely covered up before the second palace rose upon the
site. 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. It consists of a paved court, ending, on the west side,
in a flight of ten steps, more than 60 feet in length, behind which
stands a wall of large limestone blocks. As at Knossos, a flagged
pathway ran across the area, obliquely, however, in this case.
Beneath the structure of the second palace were discovered some
of the chambers of the earlier building, with a number of very
fine Kamares vases (Plate XXVI.).
But the chief glory of the palace at Phæstos is the great flight
of steps, 45 feet in width, which formed its state entrance, the
broadest and most splendid staircase that ever a royal palace had
(Plate XXVI.). 'No architect,' says Mosso, 'has ever made such a
flight of steps out of Crete.' At the head of the entrance staircase
stood a columned portico, behind which was the great reception-hall
of the palace. The halls and courts of Phæstos are comparable for
spaciousness even with the finest of those at Knossos, and, indeed,
the Megaron, so called (wrongly), of Phæstos is a more spacious
apartment than the Hall of the Double Axes at the sister palace,
the area of the Phæstos chamber being over 3,000 square feet, as
against the 2,000 odd square feet of the Hall of the Double Axes.
The Central Court, 150 feet long by 70 broad, is a fine paved
quadrangle, but has not the impressiveness of the Central Court
at Knossos, with its area of about 20,000 square feet.
On the whole, the two palaces wonderfully resemble each other in
the general ideas that determine their structure, though, of course,
there are many variations in detail. But, as contrasted with the
sister palace, the stately building at Phæstos has exhibited a
most extraordinary dearth of the objects of art which formed so
great a part of the treasures of Knossos. Apart from the Kamares
vases and one graceful flower fresco, little of importance has
been found. The comparative absence of metal-work at Knossos can
be explained by the greed of the plunderers who sacked the palace;
but Phæstos is almost barren, not of metal-work alone. All the
more interesting, therefore, was the discovery, made in 1908, of
the largest inscribed clay tablet which has yet been found on any
Minoan site. This was a disc of terra-cotta, 6.67 inches in diameter,
and covered on both sides with an inscription which coils round
from the centre outwards. 'It is by far the largest hieroglyphic
inscription yet discovered in Crete. It contains some 241 signs
and 61 sign groups, and it exhibits the remarkable peculiarity
that every sign has been separately impressed on the clay while
in a soft state by a stamp or punch. It is, in fact, a printed
inscription.'[*] One of the hieroglyphs, frequently repeated, is
the representation of the head of a warrior wearing a feathered
headdress which remarkably resembles the crested helmets of the
Pulosathu, or Philistines, on the reliefs of Ramses III. at Medinet
Habu. From his analysis of the various signs Dr. Evans has concluded
that the inscription is not Cretan, but may represent a script,
perhaps Lycian, in use in the coast-lands of Asia Minor. No
interpretation of the writing can yet be given, but Dr. Evans has
pointed out evidences of a metrical arrangement among the signs,
and has suggested that the inscription may conceivably be a hymn
in honour of the Anatolian Great Mother, a goddess who corresponded
to the Nature Goddess worshipped in Minoan Crete, whose traditions
have survived under the titles of Rhea, Britomartis, Aphrodite
Ariadne, and Artemis Dictynna. The pottery in connection with which
it was found dates it to at least 1600, perhaps to 1800, B.C.[**]
[Footnote *: A. J. Evans, 'Scripta Minoa,' p. 24.]
[Footnote **: See Appendix, p. 264.]
The hill of Hagia Triada, about two miles to the north-west of
Phæstos, proved sufficiently fruitful to compensate the Italian
explorers for the incomprehensible barrenness of Phæstos. Here
stand the ruins of the Venetian church of St. George, itself built
of stone which was hewn originally by Minoan masons. The retaining
wall of the raised ground in front of the church had given way,
exposing a section of archæological relics, Minoan potsherds, and
fragments of alabaster, to a depth of more than six feet; and this
accidental exposure led to the discovery of the Royal Villa, which
the lords of Phæstos had erected as a dependency of the great palace,
or as a country seat. Hagia Triada proved to be as rich in objects of
artistic interest as Phæstos had been poor. Some of the fresco work
discovered, in particular a scene with a cat hunting a red pheasant,
reminiscent of the hunting-cat scene on the Mycenæ dagger-blade,
is of extraordinary merit. The cat scene is judged by Professor
Burrows to be superior in vivacity to the famous Egyptian Eighteenth
Dynasty tomb-picture of the marsh-fowler with the trained cat,
though to those familiar with the wonderful dash of the Egyptian
work in question this will seem a hard saying.
There can be nothing but admiration, however, for the three astonishing
vases of black soapstone which were discovered at the villa. They
remain a most convincing evidence of the maturity of Minoan art,
and the mastery to which it had attained over the expression of
the human form in low relief. It has been already noticed that
the fine Minoan pottery is largely an imitation of earlier work
in metal, and this is true also of these stone vases. What the
Minoan craftsman was capable of when he was allowed to deal with the
precious metals we can see from the few specimens which have survived
to the present time. The Vaphio gold cups, with their bull-trapping
scenes, are generally admitted now to be of Cretan workmanship,
though found in the Peloponnese, and Benvenuto Cellini himself
need not have been ashamed to turn out such work, admirable alike
in design and execution. Little of such gold-work has survived, for
obvious reasons. 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.
But the artists of the time worked not only in the precious metals,
but also in stone, trying to reproduce there the forms with which
they had decorated the vessels wrought in the costlier medium.
Probably, when the steatite was worked to its finished shape, it was
covered with a thin coating of gold-leaf, at least this suggestion,
originally made by Evans, has been confirmed in one instance, where
part of the gold-leaf was found still adhering to a vase discovered
at Palaikastro by Mr. Currelly. In the case of the Hagia Triada
vases the gold-coated steatite had no charms for the plunderer,
who merely stripped off the gold-leaf and left its foundation to
testify to us of the skill of these ancient craftsmen. The largest
of the three stands 18 inches in height. It is divided by horizontal
bands into four zones. Three of these show boxers in all attitudes
of the prize-ring--striking, guarding, falling; while the second
zone from the top exhibits one of the bull-grappling scenes so
common in Minoan art, with two charging bulls, one of them tossing
on his horns a gymnast who appears to have missed his leap and
paid the penalty. The figures are admirably modelled and true to
nature, save for the convention of the exaggeratedly slender Minoan
waist, which seems to create an impression of unusual height and
length of limb. The second vase (Plate XXVII.) is much smaller, and
represents a procession which has been variously interpreted as a
band of soldiers or marines returning in triumph from a victory, or
as a body of harvesters marching in some sort of harvest thanksgiving
festival. This interpretation seems, on the whole, the more probable
of the two. In the middle of the procession is a figure, interesting
from the fact that he is so different from his companions. He has
not the usual pinched-in waist of the Cretans, but is quite normally
developed, and he bears in his hand the _sistrum_, or metal rattle,
which was one of the regular sacred musical instruments of the
Egyptians. In all probability he is meant to represent an Egyptian
priest, though what he is doing in a Cretan festival it is hard to
tell. The three figures, possibly of women, who are following him,
have their mouths wide open, and are evidently singing lustily.
One of the figures, that of an elderly man, who appears to be the
chief of the party, is clad in a curious, copelike garment, which
may be either a ceremonial robe or a wadded cuirass. Apart from all
questions of what kind of incident the artist meant to represent,
the artistic value of his work is unquestionable. It has been said
of this little vase that 'not until the fifth century B. C. should
we find a sculptor capable of representing, with such absolute
truth, a party of men in motion.'
The smallest of the three vases, only 4 inches in height, bears the
representation of a body of soldiers with heads and feet showing
above and below their great shields, which are locked together
into a wall. The shields are evidently covered with hide, as the
bulls' tails still show upon them. But the interest centres in
two figures which stand apart from the others. One seems to be a
chieftain or general; he has long, flowing hair, a golden collar
round his neck, and bracelets on his arms, while in his outstretched
right hand he holds a long staff, which may be the shaft of a lance,
or, more probably, an emblem of authority, like the staves carried
by Egyptian nobles and officials. His legs are covered halfway
up to the knee by a genuine pair of puttees, five turns of the
bandage being clearly marked. He appears to be giving orders to
the other figure, perhaps that of a captain or under-officer, who
stands before him in an attitude of respectful attention. The captain
is slightly lower in stature than his chief, though this may be
due to the fact that room has had to be found for the tall curving
plume of the low helmet which he wears. His neck is adorned with a
single torque, and he carries a long heavy sword sloped over his
right shoulder. Instead of wearing puttees, like his commander, he
wears half-boots, like those on the figurine discovered by Dawkins
at Petsofa. Neither the chieftain nor his officer appears to wear
any defensive armour; their only clothing is a scalloped loin-cloth,
slightly more heavily bordered in the case of the chief than in
that of the soldier; and the modelling of the bodies, with the
indications of muscular development, particularly in the legs of
the chieftain, is exceedingly fine, and of an accuracy marvellous
when the diminutive scale of the figures is considered. The little
vase is a valuable document for the appearance and equipment of
the warriors of those far-off times, but it is also a treasure
of art. 'The ideal grace and dignity of these two figures,' says
Professor Burrows, 'the pose with which they throw head and body
back, is beyond any representation of the human figure hitherto
known before the best period of Archaic Hellenic art.'
The interest of another of the Hagia Triada finds arises from the
fact that it appears to represent a religious ceremony in honour of
the dead. The object in question is a limestone sarcophagus covered
with plaster, on which various funerary ceremonies are painted. The
artistic merit of the work is small, for the figures are badly
drawn and carelessly painted, and in all likelihood represent the
decaying art of the Third Late Minoan period; but the subjects and
their arrangement are of importance (Plate XXVIII.). On one side
of the sarcophagus a figure stands against the door of a tomb. He
is closely swathed, the arms being within his wrappings, and his
attitude is so immobile as to suggest that he is dead. Towards him
advance three figures, one bearing something which, by a stretch
of charity, may be described as the model of a boat, the others
bearing calves, which, curiously enough, are represented, like
the great bulls of the frescoes, as in full gallop. At the other
end of the panel a priestess pours a libation into an urn standing
between two Double Axes, with birds perched upon them. Behind the
priestess is a woman carrying over her shoulders a yoke, from which
hang two vessels, while behind her, again, comes a man dressed in a
long robe, and playing upon a seven-stringed lyre. On the opposite
side of the sarcophagus, the painting, much defaced, shows another
priestess before an altar, with a Double Axe standing beside it, a
man playing on a flute, and five women moving in procession. On
the ends of the sarcophagus are pictures, in one case of a chariot
drawn by two horses, and driven by two women; in the other, of a
chariot drawn by griffins and driven by a woman, who has beside
her a swathed figure, perhaps again representing a dead person. The
figures of the lyre and flute players are interesting as affording
very early information concerning the forms of European musical
instruments. The double flute employed shows eight perforations,
and probably the full number, allowing for those covered by the
player's hands, was fourteen. The lyre approximates to the familiar
classic form, and the number of its strings shows that Terpander can
no longer claim credit as being the inventor of the seven-stringed
lyre, which was in use in Crete at least eight centuries before the
date at which his instrument was mutilated by the unsympathetic
judges at Sparta to put him on a level with his four-stringed
competitors.
[Illustration XVI: A FLIGHT OF THE QUADRUPLE STAIRCASE (_p_. 85)
WALL WITH DRAIN (_p_. 98)]
More important, however, is the suggestion of Egyptian influence
in the grouping of the figures. No one familiar with the details of
the ceremony of 'opening the mouth' of the deceased, so continually
represented in Egyptian funerary scenes, can fail to recognize the
original inspiration of the scene on the Hagia Triada sarcophagus.
The tomb in the background, the stiff swathed figure propped like
a log in front of it, the leafy branch before the dead man, taking
the place of the bunches of lotus-blooms, the offerings of meat,
and the sacrifice of the bull--this is an Egyptian funeral with
the mourners dressed in Cretan clothes. We have already seen a
priest from the banks of the Nile brandishing his sistrum in the
Harvest Procession; and the sarcophagus suggests that Egyptian
religious influence was telling, if not on the actual views of
the Cretans as to the state of man after death, at all events upon
the ceremonial by means of which these views were expressed. Phæstos
and Hagia Triada, we must remember, owing to their position, would
be more exposed to Egyptian influence than even Knossos, where
traces of it are not lacking.
The villa at Hagia Triada showed the same attentive care for sanitary
arrangements which has been already noticed at Knossos. Mosso has
noted an illustration of the honesty with which the work had been
executed. 'One day, after a heavy downpour of rain, I was interested
to find that all the drains acted perfectly, and I saw the water
flow from sewers through which a man could walk upright. I doubt
if there is any other instance of a drainage system acting after
4,000 years.'
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. At Gournia an American lady, Miss Harriet Boyd
(now Mrs. Hawes), made the remarkable discovery of a whole town,
mainly dating from the close of the Middle Minoan period, though
the site had been occupied from the beginning of the Bronze Age.
Gournia had had its modest palace, occupying an area of about half
an acre, with its adaptation, on a diminutive scale, of the Knossian
Theatral Area, its magazines, and its West Court, where palace and
town met, as at Knossos, for business purposes. But the main interest
of the little town centred in its shrine and in the houses of the
burghers, with their evidences of a wonderfully even standard of
comfortable and peaceful life, by no means untinged with artistic
elegance.
The shrine, discovered in 1901, stood in the very heart of the
town, and was reached by a much-worn paved way. The sacred enclosure
was only some 12 feet square, and Mrs. Hawes is inclined to believe
that its rough walls never stood more than 18 inches high, forming
merely a little _temenos_, in which stood a sacred tree, and the
small group of cult objects which were still huddled together in
a corner of the shrine. 'It is true that they are very crude, made
in coarse terra-cotta, with no artistic skill; nevertheless, they
are eloquent, for they tell us that the Great Goddess was worshipped
in the town-shrine of Gournia, as in the Palace of Knossos. Here
were her images twined with snakes, her doves, the "horns of
consecration," the low, three-legged altar-table, and cultus vases.
To complete the list, a potsherd was found with the Double Axe
moulded upon it, an indication, perhaps, that some who claimed kin
with the masters of Crete paid their devotions at this unpretentious
shrine.'[*] The smallness of the shrine at Gournia may be compared
with the smallness of the sacred rooms at Knossos, and seems to
have been characteristic of the Minoan worship.
[Footnote *: 'Crete the Forerunner of Greece,' p. 98.]
The 5-feet-broad roadways of the town, neatly paved, are conclusive
evidence of the infrequent use of wheeled vehicles. Flush with their
borders stand the fronts of the houses. Two-storey houses were
common, some of them with a basement storey beneath the ground-floor
when the slope of the hill admitted of such an arrangement. In all
likelihood the general appearance of the homes was much like that
of the comfortable-looking houses depicted on the faïence plaques
of Knossos, already referred to. Even ordinary craftsmen's houses
have six to eight rooms, while those of the wealthier burghers
have perhaps twice as many. Here and there evidences of the former
occupations of the inhabitants came to light--a complete set of
carpenter's tools in one house, a set of loom weights in another,
the block-mould in which a smith had cast his tools in a third.
That the citizens of the little town were not entirely ignorant
of letters was evidenced by the presence of a tablet bearing an
inscription in the linear script of Knossos, Class A, and the beauty
of their painted pottery shows that they were by no means lacking
in refinement and artistic feeling. The town was sacked and burned
about 1500 B.C., as its discoverer thinks, perhaps a century before
the fall of the great palace at Knossos. Partially reoccupied,
like other Cretan sites, during the Third Late Minoan period, it
has since then lain tenantless, waiting the day when its ruined
houses should be revealed again to testify to the quiet and peaceful
prosperity that reigned under the ægis of the great sea-power of
the House of Minos.
At Palaikastro another town of closely-packed houses, covering a
space of more than 400 by 350 feet, has been revealed. Its existing
remains are of somewhat later date than those of Gournia, and the
houses are, on the whole, rather larger, but their general style
is much the same. Near the town, at Petsofa, Professor J. L. Myres
has unearthed, among a wealth of other votive offerings, a number
of curious clay figurines, interesting as being among the earliest
examples of polychrome decoration (they belong to Middle Minoan I.,
and are painted in a scheme of black and white, red and orange),
but still more interesting--'with their open corsage, wide-standing
collars, high shoe-horn hats, elaborate crinolines, and their general
impression of an inaccurate attempt at representing Queen Elizabeth'--as
evidence of how utterly unlike was the costume of prehistoric woman
in the Ægean area to the stately and simple lines of the classic
Greek dress.
The Cretan discoveries have tended as much as any work of recent
years to reduce the extravagant claims which used to be put forward
on behalf of the Phnicians as originators of many of the elements
of ancient civilization, and evidence is now forthcoming to show that
originality in even their most famous and characteristic industry,
the dyeing of robes with the renowned 'Tyrian purple,' must be denied
to them and claimed for the Minoans. In 1903, Messrs. Bosanquet
and Currelly found on the island of Kouphonisi (Leuke), off the
south-east coast of Crete, a bank of the pounded shell of the murex
from which the purple dye was obtained, associated with pottery of
the Middle Minoan period; and in 1904 they discovered at Palaikastro
two similar purple shell deposits, in either case associated with
pottery of the same date.
[Illustration XVII: (1) HALL OF THE DOUBLE AXES (_p_. 86)
(2) GREAT STAIRCASE, KNOSSOS (_p_. 86)]
At Zakro, on the eastern coast of the island, Mr. Hogarth has excavated
the remains of what must have been an important trading-station.
In one single house of one of its merchants he came upon 500 clay
seal-impressions, with specimens of almost every type of Cretan
seal design, which had evidently been used for sealing bales of
goods. Some of the Zakro pottery also was of extreme beauty, one
specimen in particular, conspicuous from the fact that its delicate
decoration had been laid on subsequent to the firing of the vessel,
and could be removed by the slightest touch of the finger, showing
evident traces of Egyptian influence in its adaptation of the familiar
lotus design of Nilotic decorative art (Plate XXIX. 2).
On the tiny island of Mokhlos, only some 200 yards off the northern
coast of Crete, to which it was probably united in ancient days, Mr.
Seager has excavated, in 1907 and 1908, an Early Minoan necropolis,
from which have come some remarkable specimens of the skill with
which the ancient Cretan workmen could handle both stone and the
precious metals. Scores of beautiful vases of alabaster, breccia,
marble, and soapstone, wrought in some cases to the thinness of
a modern china cup, suggest at once the protodynastic Egyptian
bowls of diorite and syenite, and show that if the Cretan took
the idea from Egyptian models, he was not behind his master in
the skill with which he carried it out. Not less surprising is the
work in gold, which includes 'fine chains--as beautifully wrought as
the best Alexandrian fabrics of the beginning of our era--artificial
leaves and flowers, and (the distant anticipation, surely, of the gold
masks of the Mycenæ graves) gold bands with engraved and _repoussé_
eyes for the protective blinding of the dead.'[*][**]
[Footnote *: A. J. Evans, the _Times_, August 27, 1908.]
[Footnote **: For Mr. Seager's work on the Island of Pseira, see
'Excavations on the Island of Pseira, Crete,' by R. B. Seager.
Philadelphia, 1910.]
Excavating outside the area of the palace at Knossos, Dr. Evans
opened, on a hill known as Zafer Papoura, about half a mile north
of the palace, a large number of Minoan tombs dating from the Third
Middle Minoan period onwards. They revealed a civilization still high,
though giving evidence of gradual decline in its later stages. The
earlier tombs provided, what had been singularly lacking at Knossos,
a number of fine specimens of the 'stirrup-' or 'false-necked' vase.
There was also a number of bronze vessels and weapons, including
swords, some of which were nearly a metre in length. In one tomb,
which had evidently belonged to a chieftain, there was found a
short sword of elaborate workmanship, with a pommel of translucent
agate, and a gold-plated hilt, on which was engraved a scene of
a lion chasing and capturing one of the Cretan wild-goats. The
occurrence in some of the tombs of a long rapier and a shorter
sword or dagger is unexpected, as there are no representations of
the two weapons being worn together in Minoan warfare. Mr. Andrew
Lang has made the picturesque suggestion that we may have here an
anticipation of the duelling custom of the Elizabethan age, in
which the dagger was held in the left hand, and used for parrying
thrusts, or for work at close quarters, as in the savage encounter
between Sir Hatton Cheek and Sir Thomas Dutton at Calais in 1610.
On the hill of Isopata, between Knossos and the sea, Dr. Evans
also discovered a stately sepulchre, whose occupant had evidently
been some Minoan King of the Third Middle period. The tomb consisted
of a rectangular chamber measuring about 8 by 6 metres, and built of
courses of limestone blocks, which projected one beyond the other
until they met in a high gable, forming a false arch similar to
those of the beehive tombs at Mycenæ. The back wall of the chamber
had a central cell opposite to its blocked entrance, and the portal,
also false-arched, led into a lofty entrance-hall, in the side
walls of which, facing one another, were two cells, which had been
used for interments. The whole was approached by an imposing avenue
cut in the solid rock. The tomb had been rifled in ancient days,
but there still remained a golden hair-pin, parts of two silver
vessels, and a large bronze mirror; while among the stone vessels
found a diorite bowl again recalled the hard stone vessels of the
Early Egyptian dynasties.
The Dictæan Cave has already been mentioned as being peculiarly
associated with the legends about the birth of Zeus and his relationship
with Minos. Hesiod states that Rhea carried the new-born Zeus to
Lyttos, and thence to a cavern in Mount Aigaios, the north-west
peak of Dicte. Lucretius, Virgil, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus
all knew of a story in which the whole childhood of Zeus had been
passed in a cave on Dicte, and Dionysius assigns to the Dictæan
Cave that finding of the law by Minos which presents so curious a
parallel to the giving of the tables of the law to Moses on Mount
Sinai. Minos, he says, went down into the Sacred Cave, and reappeared
with the law, saying that it was from Zeus himself. And the last
legend, related by Lucian, places in the same cave that union of
Zeus with Europa from which Minos sprang. The Dictæan Cave, then,
is of special interest in connection with the origins of the Minoan
civilization, or, rather, with the fancies which later minds wove
around some of the sacred conceptions of the Minoan civilization.
It is a large double cavern, south-west of Psychro, and some 500
feet above the latter place. Its exploration by Mr. Hogarth revealed
ample evidence of its early connection with the cult of that divinity
upon whom the Greeks foisted their own ideas of Zeus.
A scarped terrace overlooking the slope of the hill gives access
to the shallow upper grotto, in which were found the remains of an
altar, and close by a table of offerings, while the ground beneath
the floor of the cave yielded, in regular stratification, Kamares
ware, immediately above the virgin soil; then glazed ware, with
cloudy brown stripes on a creamy slip; then regular Mycenæan ware,
with the familiar marine and plant designs; and, uppermost, bronze.
The lower grotto has at first a sheer fall from the upper one, then
slopes away for some 200 feet to an icy pool surrounded with a forest
of stalagmites; and in this gloomy cavern the evidence was manifest
of an ancient cult of a divinity to whom the Double Axe was sacred.
There was a great mass of votive offerings of all sorts--engraved
gems, bronze statuettes (including a Twenty-second-Dynasty figure
of the Egyptian god Amen-Ra), and an abundance of common rings,
pins, brooches, and knives; but the chief feature of the find was
the Double Axe, of which numerous specimens were found embedded in
the stalagmites around the dark pool at the foot of the cavern,
some of them still retaining their original shafts. It is evident
that the cave on Dicte was the seat of a very ancient worship,
connected with that worship whose emblems were the Double Axe Pillars
in the Palace of Knossos, and that this worship, as revealed by the
character of the remains in the grotto, goes back to the early
days of the Minoan civilization.
Throughout all these explorations, covering a considerable portion
of the island, one common feature presents itself--a feature already
noted and commented on in connection with Knossos. Nowhere have we
met with anything in the remotest degree resembling the colossal
citadel walls which are the most striking feature of Mycenæ and
Tiryns. Phæstos and Hagia Triada are as devoid of fortification as
Knossos. Gournia and Palaikastro are open towns. Everything points
to the existence of a strong and peaceful rule, allowing the natural
bent of the island race to develop quietly and steadily during long
periods in those lines of work, alike useful and artistic, whose
remains excite our admiration to-day, and resting for generation
after generation on the sea-power which kept all enemies far from
the shores of the fortunate island and guarded the trade-routes
of the Ægean.