CRETE AND EGYPT
The question of the relationship between the Minoan civilization
and the other great civilizations of the ancient world, particularly
those of Babylonia and Egypt, is not only of great intrinsic interest,
but also of very considerable importance to the attempt at a
reconstruction of the outlines of Minoan history and chronology.
For it is only by means of synchronisms with the more or less
satisfactorily, established chronology of one or other of these
kingdoms that even the most approximate system of dating can be
arrived at for the various epochs of the great civilization which the
Cretan discoveries have revealed. Had it been possible to establish
synchronisms with both Babylonian and Egyptian chronology, the result
would not only have been satisfactory as regards our knowledge
of the Minoan periods, but might have proved to have a secondary
outcome of the very greatest importance in the settlement of the
acute controversy which at present rages round the chronology of
ancient Egypt from the earliest period down to the rise of the
New Empire. As it is, this has so far proved to be impossible by
reason of the absence from the chain of the Babylonian link.
It may be held as reasonably certain that for many centuries there
was no lack of intercourse and interchange of commodities and ideas
between Crete and Asia; indeed, it is beginning to be more and
more manifest that in that ancient world there was infinitely more
intercommunication between the different peoples than had been
suspected. Far from the prehistoric age being a time of stagnation,
it was rather a time of ceaseless movement. Perhaps the most striking
example of the distance across which communication could take place
in almost incredibly early times is afforded by the discovery on
the site of ancient Troy--the Second City, roughly contemporary
with Early Minoan III.--of a piece of white jade, a stone peculiar
to China. By what long and devious routes it had reached the coast
of Asia Minor who can say? Yet the fact of its occurrence there
proves the fact of communication.
[Illustration XVIII: THE KING'S GAMING-BOARD (_p_. 87)
_G. Maraghiannis_]
Up to the present time it cannot be said that any object unquestionably
Mesopotamian has been found on any Ægean site, nor any object
unquestionably Ægean on a Mesopotamian one. But it has been suggested
that certain carved ivories found by Layard at Nimrûd in the Palace
of Sennacherib show manifest traces of Ægean influence; and in
Southern Syria, at all events--at Gezer, Tell-es-Safi, and
elsewhere--indisputably Ægean pottery and weapons have been discovered
in sufficient quantity to show that there was certainly communication
between the Minoan civilization and the shores of Asia. Intercourse
is suggested also by the obvious communities of religious conception
existing between Crete and Asia. In both places the divine spirit
is believed to associate itself with sacred pillars, such as the
Double Axe pillars at Knossos; in both it is personified as a Woman
Goddess, the mother of all life, to whom is added a son, who is also
a consort; while the emblems of the ancient cults--the guardian
lions of the goddess on the hill, the Double Axe, and the triple
pillars with perching doves--are property common to both Crete
and Asia. This may not point, however, to a continued intercourse,
but only to community at some early point of the history of both
races.
Of actual traces of Mesopotamian influence singularly few are to
be found in Crete. Dr. Evans has shown the correspondence of a
purple gypsum weight found during the second season's excavations
at Knossos, with the light Babylonian talent, while the ingots of
bronze from Hagia Triada represent the same standard of weight.
It may be that the drainage system so highly developed at Knossos
and Hagia Triada found its first suggestion in the terra-cotta
drain-pipes discovered at Niffur by Hilprecht, though it is by no
means obvious that copying should be necessary in such a matter.
The clay tablets engraved with hieroglyphic and linear script suggest
at once the corresponding and universal use of the clay tablet for
the cuneiform script of Babylonia; and that is practically all
that can be said of any connection between the cultures of Crete
and Mesopotamia.
The case is quite different, however, when we come to the relations
between Crete and the great civilization of the Nile Valley. In
this case there is, if not abundance, at all events a sufficiency
of evidence as to an intercourse which extended through practically
the whole duration of the Minoan Empire. For the Early Dynastic
period of Egyptian history the evidence is somewhat slight, and
the interpretation of it not always certain. When we come to the
Middle Kingdom of Egypt--a period contemporaneous with Middle Minoan
II. and III.--it becomes both more abundant and more unquestionable
in meaning; while with the New Empire (Eighteenth Dynasty) and Late
Minoan II. we reach absolutely firm ground, the correspondence of
art motives, and the actual proofs of intercourse, especially on
the Egyptian side, being indisputable. Our object, then, in this
chapter is to exhibit the evidence of the relationship between
Crete and Egypt, and to inquire to what conclusion it leads us
concerning the dates of the various periods of Minoan history.
For the earliest period we are left with somewhat scanty evidence.
Professor Petrie has found in some of the First Dynasty graves at
Abydos vases of black hand-burnished ware, which are very closely
allied, both inform and colour, to the primitive 'bucchero' discovered
immediately above the Neolithic deposit in the West Court at Knossos;
and he has suggested that, as the pottery is not Egyptian in style,
it may have been imported from Crete. On various sites in the palace
at Knossos there have been found stone vessels of diorite, syenite,
and liparite, exquisitely wrought. Now, such work is eminently
characteristic of the Early Egyptian Dynastic period, the artists
of that time taking a pride in turning out bowls of these intensely
hard stones, wrought sometimes to such a degree of fineness as to
be translucent. The chances are against these bowls having been
imported in later days, as the taste for them gradually died out
in Egypt, and 'no ancient nation had antiquarian tastes till the
time of the Saïtes in Egypt and of the Romans still later.' The
stone vessels discovered by Mr. Seager at Mokhlos, though wrought
out of beautiful native materials, betray, according to Dr. Evans,
the strong influence of protodynastic Egyptian models. Coming down a
little farther, to Early Minoan III., there is evidence of Egyptian
influence in the fact that the ivory seals of this period seem
to derive their motives from the so-called 'button-seals' of the
Sixth Egyptian Dynasty. Mr. H. R. Hall believes that the derivation
was the other way about. 'It would seem very probable that this
decidedly foreign decoration motive was adopted by the Egyptians
from the Ægeans about the end of the Old Kingdom (=Early Minoan
III.), so that the Egyptian seal designs are copied from those of
the Cretan seal-stones, rather than the reverse. Egyptian designs
were very ancient, and had the spiral been Egyptian, we should
have found it in the art of the Old Kingdom. It was a foreign
importation, and its place of origin is evident.'[*] Whether in
this case the Minoan borrowed from the Egyptian or the Egyptian
from the Minoan is, however, immaterial; either way the fact of
intercourse is established.
[Footnote *: Proceedings of the Society of Biblical Archæology,
vol. xxxi., part v., p. 222.]
We may assume, then, that, in all probability, there was intercourse
of some kind between Crete and Egypt as early as the time of the First
Egyptian Dynasty, and that by the time of the Sixth Dynasty, which
marks the close of the great period of the Old Kingdom in Egypt--the
period of the Pyramid Builders (Third to Sixth Dynasty)--intercourse
was common. In fact, it may be said that, from the origin of both
peoples, the likelihood is that they were in contact. It is possible
enough that both the Nilotic and the Minoan civilization sprang from
a common stock, and that the Neolithic Cretans and the Neolithic
Egyptians were alike members of the same widespread Mediterranean
race.
[Illustration XIX: IVORY FIGURES AND HEADS FROM KNOSSOS (_p_. 76)
From 'Annual of the British School of Athens,' by permission]
How was the connection between Crete and Egypt maintained at this
extremely early period? Professor Petrie believes that it was by
the natural and direct sea-route across the Mediterranean. The
representations of vessels painted on pre-dynastic Egyptian ware
show that the Neolithic Egyptians were familiar, to some extent,
with the building and the use of ships, and Professor Petrie supposes
that galleys such as those represented were the ships by means
of which the Egyptians and Cretans maintained their intercourse.
Mr. Hall, on the other hand, maintains that this is impossible,
and that the boats of the pre-dynastic ware are merely small
river-craft, totally unfitted for seafaring work.[*] In his 'Oldest
Civilization of Greece' he roundly asserts 'that these boats were
the ships which plied between Crete and Egypt some 4,000 years
B.C. Nothing can ever prove'; and he therefore believes that the
communication was kept up by way of Cyprus and the Palestinian
coast. But the evidence either way is of so extremely slight a
character, and the delineations in question are so rude, that it
might as well be said that nothing can ever prove that these boats
were _not_ the ships which plied between Crete and Egypt. It does
not seem obvious why the voyage between Crete and Egypt should be
impossible to navigators who could accomplish that between Crete
and Cyprus; and if communication were maintained by way of Cyprus,
it seems strange that that island should show practically no trace of
having been influenced by Minoan civilization until a comparatively
late date. 'It was not till the Cretan culture had passed its zenith
and was already decadent that it reached Cyprus.'[**] That the Homeric
Greeks were by no means daring navigators does not necessarily
imply that an island race, whose whole tradition throughout its
history was of sea-power, should have been equally timid. When
it is remembered in what type of vessel the Northmen risked the
Atlantic passage, one would be slow to believe that even in immediately
post-Neolithic times the Cretans could not have evolved a type of
boat as adequate to the run between Crete and the Nile mouths as
the 'long serpents' were to face the Atlantic rollers.
[Footnote *: 'Egypt and Western Asia,' p. 129.]
[Footnote **: H. R. Hall, Proceedings of the Society of Biblical
Archæology, vol. xxxi., part v., p. 227.]
But however the case may stand with regard to the pre-dynastic
period, there can be no question that by the end of the Third Dynasty
even Egypt had developed a marine not inadequate to the requirements
of the Cretan passage. We know that Sneferu, the last King of the
Third Dynasty, sent a fleet of forty ships to the Syrian coast
for cedar-wood, and that in his reign a vessel was built of the
very respectable length of 170 feet. Coming farther down, we know
also that Sahura of the Fifth Dynasty sent a fleet down the Red
Sea as far as Punt or Somaliland. And if the Egyptians, by no means
a great seafaring race, were able to do such things at this period
of their history, surely an island race, whose sole pathway to the
outer world lay across the sea, would not be behind them. There can
scarcely be any question that, by the time of the Pyramid builders
at latest, Cretan galleys were making the voyage to the Nile mouths,
and unloading at the quays of Memphis, under the shadow of the new
Pyramids, their primitive wares, among them the rude, hand-burnished
black pottery, in return for which they carried back some of the
wonderful fabric of the Egyptian stone-workers.
But supposing that the connection between the primitive Minoan
civilization and the earliest Dynasties of Egypt is a thing established,
what does this enable us to assert as to the date to which we are to
ascribe the dawn of the earliest culture that can be called European?
Here, unfortunately, we are at once involved in a controversy in
which centuries are unconsidered trifles, and a millennium is no
more than a respectable, but by no means formidable, quantity.
Egyptian chronology may be regarded as practically settled from the
beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty downwards. There is a general
consent of authority that Aahmes, the founder of that Dynasty, began
to reign about 1580 B.C., and the dates assigned by the various
schools of chronology to the subsequent Dynasties differ only by
quantities so small as to be practically negligible. But when we
attempt to trace the chronology upwards from 1580 B.C., the consent
of authorities immediately vanishes, and is replaced by a gulf of
divergence which there is no possibility of bridging. The great
divergence occurs in the well-known dark period of Egyptian history
between the Twelfth and the Eighteenth Dynasties, where monumental
evidence is extremely scanty, almost non-existent, and where historians
have to grope for facts with no better light to guide them than
is afforded by the History of Manetho, and the torn fragments of
the Turin Papyrus. The traditional dating used to place the end
of the Twelfth Dynasty somewhere around 2500 B.C., allowing thus
some 900 odd years for the intervening dynasties before the rise
of the Eighteenth. The modern German school, however, represented
by Erman, Mahler, Meyer, and the American, Professor Breasted,
arguing from the astronomical evidence of the Kahun Papyrus, cuts
this allowance short by over 700 years, allowing only 208 years
for the great gap, and proposing to pack the five Dynasties and
the Hyksos domination into that time. Professor Petrie, finally,
accepting, like the German school, the astronomical evidence of
the Kahun Papyrus, interprets it differently, and pushes back the
dates by a complete cycle of 1,460 years, allowing 1,666 years
for the gap between the Twelfth Dynasty and the Eighteenth. Thus,
even between the traditional and the German dating there is a gulf
of 700 years for all dates of the Twelfth Dynasty, while as between
the German dating and that of Professor Petrie the gulf widens to
over 1,400 years.
Into the question of which system of dating should be adopted it
is impossible to enter, though it may be said that if 1,666 years
seems a huge allowance for the five Dynasties, 208 years seems
almost incredibly small. The result is what concerns us here, and
we are faced with the fact that, while the traditional dating places
the First Egyptian Dynasty at about 4000 B.C., the German school
would bring it down to 3400 B.C., and Professor Petrie thrusts
it back to 5510 B.C. Dr. Evans, in provisionally assigning dates
to the periods of Minoan history, formerly drew nearer to the
traditional than to either the German dating or that of Professor
Petrie; but he has gradually modified this position, and now dates
his Middle Minoan II., which synchronizes with the Twelfth Egyptian
Dynasty, at 2000 B.C., thus practically accepting the chronology
of the German school. This would place Early Minoan I., which must
be equated with the First Dynasty, about 3400 B.C. Practically,
all that can be said with a moderate amount of certainty is that
the earliest civilization of Crete, like that of Egypt, was in
existence at a period not much later than 3500 B.C., while it is
not impossible that it may be 1,500 years older. Even accepting
the lower figure, the antiquity of man's first settlements on the
hill of Kephala becomes absolutely staggering to the mind. If the
growth of deposit on the hill was at the rate of something like 3
feet in a millennium--a reasonable supposition--it follows that
we must place the earliest habitations of Neolithic man at Knossos
not later than 10000, perhaps as early as 12000 B.C.
It is not till many centuries after the Sixth Egyptian Dynasty had
passed away that we come upon fresh evidence of the connection between
the two countries. The earlier palaces at Knossos and Phæstos had been
built, and the first period of Middle Minoan, with its beginnings
of polychrome decoration and its Queen Elizabeth figurines from
Petsofa, had come and gone in Crete, while in Egypt the corresponding
period had been marked by the troublous times between the Seventh
and the Eleventh Dynasties. But the rise of the Twelfth Dynasty in
Egypt marked the beginning of a more stable state of affairs in
the Nile Valley, and in this period, which corresponds with Dr.
Evans's Middle Minoan II., there are again evidences of touch between
the two kingdoms. With regard to absolute dating, we are of course
as much in the dark as ever, and may choose between 2000, 2500,
and 3459 B.C. In any case, at this point, put it provisionally
at 2000 B.C., the Egypt of the Senuserts and Amenemhats and the
Crete of Middle Minoan II. are manifestly contemporaneous, and in
well-established connection. In Crete this was the period when
the beautiful polychrome Kamares ware was at the height of its
popularity, and at Kahun, close to the pyramid of Senusert II.,
Professor Petrie some years ago discovered some unquestionable
specimens of this fine ware, which had certainly been imported from
Crete, as the fabric is one quite unknown to native Egyptian ceramic
art. Even more conclusive was Professor Garstang's discovery, in an
untouched tomb at Abydos, of a polychrome vessel in the latest
style of the period, in company with glazed steatite cylinders,
which bear the names of Senusert III. and Amenemhat III., the last
great Kings of the Twelfth Dynasty.
But the most interesting link between the two countries is found
in the fact that in this period there was erected in Egypt the
building which came to be looked on as the parallel to the Cretan
Labyrinth, and which, with a curious inversion of the actual facts,
was long supposed to be the original from which the Cretan Labyrinth
was derived. The pyramid of Amenemhat III., the greatest King of
the great Twelfth Dynasty, and indeed one of the greatest men who
ever held the Egyptian sceptre, stood at Hawara, near the mouth
of the Fayum. Not far from it Amenemhat erected a huge temple,
such as had never been built before, and never was built again,
even in that land of gigantic structures. The great building was
erected, in a taste eminently characteristic of the Middle Kingdom,
of great blocks of fine limestone and crystalline quartzite. It has
long since disappeared, having been used as a quarry for thousands
of years; but the size of the site, which can still be traced,
shows that in actual area the temple covered a space of ground
within which Karnak, Luqsor, and the Ramesseum, huge as they all
are, could quite well have stood together.
Even in the time of Herodotus enough was still remaining of this
vast building to excite his profound wonder and admiration, and it
seemed to him a more remarkable structure than even the Pyramids. 'It
has,' he says, 'twelve courts enclosed with walls, with doors opposite
each other, six facing the north, and six the south, contiguous to
one another, and the same exterior wall encloses them. It contains
two kinds of rooms, some under ground, and some above ground over
them, to the number of 3,000, 1,500 of each.' He was not allowed
to inspect the underground chambers. 'But the upper ones, which
surpass all human works, I myself saw; for the passages through
the corridors, and the windings through the courts, from their
great variety, presented a thousand occasions of wonder as I passed
from a court to the rooms, and from the rooms to halls, and to
other corridors from the halls, and to other courts from the rooms.
The roofs of all these are of stone, as also are the walls; but
the walls are full of sculptured figures. Each court is surrounded
with a colonnade of white stone, closely fitted.'[*] Herodotus
believed that the building belonged to the time of Psamtek I.,
in which, of course, he was ludicrously far astray, but otherwise
there seems no reason to question that his description actually
represents what he saw, though no doubt his lively mind somewhat
multiplied the number of the rooms.
[Footnote *: Herodotus II. 148.]
Pliny the elder, judging from his description, evidently saw much
the same thing at Hawara as Herodotus had seen, though time must
have somewhat diminished the splendour of the building. Now, to
this temple there was already applied in the time of Herodotus the
name Labyrinth. It used to be believed that the Hawara Labyrinth
gave its name to the Cretan one, and an Egyptian etymology was
arranged for the word 'labyrinth,' according to which it would
have meant 'the temple at the mouth of the canal.' The Egyptian
form of the title, however, is 'a mere figment of the philological
imagination.' Probably originality lies in the other direction.
The first palace at Knossos dates from a period certainly as early
as, probably somewhat earlier than, the Hawara temple; and since
the derivation of the word 'labyrinth' from the Labrys or Double
Axe, making the palace the House or Place of the Double Axe, seems
quite satisfactory, the Egyptian Labyrinth in all likelihood derived
its name from the House of Minos at Knossos. Apart, however, from
any mere question of names, there appears the interesting parallel
that the two most famous Labyrinths, the first palace at Knossos,
and the great Hawara temple, actually belong to the same period--a
period when, as we know from the other evidence, there was certainly
active intercourse between the two nations.
Mr. Hall has pointed out[*] the resemblance between the actual
building at Knossos and the descriptions left to us of its Egyptian
contemporary. The literary tradition of the Labyrinth of Minos
is that it was a place of mazy passages and windings, difficult
to traverse without a guide or clue, and the actual remains at
Knossos show that the palace must have answered very well to such
a description, while the feature of the Hawara temple which struck
both Herodotus and Pliny was precisely the same. 'The passages
through the corridors and the windings through the courts, from
their great variety, presented a thousand occasions of wonder.'
The resemblance extended to the material of which the buildings
were erected. The fine white limestone of Hawara must have closely
resembled the shining white gypsum of Knossos, and though the Egyptian
Labyrinth has passed away too completely for us to be able to judge
of its masonry, yet the splendid building work of the Eleventh
Dynasty temple of Mentuhotep Neb-hapet-Ra at Deir-el-Bahri, with
its great blocks of limestone beautifully fitted and laid, affords
a good Middle Kingdom parallel to the great gypsum blocks of the
Knossian palace. Of course we cannot attribute to Cretan influence
the style of the Egyptian building in this respect. For hundreds
of years the Egyptians had been past masters in the art of great
construction with huge blocks of stone, so that, if there is to
be any derivation on this point, it may rather have been Crete
which followed the example of Egypt. 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. Is it permissible to fancy that the
envoys of Amenemhat III. may have brought back to Egypt reports and
descriptions of the great Cretan palace which may have fired that
King with the desire to leave behind him a memorial, unique among
Egyptian buildings, but inspired by the actual achievements of his
brother monarchs in Crete? Whether the idea of this relation between
the two buildings be merely fanciful or not, their resemblances add
another illustration to the proofs of the close connection between
the Minoan and the Egyptian cultures in the third millennium B.C.
[Footnote *: _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, 1905, part ii.]
With the succeeding Cretan epoch, Middle Minoan III., we come into
touch with the dark age of Egyptian history, the great gap covering
Dynasties XIII.-XVII., towards the close of which is to be placed
the Hyksos domination. As the age was so troubled in Egypt, it
is scarcely probable that we shall find much evidence there of
any connection between the two lands; but the evidence found on
Cretan soil, though slight, is conclusive as to the fact that
communication was maintained. For the earlier part of the period
we have the statuette, already mentioned as having been found at
Knossos, bearing the name of 'Ab-nub's child, Sebek-user, deceased,
born of the lady Sat-Hathor.' 'Who Sebek-user was,' as Mr. Hall
remarks, 'and how his statuette got to Crete, we have no means
of knowing.' But the 'deceased' in the inscription shows that the
statuette was a funerary or memorial one, and it is hardly likely
that such an object was imported merely for its own sake or for
its artistic value, which is slight enough. May it not be that
either Ab-nub, the father, or Sebek-user, the son, or both, may
have been Egyptians resident at the Court of Knossos, either as
representatives of Egyptian interests or as skilled artificers,
and that the statuette is the memorial of one who died far from
his native land, but not without friends to see that he did not
lack the funerary attentions which would have been his at home? No
doubt there was interchange of persons as well as of commodities
between the two lands; some of the artists and craftsmen of both
countries would naturally go to where there was a demand arising
for their work, or where instructors were being sought to teach
the new arts; and Ab-nub and his son Sebek-user may have drifted
to Knossos in this manner, and found at last their graves there.
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 art of glazing pottery was not a native Cretan, but an Egyptian
art; it is in full use in Egypt from the very beginnings of the
First Dynasty. But now we find it appearing in a high state of
development in Crete in the beautiful faïence reliefs of the wild-goat
and kids, the vases with the wild-rose in relief on the lip, and
the figurines of the Snake Goddess and her votaresses. The Cretan
artists, however, though they borrowed the process, adapted it
to their own tastes. In Egypt the native faïence of the time is
of strictly conventional type, with black design on blue; but the
Cretan emancipated himself from these limits, and made his faïence
reliefs in the polychrome style, which still persisted, though
now no longer so prevalent as it had once been.
The disastrous period of the Hyksos domination in Egypt has left
but one trace at Knossos, but that is of peculiar interest, for
it is the lid of an alabastron bearing the name of the Hyksos King
Khyan. It cannot be said that we know any of the Hyksos Kings,
but Khyan is the one whose relics are the most widely distributed
and have the most interest. The finding of the lid at Knossos, his
farthest west, is balanced by the lion, bearing his cartouche,
found many years ago at Baghdad, his farthest east, while in his
inscriptions he calls himself 'Embracer of territories.' So it
has been suggested that the Knossos lid and the Baghdad lion are
the scanty relics of a great Hyksos empire which once extended
from the Euphrates to the First Cataract of the Nile, and possibly
also held Crete in subjection. In all likelihood, however, the
idea is merely a dream; certainly so far as regards Crete it is
most improbable. In the palmiest days of the Egyptian navy the
Pharaohs never held any dominion over Crete, and even Cyprus was
never really under their rule. It is much less likely still that a
King of the Hyksos race, whose whole tradition is of the land and
the desert, should have succeeded in establishing any suzerainty
over a race whose whole tradition is of the sea, and which was
then in the full pride of its strength.
Another era of history has passed away before we again find Crete
and Egypt in close touch with one another. In Crete the last period
of Middle Minoan had been succeeded by the first of Late Minoan,
in which the great palace of the Middle period was being gradually
transformed into a still larger and more magnificent structure,
which was not to be completed until the succeeding period. In Egypt
the Seventeenth Dynasty had at last, after long hesitation, picked
up the gauntlet thrown down by the Hyksos conquerors, and the War
of Independence had resulted in the expulsion of the Desert Princes
and their race. The conquering Dynasty had been succeeded by the
Eighteenth, the Dynasty of Queen Hatshepsut, Tahutmes III., and
Amenhotep III., and Egypt was in the full tide of a great revival,
alike in world-influence, in trade, and in art. Queen Hatshepsut,
who states in one of her inscriptions that 'her spirits inclined
towards foreign peoples,' had sent out her squadron to Somaliland,
and Tahutmes III. had organized a war-fleet on the Mediterranean
coast-line. The ancient Empire of the Nile was opening its arms
in every direction to outside influences, and was drawing into
the ports of the great river the commercial and artistic products
of every known people.
Among the races who are most prominent in the Egyptian records
of the period are the Keftiu, who are frequently represented in
the paintings of the time, and always with the same characteristic
features, the same dress and bearing, the same products of commerce
and art. Who, then, were the Keftiu? The word means the people
or the country 'at the back of'--in other words, at the back of
'the Very Green,' as the Egyptians called the Mediterranean. So
that the Keftians with whom the merchants and courtiers of Egypt
grew familiar in the times of Hatshepsut and Tahutmes III. Were to
them the men 'from the back of beyond'--the farthest distant people
with whom they had any dealings. But what race could correspond to
these 'back of beyond' men? In Ptolemaic times the word 'Keftiu'
was unquestionably applied to the Phnicians, who had for long
been the great seafarers and carriers of the Mediterranean; and
till recent years it was generally believed that the Keftiu of the
Eighteenth Dynasty were Phnicians also, though their faces, as
depicted on the Egyptian wall-paintings, did not bear the slightest
trace of Semitic cast. But the discoveries of the last few years
have demolished that idea for ever, along with many other beliefs
as to the influence of the overrated Phnicians upon the culture of
the Mediterranean area, and the pictures of the Minoans of Knossos
have made it certain that the Keftiu of the Eighteenth Dynasty
were none others than the ambassadors, sailors, and merchants of
the Sea-Kings of Crete. Fortunately, the tomb-painting which has
preserved so many interesting details of Egyptian life, was never
more assiduously practised or more happily inspired than at this
period. In all the chief tombs there are pictured processions of
Northerners, Westerners, Easterners, and Southerners, the North
being represented by Semites, the East by the men of Punt, the
South by negroes, and the West by the Keftiu; and we can compare
the men of the Knossos frescoes with their fellow-countrymen as
depicted on the tomb-walls of the Theban grandees, and be certain
that, allowing for the differences in the style of art, they are
essentially the same people. The tombs which preserve best the
figures of the Keftiu are those of Sen-mut and Rekh-ma-ra. That
of Sen-mut is the earlier, though only by a generation, or perhaps
rather less. He was the architect of Queen Hatshepsut, the man who
planned and executed the great colonnaded temple at Deir-el-Bahri,
and who set up Hatshepsut's gigantic obelisks. His tomb at Thebes
overlooks the temple which he built at his Queen's command to be
'a paradise for Amen,' and on its walls we can see 'the men from
the back of beyond' walking in procession, each with his offering
to present to the Pharaoh. There can be no question as to who they
are. The half-boots and puttees, the decorated girdle compressing
the waist, not quite so tightly as in the Minoan representations,
the gaily adorned loin-cloth, which is the only article of attire,
all are practically identical with the type of such a fresco as that
of the Cupbearer at Knossos. The conscientious Egyptian artists
have carefully represented also the elaborate coiffure which was
characteristic of the Minoans, who allowed their hair to fall in
long tails down their shoulders, doing part of it up in a knot or
curl on the top of the head. 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.
[Illustration XX: (1) MAIN DRAIN, KNOSSOS (_p_. 98)
(2) TERRA-COTTA DRAIN PIPES (_p_. 98)]
Rekh-ma-ra, in whose tomb are the other notable pictures of the
Keftiu, was also a great figure in Egyptian history in the next
reign. He was Vizier to Tahutmes III., the conquering Pharaoh of
the Eighteenth Dynasty. The pictures on the walls of his tomb are,
at least in some cases, evidently more than mere racial studies;
they are careful portraits. 'The first man, "The Great Chief of
the Kefti, and the Isles of the Green Sea," is young, and has a
remarkably small mouth with an amiable expression. His complexion is
fair rather than dark, but his hair is dark brown. His lieutenant,
the next in order, is of a different type--elderly, with a most
forbidding visage, Roman nose, and nut-cracker jaws. Most of the
others are very much alike--young, dark in complexion, and with
long black hair hanging below their waists and twisted up into
fantastic knots and curls on the tops of their heads.'[*]
[Footnote *: H. R. Hall, 'Egypt and Western Asia,' p. 362.]
These Keftiu, then, were the Minoans of the Great Palace period of
Crete, the pre-Hellenic Greeks, the Pelasgi of old Greek tradition,
in whose time the great civilization of the Minoan Empire reached its
culminating point, and was within a little of its final disaster.
It is a fortunate circumstance that Sen-mut and Rekh-ma-ra should
have caused them to be portrayed when they did, for in two or three
generations more the glory of Knossos had passed away, never to be
revived. Greece gave to Egyptian scholars the key to the translation
of the hieroglyphics in the Greek version of the Egyptian text on
the Rosetta Stone; the paintings of the Theban tombs have paid
back an instalment of that debt in showing us the likenesses of
those 'Greeks before the Greeks' who dwelt in Crete. Perhaps some
day the debt will be fully repaid by the discovery of a bilingual
text in Egyptian and Minoan, giving us in hieroglyphics a version
of some passage of that Minoan script which now exists only to
tantalize us with records of an ancient history which we cannot read.
Such a discovery is by no means beyond the bounds of possibility.
It is not so long since Boghaz-Keui supplied us with a cuneiform
version of the famous treaty between the Egyptians and the Hittites
in the time of Ramses II.; perhaps some site in Crete or Egypt
may yet provide us with a bilingual treaty between Tahutmes III.
and the Minoan Sovereign of his time.
After the time of Tahutmes, the evidences of connection between
the two lands grow scanty once more. The fact that the faïence of
the time of Amenhotep III. has discarded the old Egyptian tradition
of black upon blue, and now rejoices in splendid chocolates, purples,
violets, reds, and apple-greens, shows that Cretan influence was
still strong. 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. But before
Akhenaten came to the throne, about 1380 B.C.--possibly twenty
years before that event--the great catastrophe which brought the
Minoan Empire of Knossos to a close had already happened. The Cretan
wares which filtered into Egypt after 1400 B.C. were the products
of the Minoan decadence, when the survivors of the Empire of the
Sea-Kings--a broken and dwindling race--were still trying to maintain
a slowly failing tradition of art under the new masters, perhaps
the Mycenæans of the mainland, who, driven forth themselves by
the pressure of Northern invaders, had crushed in their turn the
gentler sister civilization of Crete.
The Mycenæan 'stirrup-vases' pictured in the tomb of Ramses III.
(1202-1170 B.C.), and the representations in the tomb of Imadua of
gold cups of the Vaphio type, carry the connection down to the last
dregs of the dying' race; but by the time of Ramses III. the Minoan
kingdom had probably been dead and buried for about two centuries.
In fact, with the rise of the Nineteenth Dynasty in Egypt (1350
B.C.), the name of the Keftiu disappears from the Egyptian records,
and in the place of the men from the back of beyond there appears
a confused jumble of warring sea-tribes, some of them possibly the
men who had overthrown the Minoan Empire, some of them probably
representing the broken fragments of that Empire itself, who unite
in attacks upon Egypt, but are foiled and overthrown. In the record
of the earlier of these invasions, that which took place in the
reign of Merenptah (1234-1214 B.C.), the successor of Ramses II.,
it is difficult to trace any names that have Cretan connections.
The Aqayuasha may conceivably have been Achæans; but that is another
story.
But when we come to deal with the great invasion in the reign of
Ramses III., about 1200 B.C., we get into touch with tribes which
bear almost beyond question the marks of Cretan origin, and one of
which is particularly interesting to us on other grounds. In the
eighth year of Ramses III. The eastern coasts of the Mediterranean
were swept by a great invasion of the 'Peoples of the Sea.' 'The
isles were restless, disturbed among themselves,' says Ramses in
his inscription at Medinet Habu. Very probably the incursion was the
result of the southward movement of the invading northern tribes,
whose pressure was forcing the ancient Ægean peoples to migrate
and seek new homes for themselves. Landing in Northern Syria, the
sea-peoples quickly made themselves masters of the fragments of
the once formidable Hittite confederacy, and, absorbing in their
alliance the Hittites, who may indeed have been of their own kin,
they moved southwards along the sea-coast, their fleet of war-galleys
keeping pace with the advance of the land army. They established
a central camp and place of arms in the land of Amor, or of the
Amorites, and their southward movement speedily became a menace
to the Egyptian Empire. Ramses III., the last great soldier of
the true Egyptian stock, made effective preparations to meet them.
Gathering at the Nile mouths a numerous fleet, which carried large
numbers of the dreaded Egyptian archers, he advanced with the land
army to meet the invaders, his fleet also accompanying the march
of the army. The locality of the encounter between the two forces
is doubtful, some placing it in Phnicia, and others much nearer
to the Egyptian frontier. In any case, a great battle was fought,
both by land and sea, and the Egyptian army and fleet were entirely
successful in the double encounter. The reliefs of Ramses at Medinet
Habu show the details of the battle, the Egyptian fleet penetrating
and overthrowing that of the sea-peoples, while the Pharaoh from
the shore assists by archery in the discomfiture of his enemies.
The result of the double victory was to put an effective check
on any aspirations which the invaders may have cherished in the
direction of a permanent occupation of Egypt, though quite probably
they continued to hold the territory they had already gained.
[Illustration XXI: THEATRAL AREA, KNOSSOS: BEFORE RESTORATION (_p_.
100)]
The tribes which are mentioned in the inscriptions of Ramses as
having been leagued together in this attempt are the Danauna, the
Uashasha, the Zakkaru, the Shakalsha, and the Pulosathu, in alliance
with the North Syrian tribes. The Danauna are evidently the Danaoi,
or Argives, the same race which, under Achæan overlords, composed the
mass of the Greek army at the siege of Troy. As Danaos, the name-hero
of the race, was King of Rhodes and Argos, these sea-Danaoi may have
been Rhodian Argives. The Shakalsha are a more doubtful quantity,
having been variously identified with the Sikels of ancient Sicily
and with the Sagalassians of Pisidia. But the remaining tribes are
in all probability Cretans, fragments of the old Minoan Empire
which had collapsed two centuries before, and was now gradually
becoming disintegrated under the continued pressure from the north. The
Zakkaru have been connected by Professor Petrie with the coast-town
of Zakro, in Eastern Crete, and the identification, though not
absolutely certain, is at all events very probable. The Uashasha
have been associated by Mr. H. R. Hall with the town of Axos, in
Crete. There remain the Pulosathu, who are, almost beyond question,
the Philistines, so well known to us from their connection with
the rise of the Hebrew monarchy. The Hebrew tradition brought the
Philistines from Kaphtor, and Kaphtor is plainly nothing else than
the Egyptian Kefti, or Keftiu. In the Philistines, then, we have
the last organized remnant of the old Minoan sea-power. Thrown
back from the frontier of Egypt by the victory of Ramses III.,
they established themselves on the maritime plain of Palestine,
where perhaps the Minoans had already occupied trading-settlements,
and there formed a community consisting of five cities, governed by
five confederate tyrants. No doubt they brought under and held in
subjection the ancient Canaanite population of the district, whom
they would rule as the Normans ruled the inhabitants of Sicily.
In the district which they governed, and especially at Tell-es-Safi
(Gath), Messrs. Bliss and Macalister have discovered many specimens
of pottery which is obviously Cretan of the Third Late Minoan period,
together with ware which is local in the sense of having been
manufactured on the spot, but is quite certainly Late Minoan also
in its design and decoration.
So, then, the nation with which we have all been familiar from the
earliest days of childhood as the hated rival of the young Hebrew
state, whose wars with the Hebrews are the subject of so many of
the heroic stories of Israel's Iron Age, was the last survival of
the great race of Minos. Samson made sport for his Cretan captors
in a Minoan Theatral Area by the portico of some degenerate House
of Minos, half palace, half shrine, with Cretan ladies in their
strangely modern garb of frills and flounces looking down from
the balconies to see his feats of strength, as their ancestresses
had looked down at Knossos on the boxing and bull-grappling of the
palmy days when Knossos ruled the Ægean. The great champion whom
David met and slew in the vale of Elah was a Cretan, a Pelasgian,
one of the Greeks before the Greeks, wearing the bronze panoply with
the feather-crested helmet which his people had adopted in their
later days in place of the old leathern cap and huge figure-eight
shield. Ittai of Gath, David's faithful captain of the bodyguard,
and David's body-guards themselves, the Cherethites and Pelethites
(Cretans and Philistines), were all of the same race.
Though these last supporters of the great Minoan tradition had
fallen upon evil times, it is evident that they were not altogether
degenerate. The references to their cities in Scripture show that
they still retained the national taste for splendid buildings;
and no doubt their culture, though belonging to the last and most
debased period of Minoan art, was far in advance of that of the
rude Hebrew tribes. 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. A race
that to its opponents appears to breed giants is a race that has
proved itself thoroughly respectable on the field of war; and the
fact that a small league of five towns maintained itself so long as
it did, and was able to make itself so dreaded, points to bravery
and skill in arms altogether out of proportion to its actual strength
in mere numbers. Evidently the last Minoans succeeded in creating
an atmosphere for themselves in Palestine, and in impressing the
surrounding peoples with a wholesome terror of them. We may imagine
the men from Crete, lithe and agile, as we see them on the Boxer
Vase of Hagia Triada, swaggering in their bronze armour among the
weaker Orientals, much as the later Greek hoplite of the times of
Psamtek I. or Haa-ab-ra domineered over the native Egyptians.
But all the same the Philistine was an anachronism, a survival from
an older world. The day of the Minoan, like that of his early friend
the Egyptian, had passed away. The stars of new races were rising
above the horizon, and new claimants were dividing the heritage of
the ancient world. To the new Greek the realm of knowledge and
art which his Cretan forerunner had not unworthily cultivated; to
the Mesopotamian the realm of armed dominance, to which also the
Cretan had once laid claim; to the Hebrew the realm of spiritual
thought, in which, by reason of our ignorance, we can say next to
nothing of the Cretan's achievement, save only that he too sought
for God, if haply he might feel after Him and find Him.