On the map of the world, Great Britain is small. That men should go
forth from this little island and win their way in so many distant
lands, that this island people should wield such power over the
earth, that they should venture into the unknown places and bring
vast areas under the dominion of England, seems incredible. If we
were not aware that this is the literal truth, we should find it hard
to believe, we might even feel inclined to doubt it. The fact that
the mighty British Empire has all sprung from this little island in
the North Sea is one of the most astounding things in the world.
In olden times it was thought that all the world centred round the
Mediterranean Sea, that the earth consisted only of those lands
bordering the Mediterranean. In bygone days, long before the dawn of
history, it is possible that Crete dominated the known world of that
day just as the Island of Great Britain dominates the world of our
own day.
The British Empire is tangible proof of what one little island
can do. There is no reason why Crete should not have done the
same in the past, why that little island set in the vivid blue of
the Mediterranean should not have influenced all the lands on the
Mediterranean shore. We do not know. We cannot say. We have learned
much, but more remains to be unravelled from the tangled skein that
Time has woven in Crete.
As already mentioned, Schliemann, bringing all the knowledge he
had gained in his amazing excavations at Troy, at Mycenæ and other
places, to bear on the subject of the origin of the Mediterranean
civilization, placed his finger on Knossos as the centre whence it
sprang. His uncanny instinct was once more right. He wandered about
the lonely places of Crete, still with faith in the Homer who led
him to discover Troy, feeling sure that at Knossos he would find the
fabled palace of King Minos, but death prevented him from making the
biggest discovery of all.
The work that the German excavator left undone was taken up by Sir
Arthur Evans. Unfolding his tent on the barren site of Knossos, Sir
Arthur Evans set his diggers to work. They dug diligently, scanning
every spadeful of earth for traces of man. They excavated a yard of
soil, 6 feet, 10 feet, wielding pick and shovel, carrying the debris
away in baskets. They found many things, broken jars, decorated
pottery, but most important of all were the clay tablets inscribed
with the puzzling writing of the Minoans.
[Illustration:
_By courtesy of the British School at Athens_
A GENERAL VIEW OF THE RUINS OF THE PALACE OE KNOSSOS IN CRETE,
WHERE SIR ARTHUR EVANS HAS DISCOVERED A NEW AND HIGHLY DEVELOPED
CIVILIZATION, WITH A WRITING WHICH CANNOT YET BE READ]
Still they went on, getting deeper and deeper, until the pick of a
digger struck a paving stone. They shovelled the rubbish away and
disclosed another stone, then another. At last Sir Arthur Evans had
reached the stone pavement of a palace.
Excavations were continued, and gradually the throne-room of the
Palace of Knossos was bared once more to human eyes, after lying
under the debris for countless generations. Here were the stone
seats arranged round the walls for the councillors, here was the
throne on which sat the king who laid tributary on all the lands
about the Mediterranean, a stone throne, hollowed in the seat to give
comfort, with a stone back carved in a series of six curves rising
to a half-circle at the top, the solid block comprising the seat
carved at the front to indicate legs. Here in this ancient palace he
held audiences, sent his messengers forth in their galleys to claim
tribute at Athens, issued his decrees.
“Go,” he said, and they went.
And when after feasting he desired amusement and relaxation, he
would beckon his henchman. “Fetch me maidens to dance and sing,” he
would say, and there would be the sound of twanging strings and the
pitter-patter of little naked feet on the stone floor, feet with
toes pink as rosebuds, lithe limbs, flowing draperies.
And the king, feasting his eyes on the beauty of his dancers, would
dream of the youths and maidens even then aboard his galleys on their
way from Athens to Crete, the youths and maidens who were the yearly
tribute.
The hot sun, beating down on the well-tended vineyards, drew the
nectar of the earth to the grapes, brushed them with a delicate bloom
ere they fell beneath the feet of the winepressers to yield the juice
that made the feasters merry. The blossom of the olive groves was
succeeded by tiny green olives which swelled in the heat until they
were ready to yield their rich oil which was so welcome to the people
of other lands. Artists worked happily on the plaster walls, laying
on their colours to delight the eye, potters kneaded their clay until
it was as butter under the ball of the thumb. The people spun and
sewed and draped their bodies in comely garments. But most of all
they valued health, realized the necessity for adequate drainage.
Did they become too civilized, these ancient people? Did they grow
lazy in their luxury, disinclined to work? Who knows! Perhaps it was
so. At any rate, desolation swept over them and blotted them out,
just as the cities on the site of Troy were blotted out again and
again.
We can imagine the galleys of the invaders approaching the rocky
coasts, the cries of alarm running through the palaces and over the
island, the invaders springing ashore, fierce, strong, hard, not
softened by too much civilization, relying on their own strength
and weapons for sustenance, not upon the tribute exacted from
other lands. Muscular arms that had thrust the galleys through the
Mediterranean, dropped the sweeps and caught up weapons as the keels
grounded. The sea curled about the legs of the invaders as they
dropped over the prow and swarmed ashore. Fighters, every one, asking
no quarter, giving none, seeking plunder with the sword, valuing
other lives not at all and their own but little.
See the women shrinking into the corners of the palaces, eyes full
of fear, sensing approaching doom; men shouting and gasping, the
invaders sweeping forward and cutting them down. A semi-barbarous
people conquering a civilized people, cold iron superseding bronze,
uncultured men with superior weapons triumphing over culture with
inferior weapons.
Long, long ago something like this happened in Crete; the palaces
of the ancient people were toppled about their ears and palaces and
people vanished into oblivion.
Gaze on another scene thousands of years later. Absolute desolation
on the hill of Kephala. No sound of music nor pitter-patter of pink
feet on naked stones, only the song of the breeze; no sign of
palaces, conquered and conquerors alike swept into the gulf of Time;
only the same blue sea a mile or two away singing its eternal song on
the same rocky coast.
Men are swinging picks into the bosom of the earth, making great
gashes and gaps in the hill, picking over the loosened rubbish,
throwing it into baskets and carrying it away. An easy movement of
the arm sends the contents of the basket sliding down the face of the
dump, and the black-haired labourer turns back for another load.
Suddenly a digger glimpses something amid the heap of rubbish
loosened by the point of the pick. He stoops like a hawk to its prey
and brushes aside the soil with his fingers, scrapes carefully about
the object, and in a minute has it free.
It is merely a piece of yellow pottery with red decorations. Almost
before the finder has had time to look at the fragment, a man
scrambles down to him and, taking the fragment, carefully removes all
traces of soil.
Keen eyes scrutinize the little piece of pottery, and thoughts go
crowding through the brain. Visions of Egypt leap up, of a similar
fragment found in a tomb far over the blue sea to the south, past
the age-old Pyramids and the modern wonder of Assouan. Back and
back thoughts fly through the ages, back to the earliest kings who
swayed the earliest communities in the Nile Valley, all because
of a fragment of burnt earth, bits of pottery, links in the Eternal
Chain of Time, binding together in some unknown way Egypt and Crete.
Most of the links are missing, but who knows how and when the pick
and shovel of the seeker after truth may come across them?
[Illustration:
_By courtesy of the British School at Athens_
ONE OF THE MAGAZINES UNCOVERED BY SIR ARTHUR EVANS AT KNOSSOS IN
CRETE. THE MIGHTY STORE JARS, BIG ENOUGH TO CONTAIN A MAN, ARE SEEN
IN THEIR ORIGINAL POSITIONS AND THE SIDE OF THE TRENCH INDICATES HOW
DEBRIS COMPLETELY COVERED THEM IN THE COURSE OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS]
Once more let us glimpse that hill in Crete. The diggers are
gesticulating, running about. Carefully they dig and loosen the
soil about another object. A band of carved stone comes to light;
it is a curved band, and as they work about it ever so carefully,
they find it is part of a cylinder buried deep in the earth. They
work excitedly, removing the earth, digging down until they reveal a
mighty stone jar, a jar big enough for a man to stand upright in, a
jar which the ancients used as a store. It is the giant forerunner of
those tiny canisters to be found in the modern pantry, canisters for
storing tea and coffee and sugar and rice.
Deeper yet dug Sir Arthur Evans, until he had penetrated to nearly
twice the depth of the floor of the Palace of Knossos, until he was
nearly 40 feet below the surface. Here were stone implements, the
scrapers and knives of the unknown people who first dwelt in this
island in the Mediterranean. And through all the different strata he
found relics of man, relics by which it was possible to trace the
rise of civilization in Crete, from stone to copper, and copper to
bronze and bronze to iron.
But the biggest find of all are the stones and clay tablets and seals
with their hieroglyphic and script writing. For years Sir Arthur
Evans has puzzled over them, tried to solve the mystery of this
strange writing. The finest scholars of the world have racked their
brains for the clue to the mystery writing. There is the writing, but
we cannot read it. The key is lost.
Still the search for it goes on, and some day Sir Arthur Evans will
surely achieve his crowning triumph and solve the riddle of the
pictographs and script of Crete. What we may learn then about the
origins of our own civilization, nobody can foretell. The inscribed
stones and clay tablets of Crete have yet to yield up their secret.
For years Sir Arthur Evans has laboured in Crete, finding the money
to move mountains of soil so that light may be thrown on the past.
Discoveries of the highest importance have followed his excavations,
for he has proved with pick and spade that here in this little
island flourished a civilization almost undreamed of till the
present century, a civilization maybe as old as that of Egypt and
Mesopotamia, a civilization that flourished at least five thousand
years ago, that endured for ages before the Phœnicians launched their
galleys on the Mediterranean.
Perhaps in the years to come the researches of those who are
working in the desert places will make the origin of these early
civilizations clearer, and we may be able to assign to each its
proper place in the Story of Mankind.
THE END