One other discovery was most precious,
not for its own artistic value, which is slight enough, but for the
link which it gives with one of the other great sister civilizations
of the ancient world. This was the lower part of a small diorite
statuette of Egyptian workmanship, with an inscription in hieroglyphic
which reads: 'Ab-nub-mes-Sebek-user maat-kheru' (Ab-nub's child,
Sebek-user, deceased). The name of the individual and the style
of the statuette point to Sebek-user, whoever he may have been,
having been an Egyptian of the latter days of the Middle Kingdom,
probably about the Thirteenth Dynasty. This is the first link in
the chain of evidence, which, as we shall see later, shows the
continuous connection between the Minoan and Nilotic civilizations.
Nine weeks after the excavations on the hill of Kephala had begun,
the season's work was closed, and, surely, never had a like period
of time been more fruitful of fresh knowledge, more illuminative
as to the conditions of ancient life, or more destructive of hoary
prejudices. It was a new world, new because of its very ancientry,
that had begun to rise out of the buried past at the summons of
the patient explorer.
CHAPTER V
THE PALACE OF 'BROAD KNOSSOS' (_continued_)
The discoveries of 1900, important as they were, were evidently
far from having exhausted the hidden treasures of the House of
Minos; but even the explorer himself, who spoke of his task as
being 'barely half completed' by the first year's work, had no
conception of the magnitude of the task which yet lay before him,
or of the richness of the results which it was destined to produce.
Pages:
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102