1). Meanwhile they could beguile the time
by watching the ever-changing picture in front of them, where gay
courtier figures, with gold and jewels on neck and arm, mingled with
grave citizens of substance from the town, or gathered round some
Egyptian visitor, newly arrived on board one of the Keftiu ships,
to discuss some matter of trade--a clean-cut and austere-looking
figure, in his garb of pure white linen, beside the more gaudily
clothed Minoans. When their eyes wearied of the glare of sunlight
on the red cement pavement and the brilliant crowd, they could
turn to the wall behind them, where above their heads ran a broad
zone of paintings in fresco--shrines with scenes of religion,
conventional decorations, and lifelike representations of the great
bulls which played so conspicuous, and sometimes so tragic, a part
in the Minoan economy.
But the main discoveries of the season were to lie on the opposite
side of the building from the Western Court. The Central Court,
instead of being, as it had seemed at first, the boundary of the
building on the eastern side, was now found to have been the focus
of the inner life of the palace. For on its eastern margin, as the
excavations progressed, there came to light a mass of building,
fully equal in importance to that on the western side, and perhaps
of even greater interest.
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