The statuette
of Sebek-user, son of Ab-nub, evidenced a connection between Knossos
and Egypt in the time of the later Middle Kingdom. This cartouche
of Khyan shows that the connection was maintained in that dark
period of Egyptian history which lay between the fall of the Middle
Kingdom and the rise of the Empire. The intercourse between Crete
and Egypt, however, goes much farther back than either the domination
of the Hyksos or the Middle Kingdom. The discovery of various stone
vessels in translucent diorite, and other hard materials familiar
to the student of Early Egyptian work as characteristic of the
taste of the earliest dynasties, shows that for the beginning of
the connection between the two great Empires we must go back to
the early days of the Old Kingdom in Egypt. The two civilizations,
as we shall see later, can be equated period by period from the
earliest times until the catastrophe of Knossos.
Among the seal impressions in clay, which were found in considerable
numbers this season, were two worthy of attention: the one of great
importance, the other scarcely of importance, but at least of interest.
The first was an impression of the figure of a female divinity,
dressed in the usual flounced garb of the Mycenaean period, standing
upon a sacred rock on which two guardian lions rest their forefeet,
the arrangement of the design being very much the same as that of
the relief on the Lion Gate at Mycenae, only with the figure of
the goddess taking the place of the sacred pillar.
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