Evans
says: 'From the open court to the east, and the narrower area that
flanks the inner section of the hall, the light pours in between
the piers and columns just as it did of old. In cooler tones it
steals into the little bathroom behind. It dimly illumines the
painted spiral frieze above its white gypsum dado, and falls below
on the small terra-cotta bath-tub, standing much as it was left
some three and a half millenniums back. The little bath bears a
painted design of a character that marks the close of the great
"Palace Style." By whom was it last used? By a Queen, perhaps,
and mother, for some "Hope of Minos"--a hope that failed.'[*]
[Footnote *: The _Times_, August 27, 1908.]
The little bath-tub in the Queen's Megaron at Knossos takes its
place with the children's toys of the Twelfth Dynasty town at Kahun
in bringing home to us the actual humanity of the people who used
to be paragraphs in Lempriere's 'Classical Dictionary' or Rollin's
'Ancient History.'
CHAPTER VI
PHAESTOS, HAGIA TRIADA, AND EASTERN CRETE
We have followed the fortunes of the excavations at Knossos in
considerable detail, not only as being the most important, but as
illustrating also in the fullest manner the legendary and religious
history of Crete. But they are very far from being the only important
investigations which have been carried on in the island, and it
may even be said that, had Knossos never been excavated, it would
still have been possible, from the results of the excavations made
at other sites, to deduce the conclusion which has been arrived at
as to the supreme position of Crete in the early AEgean civilization.
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