2).
On the tiny island of Mokhlos, only some 200 yards off the northern
coast of Crete, to which it was probably united in ancient days, Mr.
Seager has excavated, in 1907 and 1908, an Early Minoan necropolis,
from which have come some remarkable specimens of the skill with
which the ancient Cretan workmen could handle both stone and the
precious metals. Scores of beautiful vases of alabaster, breccia,
marble, and soapstone, wrought in some cases to the thinness of
a modern china cup, suggest at once the protodynastic Egyptian
bowls of diorite and syenite, and show that if the Cretan took
the idea from Egyptian models, he was not behind his master in
the skill with which he carried it out. Not less surprising is the
work in gold, which includes 'fine chains--as beautifully wrought as
the best Alexandrian fabrics of the beginning of our era--artificial
leaves and flowers, and (the distant anticipation, surely, of the gold
masks of the Mycenae graves) gold bands with engraved and _repousse_
eyes for the protective blinding of the dead.'[*][**]
[Footnote *: A. J. Evans, the _Times_, August 27, 1908.]
[Footnote **: For Mr. Seager's work on the Island of Pseira, see
'Excavations on the Island of Pseira, Crete,' by R. B. Seager.
Philadelphia, 1910.]
Excavating outside the area of the palace at Knossos, Dr.
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