C., while it is
not impossible that it may be 1,500 years older. Even accepting
the lower figure, the antiquity of man's first settlements on the
hill of Kephala becomes absolutely staggering to the mind. If the
growth of deposit on the hill was at the rate of something like 3
feet in a millennium--a reasonable supposition--it follows that
we must place the earliest habitations of Neolithic man at Knossos
not later than 10000, perhaps as early as 12000 B.C.
It is not till many centuries after the Sixth Egyptian Dynasty had
passed away that we come upon fresh evidence of the connection between
the two countries. The earlier palaces at Knossos and Phaestos had been
built, and the first period of Middle Minoan, with its beginnings
of polychrome decoration and its Queen Elizabeth figurines from
Petsofa, had come and gone in Crete, while in Egypt the corresponding
period had been marked by the troublous times between the Seventh
and the Eleventh Dynasties. But the rise of the Twelfth Dynasty in
Egypt marked the beginning of a more stable state of affairs in
the Nile Valley, and in this period, which corresponds with Dr.
Evans's Middle Minoan II., there are again evidences of touch between
the two kingdoms. With regard to absolute dating, we are of course
as much in the dark as ever, and may choose between 2000, 2500,
and 3459 B.
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