The finding of the lid at Knossos, his
farthest west, is balanced by the lion, bearing his cartouche,
found many years ago at Baghdad, his farthest east, while in his
inscriptions he calls himself 'Embracer of territories.' So it
has been suggested that the Knossos lid and the Baghdad lion are
the scanty relics of a great Hyksos empire which once extended
from the Euphrates to the First Cataract of the Nile, and possibly
also held Crete in subjection. In all likelihood, however, the
idea is merely a dream; certainly so far as regards Crete it is
most improbable. In the palmiest days of the Egyptian navy the
Pharaohs never held any dominion over Crete, and even Cyprus was
never really under their rule. It is much less likely still that a
King of the Hyksos race, whose whole tradition is of the land and
the desert, should have succeeded in establishing any suzerainty
over a race whose whole tradition is of the sea, and which was
then in the full pride of its strength.
Another era of history has passed away before we again find Crete
and Egypt in close touch with one another. In Crete the last period
of Middle Minoan had been succeeded by the first of Late Minoan,
in which the great palace of the Middle period was being gradually
transformed into a still larger and more magnificent structure,
which was not to be completed until the succeeding period.
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