[Illustration XX: (1) MAIN DRAIN, KNOSSOS (_p_. 98)
(2) TERRA-COTTA DRAIN PIPES (_p_. 98)]
Rekh-ma-ra, in whose tomb are the other notable pictures of the
Keftiu, was also a great figure in Egyptian history in the next
reign. He was Vizier to Tahutmes III., the conquering Pharaoh of
the Eighteenth Dynasty. The pictures on the walls of his tomb are,
at least in some cases, evidently more than mere racial studies;
they are careful portraits. 'The first man, "The Great Chief of
the Kefti, and the Isles of the Green Sea," is young, and has a
remarkably small mouth with an amiable expression. His complexion is
fair rather than dark, but his hair is dark brown. His lieutenant,
the next in order, is of a different type--elderly, with a most
forbidding visage, Roman nose, and nut-cracker jaws. Most of the
others are very much alike--young, dark in complexion, and with
long black hair hanging below their waists and twisted up into
fantastic knots and curls on the tops of their heads.'[*]
[Footnote *: H. R. Hall, 'Egypt and Western Asia,' p. 362.]
These Keftiu, then, were the Minoans of the Great Palace period of
Crete, the pre-Hellenic Greeks, the Pelasgi of old Greek tradition,
in whose time the great civilization of the Minoan Empire reached its
culminating point, and was within a little of its final disaster.
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