It is a fortunate circumstance that Sen-mut and Rekh-ma-ra should
have caused them to be portrayed when they did, for in two or three
generations more the glory of Knossos had passed away, never to be
revived. Greece gave to Egyptian scholars the key to the translation
of the hieroglyphics in the Greek version of the Egyptian text on
the Rosetta Stone; the paintings of the Theban tombs have paid
back an instalment of that debt in showing us the likenesses of
those 'Greeks before the Greeks' who dwelt in Crete. Perhaps some
day the debt will be fully repaid by the discovery of a bilingual
text in Egyptian and Minoan, giving us in hieroglyphics a version
of some passage of that Minoan script which now exists only to
tantalize us with records of an ancient history which we cannot read.
Such a discovery is by no means beyond the bounds of possibility.
It is not so long since Boghaz-Keui supplied us with a cuneiform
version of the famous treaty between the Egyptians and the Hittites
in the time of Ramses II.; perhaps some site in Crete or Egypt
may yet provide us with a bilingual treaty between Tahutmes III.
and the Minoan Sovereign of his time.
After the time of Tahutmes, the evidences of connection between
the two lands grow scanty once more. The fact that the faience of
the time of Amenhotep III.
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