has discarded the old Egyptian tradition
of black upon blue, and now rejoices in splendid chocolates, purples,
violets, reds, and apple-greens, shows that Cretan influence was
still strong. Fragments of Late Minoan pottery found in abundance
on the site of Akhenaten's new capital at Tell-el-Amarna show that
even in the reign of this King, the heretic son and successor of
Amenhotep III., Crete was still trading with Egypt. But before
Akhenaten came to the throne, about 1380 B.C.--possibly twenty
years before that event--the great catastrophe which brought the
Minoan Empire of Knossos to a close had already happened. The Cretan
wares which filtered into Egypt after 1400 B.C. were the products
of the Minoan decadence, when the survivors of the Empire of the
Sea-Kings--a broken and dwindling race--were still trying to maintain
a slowly failing tradition of art under the new masters, perhaps
the Mycenaeans of the mainland, who, driven forth themselves by
the pressure of Northern invaders, had crushed in their turn the
gentler sister civilization of Crete.
The Mycenaean 'stirrup-vases' pictured in the tomb of Ramses III.
(1202-1170 B.C.), and the representations in the tomb of Imadua of
gold cups of the Vaphio type, carry the connection down to the last
dregs of the dying' race; but by the time of Ramses III.
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