was only the prelude to its great
and final disaster. Exactly when the catastrophe came we cannot
tell. The Cretan Empire was certainly still existent in all its
glory in 1449 B.C., when Amenhotep II., the son of the great Tahutmes
III., came to the throne, for Rekh-ma-ra, the Vizier of Tahutmes,
in whose tomb the visit of the Keftian ambassadors is pictured,
survived, as we know, into the reign of Amenhotep. The twenty-six
years of Amenhotep II.'s reign, and the almost nine of Tahutmes
IV., bring us to the accession of Amenhotep III. in 1414, and the
thirty-six years of the latter take us to 1379 B.C. or thereby,
when the heretic Akhenaten, whose reign was to witness the downfall
of the Egyptian Empire in Syria, ascended the throne. Somewhere
within these seventy years the Empire of the Minoans passed away
in fire and bloodshed, and we shall probably not go far wrong if
we suppose that the great catastrophe came about the year 1400
B.C. The conclusion of Dr. Evans is that 'it seems reasonable to
suppose that the overthrow at Knossos had taken place not later
than the first half of the fourteenth century.'[*] Mrs. H. B. Hawes
places the fall of Knossos at 1450; but Rekh-ma-ra must have still
been living at that date, and, as Professor Burrows remarks, 'it
would at least be a strange coincidence if Egyptian artists were
painting the glories of the Palace at the very moment when they
were passing away.
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