C.), how the Egyptian
ambassador was threatened with capture by eleven ships of Zakru
pirates, who put into Byblos when he was about to sail thence.
Whether these were genuine Minoans or not, it is impossible to
tell; their immediate connection was apparently with Dor, on the
coast of Palestine; but their name suggests the town of Zakro, in
Eastern Crete, and it is not unlikely that they belonged to the
same race as the Zakkaru of the time of Ramses III.
Thereafter the Egyptian records are silent as to the scattered
tribes of Crete, just as they had been silent since the rise of
the Nineteenth Dynasty as to the organized Empire of the Keftians.
The eleven shiploads of Zakru sea-robbers are the last degenerate
representatives of the great marine which, under the Kings of the
House of Minos, had once held the undisputed Empire of the AEgean.
The ring of Minos was destined to lie for long ages beneath the
waves before the descendants of Theseus brought it up again.
CHAPTER IX
THE PERIODS OF MINOAN CULTURE
We must now endeavour to form some idea of the various periods
into which the long enduring culture of the Minoan Empire more
or less naturally falls, and to note some of the characteristic
features of each period. The chief aid in the formation of such
an idea is given by the remains of the pottery which have survived
from each period, and it is largely from the classification of
the pottery at Knossos and other sites that the scheme adopted
by Dr.
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