'[*] Such tools were, of course, of bronze. Probably
the chief industry of the island was the manufacture and export of
olive oil. The palace at Knossos has its Room of the Olive Press,
and its conduit for conveying the product of the press to the place
where it was to be stored for use; and probably many of the great
jars now in the magazines were used for the storage of this
indispensable article. As we have seen, Dr. Evans conjectures that
it was the decay of the trade in oil during the troubled days after
the sack of the palaces that drove the Minoans abroad from their
island home to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Besides the trade
in oil, it would seem that there must have been a trade in the
purple of the murex, and no doubt the Keftiu mariners found a ready
market for this much-prized product long before the Phoenicians
dreamed of Tyrian purple. Minoan pottery was manifestly also an
article of export--a fragile cargo for those days. The fact that
two of the Keftiu envoys in the Rekh-ma-ra frescoes carry ingots
of copper of the same shape as those found by Dr. Halbherr at Hagia
Triada suggests that Crete may have exported copper to Egypt in the
time of Tahutmes III. as Cyprus exported it in large quantities
in that of Amenhotep III.
[Footnote *: C. H. and H. Hawes, 'Crete the Forerunner of Greece,'
p.
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