While an Assyrian palace would have been decorated from end to
end with pictures of barbarous bloodshed and plunder, while even
the milder Egyptians would have adorned their walls with records
of the conquests of their Pharaohs, the Kings of the House of Minos
turned to other and more gentle scenes for the decoration of their
homes. Flower-gatherers and dancing-girls, harvest festivals and
religious processions, appealed to their minds far more than the
endless and monotonous succession of horrors with which the Mesopotamian
monarchs delighted to disfigure their walls; and even the dangers
of the bull-ring, as seen on the Knossian frescoes, are mild and
gentle when compared with the abominations where Teumman has his
head sawed off with a short dagger, and other unfortunates are
flayed alive, or have their tongues torn out.
The archives of the palace at Knossos certainly show that a military
force was kept on foot, and was thoroughly organized and well looked
after. There are records of numbers of chariots, and of the issue
of equipments to the charioteers of the force; and many of the
tablets refer to stores of lances, swords, bows, and arrows, a
store of nearly 9,000 arrows being mentioned in one of the finds;
while an actual magazine, containing hundreds of bronze arrow-heads,
has been discovered.
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