Part 6 (2/2)

(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. the Minoan kingdom had probably been dead and buried for about two centuries.

In fact, with the rise of the Nineteenth Dynasty in Egypt (1350 B.C.), the name of the Keftiu disappears from the Egyptian records, and in the place of the men from the back of beyond there appears a confused jumble of warring sea-tribes, some of them possibly the men who had overthrown the Minoan Empire, some of them probably representing the broken fragments of that Empire itself, who unite in attacks upon Egypt, but are foiled and overthrown. In the record of the earlier of these invasions, that which took place in the reign of Merenptah (1234-1214 B.C.), the successor of Ramses II., it is difficult to trace any names that have Cretan connections.

The Aqayuasha may conceivably have been Achaeans; but that is another story.

But when we come to deal with the great invasion in the reign of Ramses III., about 1200 B.C., we get into touch with tribes which bear almost beyond question the marks of Cretan origin, and one of which is particularly interesting to us on other grounds. In the eighth year of Ramses III. The eastern coasts of the Mediterranean were swept by a great invasion of the 'Peoples of the Sea.' 'The isles were restless, disturbed among themselves,' says Ramses in his inscription at Medinet Habu. Very probably the incursion was the result of the southward movement of the invading northern tribes, whose pressure was forcing the ancient aegean peoples to migrate and seek new homes for themselves. Landing in Northern Syria, the sea-peoples quickly made themselves masters of the fragments of the once formidable Hitt.i.te confederacy, and, absorbing in their alliance the Hitt.i.tes, who may indeed have been of their own kin, they moved southwards along the sea-coast, their fleet of war-galleys keeping pace with the advance of the land army. They established a central camp and place of arms in the land of Amor, or of the Amorites, and their southward movement speedily became a menace to the Egyptian Empire. Ramses III., the last great soldier of the true Egyptian stock, made effective preparations to meet them.

Gathering at the Nile mouths a numerous fleet, which carried large numbers of the dreaded Egyptian archers, he advanced with the land army to meet the invaders, his fleet also accompanying the march of the army. The locality of the encounter between the two forces is doubtful, some placing it in Ph?nicia, and others much nearer to the Egyptian frontier. In any case, a great battle was fought, both by land and sea, and the Egyptian army and fleet were entirely successful in the double encounter. The reliefs of Ramses at Medinet Habu show the details of the battle, the Egyptian fleet penetrating and overthrowing that of the sea-peoples, while the Pharaoh from the sh.o.r.e a.s.sists by archery in the discomfiture of his enemies.

The result of the double victory was to put an effective check on any aspirations which the invaders may have cherished in the direction of a permanent occupation of Egypt, though quite probably they continued to hold the territory they had already gained.

[Ill.u.s.tration XXI: THEATRAL AREA, KNOSSOS: BEFORE RESTORATION (_p_.

100)]

The tribes which are mentioned in the inscriptions of Ramses as having been leagued together in this attempt are the Danauna, the Uashasha, the Zakkaru, the Shakalsha, and the Pulosathu, in alliance with the North Syrian tribes. The Danauna are evidently the Danaoi, or Argives, the same race which, under Achaean overlords, composed the ma.s.s of the Greek army at the siege of Troy. As Danaos, the name-hero of the race, was King of Rhodes and Argos, these sea-Danaoi may have been Rhodian Argives. The Shakalsha are a more doubtful quant.i.ty, having been variously identified with the Sikels of ancient Sicily and with the Sagala.s.sians of Pisidia. But the remaining tribes are in all probability Cretans, fragments of the old Minoan Empire which had collapsed two centuries before, and was now gradually becoming disintegrated under the continued pressure from the north. The Zakkaru have been connected by Professor Petrie with the coast-town of Zakro, in Eastern Crete, and the identification, though not absolutely certain, is at all events very probable. The Uashasha have been a.s.sociated by Mr. H. R. Hall with the town of Axos, in Crete. There remain the Pulosathu, who are, almost beyond question, the Philistines, so well known to us from their connection with the rise of the Hebrew monarchy. The Hebrew tradition brought the Philistines from Kaphtor, and Kaphtor is plainly nothing else than the Egyptian Kefti, or Keftiu. In the Philistines, then, we have the last organized remnant of the old Minoan sea-power. Thrown back from the frontier of Egypt by the victory of Ramses III., they established themselves on the maritime plain of Palestine, where perhaps the Minoans had already occupied trading-settlements, and there formed a community consisting of five cities, governed by five confederate tyrants. No doubt they brought under and held in subjection the ancient Canaanite population of the district, whom they would rule as the Normans ruled the inhabitants of Sicily.

In the district which they governed, and especially at Tell-es-Safi (Gath), Messrs. Bliss and Macalister have discovered many specimens of pottery which is obviously Cretan of the Third Late Minoan period, together with ware which is local in the sense of having been manufactured on the spot, but is quite certainly Late Minoan also in its design and decoration.

So, then, the nation with which we have all been familiar from the earliest days of childhood as the hated rival of the young Hebrew state, whose wars with the Hebrews are the subject of so many of the heroic stories of Israel's Iron Age, was the last survival of the great race of Minos. Samson made sport for his Cretan captors in a Minoan Theatral Area by the portico of some degenerate House of Minos, half palace, half shrine, with Cretan ladies in their strangely modern garb of frills and flounces looking down from the balconies to see his feats of strength, as their ancestresses had looked down at Knossos on the boxing and bull-grappling of the palmy days when Knossos ruled the aegean. The great champion whom David met and slew in the vale of Elah was a Cretan, a Pelasgian, one of the Greeks before the Greeks, wearing the bronze panoply with the feather-crested helmet which his people had adopted in their later days in place of the old leathern cap and huge figure-eight s.h.i.+eld. Ittai of Gath, David's faithful captain of the bodyguard, and David's body-guards themselves, the Cherethites and Pelethites (Cretans and Philistines), were all of the same race.

Though these last supporters of the great Minoan tradition had fallen upon evil times, it is evident that they were not altogether degenerate. The references to their cities in Scripture show that they still retained the national taste for splendid buildings; and no doubt their culture, though belonging to the last and most debased period of Minoan art, was far in advance of that of the rude Hebrew tribes. The golden mice and tumours which they sent to the Hebrews along with the ark of Jehovah recall on the one hand the skill of the Minoan goldsmiths, and on the other the votive images of animals and diseased human organs placed in the old shrine at Petsofa. The respect which was excited by their warlike prowess can easily be read between the lines of the Hebrew story. A race that to its opponents appears to breed giants is a race that has proved itself thoroughly respectable on the field of war; and the fact that a small league of five towns maintained itself so long as it did, and was able to make itself so dreaded, points to bravery and skill in arms altogether out of proportion to its actual strength in mere numbers. Evidently the last Minoans succeeded in creating an atmosphere for themselves in Palestine, and in impressing the surrounding peoples with a wholesome terror of them. We may imagine the men from Crete, lithe and agile, as we see them on the Boxer Vase of Hagia Triada, swaggering in their bronze armour among the weaker Orientals, much as the later Greek hoplite of the times of Psamtek I. or Haa-ab-ra domineered over the native Egyptians.

But all the same the Philistine was an anachronism, a survival from an older world. The day of the Minoan, like that of his early friend the Egyptian, had pa.s.sed away. The stars of new races were rising above the horizon, and new claimants were dividing the heritage of the ancient world. To the new Greek the realm of knowledge and art which his Cretan forerunner had not unworthily cultivated; to the Mesopotamian the realm of armed dominance, to which also the Cretan had once laid claim; to the Hebrew the realm of spiritual thought, in which, by reason of our ignorance, we can say next to nothing of the Cretan's achievement, save only that he too sought for G.o.d, if haply he might feel after Him and find Him.

CHAPTER VIII

THE DESTROYERS

The Empire of the Sea-Kings had not been immune from disaster and defeat any more than any other great Empire of the ancient world.

The times of conquest and triumph, when Knossos exacted its human tribute from the vanquished states, Megara or Athens, or from its own far-spread dependencies, had occasionally been broken by periods when victory left its banners, and when the indignities it had inflicted on other states were retaliated on itself. Once at least in the long history of the palace at Knossos, if not twice, there had come a disastrous day when the Minoan fleet had either been defeated or eluded, when some invading force had landed and swept up the valley, had overcome what resistance could be made by the guard of the unfortified palace, and had ebbed back again to its s.h.i.+ps, leaving death and fire-blackened walls behind it. The Second Middle Minoan period closes with the evidence of such a general catastrophe, in which the palace was sacked and fired, and there are also traces which suggest that the end of the preceding period was marked by a similar disaster.

But these catastrophes, whether the agents of them were mere sea-rovers, making a daring raid upon the eyrie of the great sea-power, or the warriors of rival mainland states, eager to avenge upon their enemy what they themselves had suffered at her hands, or, as Dr.

Evans and other explorers incline rather to believe, Cretans from Phaestos, whose purpose was merely to overthrow the ruling dynasty, scarcely interrupted the current of Minoan development. If the enemy came from without, he came only to destroy and plunder, not to occupy, and, having done his work, departed; if from within the Empire, his triumph made no breach in the continuity of the Minoan tradition. The palace rose again from its ashes, greater and more glorious than before, and men of the same stock carried on the work that had been checked for a while by the rough hand of war. The men of the Third Middle Minoan period reared the beginnings of the second palace on the site where the first had stood, and in the relics of their arts and crafts the same spirit which informed the earlier period still prevails, with no greater modifications than such as come naturally to the art of any nation by the mere lapse of time.

From the beginning of Middle Minoan III. to the end of Late Minoan II.--a period, that is to say, of either some 500 or almost 2,000 years, according to the scheme of Egyptian chronology which we may adopt--the civilization of Crete apparently followed a course of even and peaceful development. At Knossos, Phaestos, and Hagia Triada the great palaces slowly grew to their final glory. The art that had produced the beautiful polychrome Kamares ware pa.s.sed away, and was succeeded by the naturalism which has left us the Blue Boy who gathers the white crocuses, and the faence reliefs of the Temple Repositories, a naturalism which, with various modifications in style and material, persists to the end of Late Minoan I. In the midst of this period (Late Minoan I.) come what are perhaps the highest developments of Minoan art in the shape of the steat.i.te vases of Hagia Triada, Boxer, Harvester, and Chieftain. On the mainland the kindred culture of Mycenae was rising to its culmination, and the art represented in the Circle-Graves was almost in the fulness of its bloom. Naturalism declines in its turn, and is succeeded by the Later Palace style, more grandiose, more mannered, and less free than that which had preceded it. It was in the Later Palace period (Late Minoan II.) that the miniature frescoes were painted, to preserve for us the strangely modern style of the Minoan Court, with its flounced and furbelowed dames. Naturalism, though failing, was still capable of great things, and its last efforts in the palace at Knossos gave us the magnificent reliefs of painted stucco, such as the bull's head and the King with the peac.o.c.k plumes. Over the seas, the Egyptians of the Eighteenth Dynasty were setting down on their tomb walls those likenesses of the Keftiu which have helped us to the date of this last development of Minoan greatness.

[Ill.u.s.tration XXII: THEATRAL AREA, KNOSSOS: RESTORED (_p_. 100)

_G. Maraghiannis_]

Probably the power and grandeur of the Empire was never more imposing than during the hundred years before 1400 B.C. The House of Minos at Knossos had reached its full development, and stood in all its splendour, an imposing ma.s.s of building, crowning the hill of Kephala with its five storeys around the great Central. Court, its Theatral Area, and its outlying dependencies. Within its s.p.a.cious porticoes and corridors the walls glowed with the brilliant colours of innumerable frescoes and reliefs in coloured plaster. The Cup-Bearer, the Queen's Procession, the Miniature Frescoes of the Palace Sports, stood out in all their freshness. Magnificent urns in painted pottery, with reliefs like those of the great papyrus vase (Plate XXIII.), decorated the halls and courts, and were rivalled by huge stone amphorae, exquisitely carved. The King and his courtiers were served in costly vessels of gold, silver, and bronze _repousse_ work.

The Empire of the Sea-Kings was at its apogee, and on every hand there were the evidences of security and luxury.

But, as in the contemporary Egypt of Amenhotep III. a similar development in all the comforts and luxuries of civilized life was swiftly followed by the downfall under Akhenaten, so in Crete the luxury of Late Minoan II. 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 amba.s.sadors 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing away.'

[Footnote *: 'Scripta Minoa,' pp. 52, 53.]

That there was a huge disaster, which broke for ever the power of the Sea-Kings, is unmistakable. The Minoan kingdom did not fall from over-ripeness and decay, as was the case with so many other empires. The latest relics of its art before the catastrophe show no signs of decadence; the latest specimens of its linear writing show a marked advance on those of preceding periods. A civilization in full strength and growth was suddenly and fatally arrested.

Everywhere throughout the palace at Knossos there are traces of a vast conflagration. The charred ends of beams and pillars, the very preservation of the clay tablets with their enigmatic records, a preservation due, probably, to the tremendous heat to which they were exposed by the furious blazing of the oil in the store jars of the magazines, the traces of the blackening of fire upon the walls--everything tells of an overwhelming tragedy. Nor was the catastrophe the result of an accident. There is no mistaking the significance of the fact that in the palace scarcely a trace of precious metal, and next to no trace of bronze has been discovered.

Fire at Knossos was accompanied by plunder, and the plundering was thorough. A few sc.r.a.ps of gold-leaf, and the little deposit of bronze vessels that had been preserved from the plunderers by the fact that the floor of the room in which they were found had sunk in the ruin of the conflagration, are evidences, better than absolute barrenness would have been, to the fact that the place was pillaged with minute thoroughness, and the unfinished stone jar in the sculptor's workshop tells its own tale of a sudden summons from peaceful and happy toil to the stern realities of warfare.

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