rning, "the whole place spooks!"'[*]

[Footnote *: _Monthly Review_, March, 1901, pp. 124, 125.]

[Illustration IX: MAGAZINE WITH JARS AND KASELLES

GREAT JAR WITH TRICKLE ORNAMENT]

The Southern Portico gave access to a large court which turned out,
from later investigation, to have been really the Central Court
of the palace, the focus of the life of the whole huge building.
The block of building between the West and the Central Courts was
divided into two by a long gallery (Plate VII.), 3.40 metres in
breadth, running almost the whole length of the structure, and
paved with gypsum blocks. Between this gallery and the western
wall of the palace lay a long range of what had evidently been
magazines for the storage of oil, and perhaps of corn. They were
occupied by rows of huge earthenware jars, or _pithoi_, sufficiently
large to have held the Forty Thieves, or to have accommodated the
soldiers of Tahuti in their venture on Joppa (Plates VIII. and
IX.). In one of the magazines no fewer than twenty of these jars
were found. They were all ornamented, some of them very elaborately,
with spiral and rope-work patterns; one of them, found, not in a
magazine, but in a small room near the Central Court, was particularly
elaborate in its adornment, and stood almost five feet in height
(Plate X. 2). Down the centre line of each magazine ran a row of
small square openings in the floor--'kaselles,' as they came to be
called--which at one time had evidently been receptacles, some of
them, perhaps, for oil, but some of them certainly for valuables.
They were carefully lined with lead, and in some cases the slabs
of stone covering them could not be removed without lifting the
whole pavement. In spite of such precautions, however, they had
been well rifled in ancient days, and little was left to tell of
what their contents may once have been. The magazines were well
fitted to convey a strong impression, not only of the size, but
also of the splendour of the palace which needed such storerooms.
There was no meanness or squalor about the domestic offices of the
House of Minos. The doorways leading into the magazines from the
Long Corridor were of fine stone-work, and the side-walls, both
of the gallery and the magazines, had been covered with painted
plaster, presenting a white ground on which ran a dado of horizontal
bands of red and blue, further bands of the same colours forming a
frieze below the ceiling level. This, of course,