lf to solve on Cretan soil, has
found, so far at least, an answer. That great early civilization
was not dumb, and the written records of the Hellenic world were
carried back some seven centuries beyond the date of the first-known
historic writings. But what, perhaps, is even more remarkable than
this, is that, when we examine in detail the linear script of these
Mycenaean documents, it is impossible not to recognize that we have
here a system of writing, syllabic and perhaps partly alphabetic,
which stands on a distinctly higher level of development than the
hieroglyphs of Egypt, or the cuneiform script of contemporary Syria
and Babylonia. It is not till some five centuries later that we
find the first dated examples of Phoenician writing.'[*]

[Footnote *: _Monthly Review_, March, 1901, p. 130.]

Among the other finds of this wonderful season's work were several
stone vases, of masterly workmanship, in marble, alabaster, and
steatite, a few vases in pottery of the stirrup type (a type common
on other Mycenaean sites, but noticeably rare at Knossos, probably
because in the great palace the bulk of such vases were of metal,
and were carried off by plunderers in the sack), and a noble head of
a lioness, with eyes and nostrils inlaid, which had evidently once
formed part of a fountain. One other discovery was most precious,
not for its own artistic value, which is slight enough, but for the
link which it gives with one of the other great sister civilizations
of the ancient world. This was the lower part of a small diorite
statuette of Egyptian workmanship, with an inscription in hieroglyphic
which reads: 'Ab-nub-mes-Sebek-user maat-kheru' (Ab-nub's child,
Sebek-user, deceased). The name of the individual and the style
of the statuette point to Sebek-user, whoever he may have been,
having been an Egyptian of the latter days of the Middle Kingdom,
probably about the Thirteenth Dynasty. This is the first link in
the chain of evidence, which, as we shall see later, shows the
continuous connection between the Minoan and Nilotic civilizations.

Nine weeks after the excavations on the hill of Kephala had begun,
the season's work was closed, and, surely, never had a like period
of time been more fruitful of fresh knowledge, more illuminative
as to the conditions of ancient life, or more destructive of hoary
prejudices. It was a new world, new because of its very ancientry,
that had begun to rise out of the buried past at the s