red, and white bands. One well-preserved
figure is that of a girl with very large eyes, lips of brilliant
red, and curling black hair. Her high-bodied dress is looped up
at the shoulder with a bunch of blue, with red and black stripes,
and fringed ends. A border of the same robe, adorned with smaller
loops, crosses the bosom, and between its blue and red bands the
white tint of the skin displays itself, showing that the material
of the robe was diaphanous. Relief work in stucco was represented
by fragments of a life-sized figure, since pieced together by M.
Gillieron, which must have been that of some Minoan King. The head
wears a fleur-de-lys crown and peacock plumes, and round the neck
of the finely modelled torso there runs a collar of fleur-de-lys
ornament.
Again the connection of Knossos with Egypt was evidenced, and this
time in most interesting fashion. Near the wall of a bathroom which
was unearthed by the north-west side of the North Portico, there was
found the lid of an Egyptian alabastron, bearing the cartouche of
a King, which reads, 'Neter nefer S'user-en-Ra, sa Ra Khyan.' These
are the names of one of the most famous Kings of the enigmatical
Hyksos race--Khyan--'the Embracer of the Lands,' as he called himself,
one of whose memorials, in the shape of a lion figure, carved in
granite, and bearing his cartouche upon its breast, was found as
far east as Baghdad, and is now in the British Museum. The statuette
of Sebek-user, son of Ab-nub, evidenced a connection between Knossos
and Egypt in the time of the later Middle Kingdom. This cartouche
of Khyan shows that the connection was maintained in that dark
period of Egyptian history which lay between the fall of the Middle
Kingdom and the rise of the Empire. The intercourse between Crete
and Egypt, however, goes much farther back than either the domination
of the Hyksos or the Middle Kingdom. The discovery of various stone
vessels in translucent diorite, and other hard materials familiar
to the student of Early Egyptian work as characteristic of the
taste of the earliest dynasties, shows that for the beginning of
the connection between the two great Empires we must go back to
the early days of the Old Kingdom in Egypt. The two civilizations,
as we shall see later, can be equated period by period from the
earliest times until the catastrophe of Knossos.
Among the seal impressions in clay, which were found in considerable
numbers this season, were two worth
|