om Jupiter.' Hesiod's
story of how Kronos or Saturn devoured a stone under the belief
that he was swallowing the infant Zeus evidently belongs to the
recollections of a worship in which such natural idols as these
were adored.

Hitherto Knossos had yielded only one small and inadequate
representation of that seafaring enterprise upon which the Minoan
power rested, though even this had, in its own way, a certain
suggestiveness of the romance and terror of the sea. It was a
seal-impression, found in 1903, in the Temple Repositories, on
which a great sea-monster, with dog's head and open jaws, is seen
rising from the waves and attacking a fisherman, who stands up in
his light skiff endeavouring to defend himself. The Little Palace
yielded a somewhat more adequate representation of the Minoan marine
in the shape of another seal-impression, which showed part of a
vessel carrying one square sail, and propelled also by a single
bank of oars, whose rowers sit under an awning. Imposed upon the
figure of the vessel is that of a gigantic horse, and the impression
has been construed as a record of the first importation of the
thoroughbred horse into Crete, probably from Libya, an interpretation
which seems to demand a certain amount of faith and imagination, for
Mosso's criticism, that 'the perspective is faulty,' is extremely
mild. But at least the representation of the vessel itself gives
us some idea of the galleys which maintained the Minoan peace in
the AEgean.

[Illustration XV: (1) PALACE WALL, WEST SIDE. MOUNT JUKTAS IN BACKGROUND
(_p_. 84)

(2) BATHROOM, KNOSSOS]

Among other treasures yielded by the Little Palace was a vessel of
black steatite in the shape of a bull's head. The idea was already
familiar from other examples, but the execution of this specimen
was beyond comparison fine. 'The modelling of the head and curly
hair,' says Dr. Evans, 'is beautifully executed, and some of the
technical details are unique. The nostrils are inlaid with a kind
of shell like that out of which cameos are made, and the one eye
which was perfectly preserved presented a still more remarkable
feature. The eye within the socket was cut out of a piece of
rock-crystal, the pupil and iris being indicated by means of colours
applied to the lower face of the crystal which had been hollowed
out, and had a certain magnifying power.'[*] Students of Early
Egyptian art will be reminded of the details of the eyes in the
statues of Rahotep an