1800, B.C.[**]

[Footnote *: A. J. Evans, 'Scripta Minoa,' p. 24.]

[Footnote **: See Appendix, p. 264.]

The hill of Hagia Triada, about two miles to the north-west of
Phaestos, proved sufficiently fruitful to compensate the Italian
explorers for the incomprehensible barrenness of Phaestos. Here
stand the ruins of the Venetian church of St. George, itself built
of stone which was hewn originally by Minoan masons. The retaining
wall of the raised ground in front of the church had given way,
exposing a section of archaeological relics, Minoan potsherds, and
fragments of alabaster, to a depth of more than six feet; and this
accidental exposure led to the discovery of the Royal Villa, which
the lords of Phaestos had erected as a dependency of the great palace,
or as a country seat. Hagia Triada proved to be as rich in objects of
artistic interest as Phaestos had been poor. Some of the fresco work
discovered, in particular a scene with a cat hunting a red pheasant,
reminiscent of the hunting-cat scene on the Mycenae dagger-blade,
is of extraordinary merit. The cat scene is judged by Professor
Burrows to be superior in vivacity to the famous Egyptian Eighteenth
Dynasty tomb-picture of the marsh-fowler with the trained cat,
though to those familiar with the wonderful dash of the Egyptian
work in question this will seem a hard saying.

There can be nothing but admiration, however, for the three astonishing
vases of black soapstone which were discovered at the villa. They
remain a most convincing evidence of the maturity of Minoan art,
and the mastery to which it had attained over the expression of
the human form in low relief. It has been already noticed that
the fine Minoan pottery is largely an imitation of earlier work
in metal, and this is true also of these stone vases. What the
Minoan craftsman was capable of when he was allowed to deal with the
precious metals we can see from the few specimens which have survived
to the present time. The Vaphio gold cups, with their bull-trapping
scenes, are generally admitted now to be of Cretan workmanship,
though found in the Peloponnese, and Benvenuto Cellini himself
need not have been ashamed to turn out such work, admirable alike
in design and execution. Little of such gold-work has survived, for
obvious reasons. The metal was too precious to escape the plunderer
in the evil days which fell upon the Minoan Empire; and the artistic
value of the vases and bowls would seem trif