tools in a third.
That the citizens of the little town were not entirely ignorant
of letters was evidenced by the presence of a tablet bearing an
inscription in the linear script of Knossos, Class A, and the beauty
of their painted pottery shows that they were by no means lacking
in refinement and artistic feeling. The town was sacked and burned
about 1500 B.C., as its discoverer thinks, perhaps a century before
the fall of the great palace at Knossos. Partially reoccupied,
like other Cretan sites, during the Third Late Minoan period, it
has since then lain tenantless, waiting the day when its ruined
houses should be revealed again to testify to the quiet and peaceful
prosperity that reigned under the aegis of the great sea-power of
the House of Minos.

At Palaikastro another town of closely-packed houses, covering a
space of more than 400 by 350 feet, has been revealed. Its existing
remains are of somewhat later date than those of Gournia, and the
houses are, on the whole, rather larger, but their general style
is much the same. Near the town, at Petsofa, Professor J. L. Myres
has unearthed, among a wealth of other votive offerings, a number
of curious clay figurines, interesting as being among the earliest
examples of polychrome decoration (they belong to Middle Minoan I.,
and are painted in a scheme of black and white, red and orange),
but still more interesting--'with their open corsage, wide-standing
collars, high shoe-horn hats, elaborate crinolines, and their general
impression of an inaccurate attempt at representing Queen Elizabeth'--as
evidence of how utterly unlike was the costume of prehistoric woman
in the AEgean area to the stately and simple lines of the classic
Greek dress.

The Cretan discoveries have tended as much as any work of recent
years to reduce the extravagant claims which used to be put forward
on behalf of the Phoenicians as originators of many of the elements
of ancient civilization, and evidence is now forthcoming to show that
originality in even their most famous and characteristic industry,
the dyeing of robes with the renowned 'Tyrian purple,' must be denied
to them and claimed for the Minoans. In 1903, Messrs. Bosanquet
and Currelly found on the island of Kouphonisi (Leuke), off the
south-east coast of Crete, a bank of the pounded shell of the murex
from which the purple dye was obtained, associated with pottery of
the Middle Minoan period; and in 1904 they discovered at Palaikastro