, cuts
this allowance short by over 700 years, allowing only 208 years
for the great gap, and proposing to pack the five Dynasties and
the Hyksos domination into that time. Professor Petrie, finally,
accepting, like the German school, the astronomical evidence of
the Kahun Papyrus, interprets it differently, and pushes back the
dates by a complete cycle of 1,460 years, allowing 1,666 years
for the gap between the Twelfth Dynasty and the Eighteenth. Thus,
even between the traditional and the German dating there is a gulf
of 700 years for all dates of the Twelfth Dynasty, while as between
the German dating and that of Professor Petrie the gulf widens to
over 1,400 years.

Into the question of which system of dating should be adopted it
is impossible to enter, though it may be said that if 1,666 years
seems a huge allowance for the five Dynasties, 208 years seems
almost incredibly small. The result is what concerns us here, and
we are faced with the fact that, while the traditional dating places
the First Egyptian Dynasty at about 4000 B.C., the German school
would bring it down to 3400 B.C., and Professor Petrie thrusts
it back to 5510 B.C. Dr. Evans, in provisionally assigning dates
to the periods of Minoan history, formerly drew nearer to the
traditional than to either the German dating or that of Professor
Petrie; but he has gradually modified this position, and now dates
his Middle Minoan II., which synchronizes with the Twelfth Egyptian
Dynasty, at 2000 B.C., thus practically accepting the chronology
of the German school. This would place Early Minoan I., which must
be equated with the First Dynasty, about 3400 B.C. Practically,
all that can be said with a moderate amount of certainty is that
the earliest civilization of Crete, like that of Egypt, was in
existence at a period not much later than 3500 B.C., while it is
not impossible that it may be 1,500 years older. Even accepting
the lower figure, the antiquity of man's first settlements on the
hill of Kephala becomes absolutely staggering to the mind. If the
growth of deposit on the hill was at the rate of something like 3
feet in a millennium--a reasonable supposition--it follows that
we must place the earliest habitations of Neolithic man at Knossos
not later than 10000, perhaps as early as 12000 B.C.

It is not till many centuries after the Sixth Egyptian Dynasty had
passed away that we come upon fresh evidence of the connection between
the two countries. Th