have succeeded in establishing any suzerainty
over a race whose whole tradition is of the sea, and which was
then in the full pride of its strength.

Another era of history has passed away before we again find Crete
and Egypt in close touch with one another. In Crete the last period
of Middle Minoan had been succeeded by the first of Late Minoan,
in which the great palace of the Middle period was being gradually
transformed into a still larger and more magnificent structure,
which was not to be completed until the succeeding period. In Egypt
the Seventeenth Dynasty had at last, after long hesitation, picked
up the gauntlet thrown down by the Hyksos conquerors, and the War
of Independence had resulted in the expulsion of the Desert Princes
and their race. The conquering Dynasty had been succeeded by the
Eighteenth, the Dynasty of Queen Hatshepsut, Tahutmes III., and
Amenhotep III., and Egypt was in the full tide of a great revival,
alike in world-influence, in trade, and in art. Queen Hatshepsut,
who states in one of her inscriptions that 'her spirits inclined
towards foreign peoples,' had sent out her squadron to Somaliland,
and Tahutmes III. had organized a war-fleet on the Mediterranean
coast-line. The ancient Empire of the Nile was opening its arms
in every direction to outside influences, and was drawing into
the ports of the great river the commercial and artistic products
of every known people.

Among the races who are most prominent in the Egyptian records
of the period are the Keftiu, who are frequently represented in
the paintings of the time, and always with the same characteristic
features, the same dress and bearing, the same products of commerce
and art. Who, then, were the Keftiu? The word means the people
or the country 'at the back of'--in other words, at the back of
'the Very Green,' as the Egyptians called the Mediterranean. So
that the Keftians with whom the merchants and courtiers of Egypt
grew familiar in the times of Hatshepsut and Tahutmes III. Were to
them the men 'from the back of beyond'--the farthest distant people
with whom they had any dealings. But what race could correspond to
these 'back of beyond' men? In Ptolemaic times the word 'Keftiu'
was unquestionably applied to the Phoenicians, who had for long
been the great seafarers and carriers of the Mediterranean; and
till recent years it was generally believed that the Keftiu of the
Eighteenth Dynasty were Phoenicians also, though their