ls those likenesses of the Keftiu which have helped
us to the date of this last development of Minoan greatness.

[Illustration XXII: THEATRAL AREA, KNOSSOS: RESTORED (_p_. 100)

_G. Maraghiannis_]

Probably the power and grandeur of the Empire was never more imposing
than during the hundred years before 1400 B.C. The House of Minos
at Knossos had reached its full development, and stood in all its
splendour, an imposing mass of building, crowning the hill of Kephala
with its five storeys around the great Central. Court, its Theatral
Area, and its outlying dependencies. Within its spacious porticoes and
corridors the walls glowed with the brilliant colours of innumerable
frescoes and reliefs in coloured plaster. The Cup-Bearer, the Queen's
Procession, the Miniature Frescoes of the Palace Sports, stood
out in all their freshness. Magnificent urns in painted pottery,
with reliefs like those of the great papyrus vase (Plate XXIII.),
decorated the halls and courts, and were rivalled by huge stone
amphorae, exquisitely carved. The King and his courtiers were served
in costly vessels of gold, silver, and bronze _repousse_ work.
The Empire of the Sea-Kings was at its apogee, and on every hand
there were the evidences of security and luxury.

But, as in the contemporary Egypt of Amenhotep III. a similar
development in all the comforts and luxuries of civilized life
was swiftly followed by the downfall under Akhenaten, so in Crete
the luxury of Late Minoan II. was only the prelude to its great
and final disaster. Exactly when the catastrophe came we cannot
tell. The Cretan Empire was certainly still existent in all its
glory in 1449 B.C., when Amenhotep II., the son of the great Tahutmes
III., came to the throne, for Rekh-ma-ra, the Vizier of Tahutmes,
in whose tomb the visit of the Keftian ambassadors is pictured,
survived, as we know, into the reign of Amenhotep. The twenty-six
years of Amenhotep II.'s reign, and the almost nine of Tahutmes
IV., bring us to the accession of Amenhotep III. in 1414, and the
thirty-six years of the latter take us to 1379 B.C. or thereby,
when the heretic Akhenaten, whose reign was to witness the downfall
of the Egyptian Empire in Syria, ascended the throne. Somewhere
within these seventy years the Empire of the Minoans passed away
in fire and bloodshed, and we shall probably not go far wrong if
we suppose that the great catastrophe came about the year 1400
B.C. The conclusion of Dr. Evans is