t material. Eor it is due to them that the voice of the doubter
has finally ceased to be heard, and that now no archaeologist questions
that the Egyptians were in direct communication with the Cretan
Mycenaeans in the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty, some fifteen hundred years
before Christ, for no one doubts that the pictures of the Keftiu are
pictures of Mycenaeans.

As we have seen, we know that this connection was far older than the
time of the XVIIIth Dynasty, but it is during that time and the Hyksos
period that we have the clearest documentary proof of its existence,
from the statuette of Abnub and the alabastron lid of King Khian,
found at Knossos, down to the Mycenaean pottery fragments found at Tell
el-Amarna, a site which has been utterly abandoned since the time of
the heretic Akhunaten (B.C. 1430), so that there is no possibility of
anything found there being later than his time. That the connection
existed as late as the time of the XXth Dynasty we know from the
representations of golden _Buegelkannen_ or false-necked vases of
Mycenaean form in the tomb of Ramses III in the Biban el-Muluk, and of
golden cups of Vaphio type in the tomb of Imadua, already mentioned.
This brings the connection down to about 1050 B.C.

After that date we cannot hope to find any certain evidence of
connection, for by that time the Mycenaean civilization had probably
come to an end. In the days of the XIIth and XVIIIth Dynasties a great
and splendid power evidently existed in Crete, and sent its peaceful
ambassadors, the Keftiu who are represented in the Theban tombs, to
Egypt. But with the XIXth Dynasty the name of the Keftiu disappears from
Egyptian records, and their place is taken by a congeries of warring
seafaring tribes, whose names as given by the Egyptians seem to be forms
of tribal and place names well known to us in the Greece of later days.
We find the Akaivasha (_Axaifol_, Achaians), Shakalsha (Sagalassians of
Pisidia), Tursha (Tylissians of Crete?), and Shardana (Sardians) allied
with the Libyans and Mashauash (Maxyes) in a land attack upon Egypt in
the days of Meneptah, the successor of Ramses II--just as in the later
days of the XXVIth Dynasty the Northern pirates visited the African
shore of the Mediterranean, and in alliance with the predatory Libyans
attacked Egypt.

Prof. Petrie has lately [History of Egypt, iii, pp. Ill, I12.] proffered
an alternative view, which would make all these tribes Tunisians and
Alge