ummons of
the patient explorer.

CHAPTER V

THE PALACE OF 'BROAD KNOSSOS' (_continued_)

The discoveries of 1900, important as they were, were evidently
far from having exhausted the hidden treasures of the House of
Minos; but even the explorer himself, who spoke of his task as
being 'barely half completed' by the first year's work, had no
conception of the magnitude of the task which yet lay before him,
or of the richness of the results which it was destined to produce.
The early work in the second year led to a further disclosure of
the large area of the Western Court of the palace, which seems
to have formed the meeting-place between the citizens of Knossos
and their royal masters. Here probably all the business between
the town and the palace-folk was transacted; stores were brought
up, received and paid for by the palace stewards, and passed into
the great magazines; and here, perhaps, the ancients of the Knossian
Assembly gathered in council to discuss affairs, as the men of the
Greek host gathered in the Iliad, while the King sat in state in
the Western Portico, presiding over their deliberations. The Portico
itself, with its wooden central pillar, 16 feet in height, must have
been a sufficiently imposing structure, while the great court on
which it opened, more than 160 feet in length, must have formed a
stately meeting-place for the citizens. Whether as market-place or
open-air council-room, this West Court must have presented a gay
and animated spectacle when the prosperity of the Minoan Empire
was at its height. Along the outer wall of the palace fronting the
court ran a projecting base, which served as a seat where merchants
or suppliants might wait, sheltered from the sun by the shadow of
the vast building at their backs, till their business fell to be
disposed of (Plate XV. 1). Meanwhile they could beguile the time
by watching the ever-changing picture in front of them, where gay
courtier figures, with gold and jewels on neck and arm, mingled with
grave citizens of substance from the town, or gathered round some
Egyptian visitor, newly arrived on board one of the Keftiu ships,
to discuss some matter of trade--a clean-cut and austere-looking
figure, in his garb of pure white linen, beside the more gaudily
clothed Minoans. When their eyes wearied of the glare of sunlight
on the red cement pavement and the brilliant crowd, they could
turn to the wall behind them, where above their heads ran a broad