two similar purple shell deposits, in either case associated with
pottery of the same date.

[Illustration XVII: (1) HALL OF THE DOUBLE AXES (_p_. 86)

(2) GREAT STAIRCASE, KNOSSOS (_p_. 86)]

At Zakro, on the eastern coast of the island, Mr. Hogarth has excavated
the remains of what must have been an important trading-station.
In one single house of one of its merchants he came upon 500 clay
seal-impressions, with specimens of almost every type of Cretan
seal design, which had evidently been used for sealing bales of
goods. Some of the Zakro pottery also was of extreme beauty, one
specimen in particular, conspicuous from the fact that its delicate
decoration had been laid on subsequent to the firing of the vessel,
and could be removed by the slightest touch of the finger, showing
evident traces of Egyptian influence in its adaptation of the familiar
lotus design of Nilotic decorative art (Plate XXIX. 2).

On the tiny island of Mokhlos, only some 200 yards off the northern
coast of Crete, to which it was probably united in ancient days, Mr.
Seager has excavated, in 1907 and 1908, an Early Minoan necropolis,
from which have come some remarkable specimens of the skill with
which the ancient Cretan workmen could handle both stone and the
precious metals. Scores of beautiful vases of alabaster, breccia,
marble, and soapstone, wrought in some cases to the thinness of
a modern china cup, suggest at once the protodynastic Egyptian
bowls of diorite and syenite, and show that if the Cretan took
the idea from Egyptian models, he was not behind his master in
the skill with which he carried it out. Not less surprising is the
work in gold, which includes 'fine chains--as beautifully wrought as
the best Alexandrian fabrics of the beginning of our era--artificial
leaves and flowers, and (the distant anticipation, surely, of the gold
masks of the Mycenae graves) gold bands with engraved and _repousse_
eyes for the protective blinding of the dead.'[*][**]

[Footnote *: A. J. Evans, the _Times_, August 27, 1908.]

[Footnote **: For Mr. Seager's work on the Island of Pseira, see
'Excavations on the Island of Pseira, Crete,' by R. B. Seager.
Philadelphia, 1910.]

Excavating outside the area of the palace at Knossos, Dr. Evans
opened, on a hill known as Zafer Papoura, about half a mile north
of the palace, a large number of Minoan tombs dating from the Third
Middle Minoan period onwards. They revealed a civilization still high,
t