spected. Far from the prehistoric age being a time of stagnation,
it was rather a time of ceaseless movement. Perhaps the most striking
example of the distance across which communication could take place
in almost incredibly early times is afforded by the discovery on
the site of ancient Troy--the Second City, roughly contemporary
with Early Minoan III.--of a piece of white jade, a stone peculiar
to China. By what long and devious routes it had reached the coast
of Asia Minor who can say? Yet the fact of its occurrence there
proves the fact of communication.

[Illustration XVIII: THE KING'S GAMING-BOARD (_p_. 87)

_G. Maraghiannis_]

Up to the present time it cannot be said that any object unquestionably
Mesopotamian has been found on any AEgean site, nor any object
unquestionably AEgean on a Mesopotamian one. But it has been suggested
that certain carved ivories found by Layard at Nimrud in the Palace
of Sennacherib show manifest traces of AEgean influence; and in
Southern Syria, at all events--at Gezer, Tell-es-Safi, and
elsewhere--indisputably AEgean pottery and weapons have been discovered
in sufficient quantity to show that there was certainly communication
between the Minoan civilization and the shores of Asia. Intercourse
is suggested also by the obvious communities of religious conception
existing between Crete and Asia. In both places the divine spirit
is believed to associate itself with sacred pillars, such as the
Double Axe pillars at Knossos; in both it is personified as a Woman
Goddess, the mother of all life, to whom is added a son, who is also
a consort; while the emblems of the ancient cults--the guardian
lions of the goddess on the hill, the Double Axe, and the triple
pillars with perching doves--are property common to both Crete
and Asia. This may not point, however, to a continued intercourse,
but only to community at some early point of the history of both
races.

Of actual traces of Mesopotamian influence singularly few are to
be found in Crete. Dr. Evans has shown the correspondence of a
purple gypsum weight found during the second season's excavations
at Knossos, with the light Babylonian talent, while the ingots of
bronze from Hagia Triada represent the same standard of weight.
It may be that the drainage system so highly developed at Knossos
and Hagia Triada found its first suggestion in the terra-cotta
drain-pipes discovered at Niffur by Hilprecht, though it is by no
means obvious that c