e earlier palaces at Knossos and Phaestos had been
built, and the first period of Middle Minoan, with its beginnings
of polychrome decoration and its Queen Elizabeth figurines from
Petsofa, had come and gone in Crete, while in Egypt the corresponding
period had been marked by the troublous times between the Seventh
and the Eleventh Dynasties. But the rise of the Twelfth Dynasty in
Egypt marked the beginning of a more stable state of affairs in
the Nile Valley, and in this period, which corresponds with Dr.
Evans's Middle Minoan II., there are again evidences of touch between
the two kingdoms. With regard to absolute dating, we are of course
as much in the dark as ever, and may choose between 2000, 2500,
and 3459 B.C. In any case, at this point, put it provisionally
at 2000 B.C., the Egypt of the Senuserts and Amenemhats and the
Crete of Middle Minoan II. are manifestly contemporaneous, and in
well-established connection. In Crete this was the period when
the beautiful polychrome Kamares ware was at the height of its
popularity, and at Kahun, close to the pyramid of Senusert II.,
Professor Petrie some years ago discovered some unquestionable
specimens of this fine ware, which had certainly been imported from
Crete, as the fabric is one quite unknown to native Egyptian ceramic
art. Even more conclusive was Professor Garstang's discovery, in an
untouched tomb at Abydos, of a polychrome vessel in the latest
style of the period, in company with glazed steatite cylinders,
which bear the names of Senusert III. and Amenemhat III., the last
great Kings of the Twelfth Dynasty.

But the most interesting link between the two countries is found
in the fact that in this period there was erected in Egypt the
building which came to be looked on as the parallel to the Cretan
Labyrinth, and which, with a curious inversion of the actual facts,
was long supposed to be the original from which the Cretan Labyrinth
was derived. The pyramid of Amenemhat III., the greatest King of
the great Twelfth Dynasty, and indeed one of the greatest men who
ever held the Egyptian sceptre, stood at Hawara, near the mouth
of the Fayum. Not far from it Amenemhat erected a huge temple,
such as had never been built before, and never was built again,
even in that land of gigantic structures. The great building was
erected, in a taste eminently characteristic of the Middle Kingdom,
of great blocks of fine limestone and crystalline quartzite. It has
long since d