that 'it seems reasonable to
suppose that the overthrow at Knossos had taken place not later
than the first half of the fourteenth century.'[*] Mrs. H. B. Hawes
places the fall of Knossos at 1450; but Rekh-ma-ra must have still
been living at that date, and, as Professor Burrows remarks, 'it
would at least be a strange coincidence if Egyptian artists were
painting the glories of the Palace at the very moment when they
were passing away.'

[Footnote *: 'Scripta Minoa,' pp. 52, 53.]

That there was a huge disaster, which broke for ever the power of
the Sea-Kings, is unmistakable. The Minoan kingdom did not fall
from over-ripeness and decay, as was the case with so many other
empires. The latest relics of its art before the catastrophe show
no signs of decadence; the latest specimens of its linear writing
show a marked advance on those of preceding periods. A civilization
in full strength and growth was suddenly and fatally arrested.
Everywhere throughout the palace at Knossos there are traces of
a vast conflagration. The charred ends of beams and pillars, the
very preservation of the clay tablets with their enigmatic records,
a preservation due, probably, to the tremendous heat to which they
were exposed by the furious blazing of the oil in the store jars
of the magazines, the traces of the blackening of fire upon the
walls--everything tells of an overwhelming tragedy. Nor was the
catastrophe the result of an accident. There is no mistaking the
significance of the fact that in the palace scarcely a trace of
precious metal, and next to no trace of bronze has been discovered.
Fire at Knossos was accompanied by plunder, and the plundering
was thorough. A few scraps of gold-leaf, and the little deposit
of bronze vessels that had been preserved from the plunderers by
the fact that the floor of the room in which they were found had
sunk in the ruin of the conflagration, are evidences, better than
absolute barrenness would have been, to the fact that the place
was pillaged with minute thoroughness, and the unfinished stone jar
in the sculptor's workshop tells its own tale of a sudden summons
from peaceful and happy toil to the stern realities of warfare.

The evidence from Phaestos and Hagia Triada tallies with that from
Knossos. Everywhere there are the traces of fire on the walls,
and a sudden interruption of quiet and luxurious life. The very
stone lamps still stand in the rooms at Hagia Triada, and on the
stairs of the