y, are artistic descendants of Minoan
masterpieces modified by some element of uncouthness which was
probably of Northern origin.'[*]

[Footnote *: _Fortnightly Review_, October, 1908, p. 602.]

Thus in slow decay, after the great catastrophe, passed away the
great civilization of the Minoan Empire. Not all of the tribes
which had owned the dominion of the House of Minos were content,
however, to remain as subjects to the mainland conquerors. The
destruction of the central power at Knossos must have involved, as
Dr. Evans has suggested,[*] the collapse of much of the commerce
on which the island of the Hundred Cities depended for the support
of its great population. Already in the reign of Amenhotep III.
of Egypt, that powerful monarch had been obliged to establish a
special coastguard service at the mouths of the Nile to protect his
trade-routes against the Lycian pirates. When the Minoan fleet was
no longer in being to police the AEgean, these and other piratical
races must have quickly driven the Cretan merchant marine from the
seas. The purple fisheries and the oil trade would dwindle and
die, and the population which had been supported by them would be
driven from a land which could no longer maintain it. The colonizing
movement which has left traces of Minoan culture in Anatolia, in
Palestine, in Sicily, and even in Spain, began, no doubt, at an
earlier period, when the Empire of the Sea-Kings was in its full
strength; but it probably received a considerable impulse at this
time of forced emigration. The sudden introduction of the same
culture into Cyprus at some period after 1400 B.C. has been referred
to conquest by men of the AEgean race, who may very well have been the
men of Knossos driven forth by the pressure of altered conditions
to find a new home for themselves.

[Footnote *: 'Scripta Minoa,' p. 59.]

The Mycenaean pottery found at Tell-el-Amarna shows that there was
still an opening in Egypt for the products of AEgean art at least as
late as the reign of Akhenaten; and it is more than probable that
in Egypt many of the _emigres_ of the Minoan _debacle_ found a home.
The art of the reign of Akhenaten is characterized by the somewhat
sudden outburst of a naturalistic style almost entirely foreign to
the Egyptian tradition; and, as Mr. Hall foresaw eleven years ago,
it has been suggested[*] that the naturalism of Tell-el-Amarna
owes some of its inspiration to the influence of the fugitives
who brough