t with them from Crete the traditions of the great art
of Knossos. Such a suggestion is no longer so improbable as it
seemed to be in 1901, when it was still a tenable theory that the
new development of Egyptian art was due to Mesopotamian influence,
and came from Mitanni with Queen Tyi, the wife of Amenhotep III.
Now that it is certain that Tyi was no Mitannian, but a native
Egyptian, that door is closed, and we must suppose either that
Egyptian art suddenly and spontaneously awakened to a new style of
vision and execution, from which, again, it as suddenly departed,
or else that some foreign influence was working strongly upon the
rigid Egyptian convention, modifying and vivifying it. If a foreign
influence, why not the influence of the Minoan _emigres_, whose
art we at least know to have been capable of such an effect? Of
course, it is, after all, matter of surmise, and perhaps the chances
are rather in favour of the new art of Akhenaten's time having
been a genuinely native growth, influenced and inspired by the
new ideas with which the heretic King was seeking to leaven the
national life; but it is certainly far from unlikely that the break-up
of the Minoan Empire did influence the art of Egypt, and perhaps
that or other nations, in a manner something similar to, though on
a smaller scale than, that in which the capture of Constantinople
influenced the culture of Europe in the fifteenth century.

[Footnote *: R. M. Burrows, 'The Discoveries in Crete,' p. 96.]

We have already seen the evidence for the migration of Minoan tribes
of a later age in the assault of the Zakkaru and Pulosathu upon
Egypt 200 years after the fall of Knossos, and the establishment
of the latter tribe as an independent power upon the coast of
Palestine--events which may have been due to the advance of another
wave of Northern colonists upon the shores of Crete. One more glimpse
of the dying sea-power of the Cretan race, now itself disorganized
and predatory, is given us by the Golenischeff papyrus, which tells,
among other adventures of the unfortunate Wen-Amon, envoy of Her-hor,
the priest-King of Upper Egypt (_circa_ 1100 B.C.), how the Egyptian
ambassador was threatened with capture by eleven ships of Zakru
pirates, who put into Byblos when he was about to sail thence.
Whether these were genuine Minoans or not, it is impossible to
tell; their immediate connection was apparently with Dor, on the
coast of Palestine; but their name suggests