on
through the addition of contrasts of light and shade--is seen coming
into use in the earliest part of the period.

Decoration is still geometric, and was to continue so for long.
Not until Middle Minoan III. do we get a really naturalistic style
of decorative art. But in Middle Minoan I. there are indications
which, though slight, seem to point to a striving after realism
on the part of some of the artists of the period. This tendency
is apparent even in some of the geometric designs, which are so
disposed as to form an approach to naturalistic patterns. But the
most remarkable example of the tendency is seen in a fragment of
a vase from Knossos, figured by Dr. Mackenzie,[*] on which the
figures of three of the Cretan wild goats are followed by that
of a gigantic beetle with a tail. 'The subject of the design,'
says Dr. Mackenzie, 'in its naturalistic character is so advanced
that, were it not for the company in which the fragments occur,
we should be tempted to assign it to a much later age.' It is
unfortunate that only a part of the design has survived, and that
no parallel to it has ever been found. Was it merely a sport, the
freak of some ancient potter who was weary of the conventional
designs of his time, and tried his hand at something new, combining
the wild life that he could see from the window of his workshop
with that which crawled upon its floor, without ever dreaming of
the problem he was setting for the students of 4,000 years later to
exercise themselves upon? The style of the goat and beetle fragment
is dark upon light. The goats are surrounded by an incised outline,
and filled in with lustrous black glaze; the beetle is drawn freely
in the black glaze, without incision, almost as though it had been
a humorous afterthought of the potter.

[Footnote *: _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, vol. xxvi., part I,
plate ix. 3.]

Middle Minoan I. has no surviving link with Egyptian art, a fact
which may be explained by the consideration that from the end of the
Sixth Dynasty to the establishment of the Eleventh, Egypt appears
to have been passing through a time of great confusion. The period
is practically a Dark Age so far as Egyptian history is concerned.

[Illustration XXV: (1) KNOSSOS VALLEY

(2) EXCAVATING AT KNOSSOS]

_Middle Minoan II_.--We now come to the period when the first undoubted
traces of the Cretan palaces begin to reveal themselves. The chief
architectural remains of the period are, howe