est links between the first great civilization of Europe
and our own.'[*] Such tools were, of course, of bronze. Probably
the chief industry of the island was the manufacture and export of
olive oil. The palace at Knossos has its Room of the Olive Press,
and its conduit for conveying the product of the press to the place
where it was to be stored for use; and probably many of the great
jars now in the magazines were used for the storage of this
indispensable article. As we have seen, Dr. Evans conjectures that
it was the decay of the trade in oil during the troubled days after
the sack of the palaces that drove the Minoans abroad from their
island home to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Besides the trade
in oil, it would seem that there must have been a trade in the
purple of the murex, and no doubt the Keftiu mariners found a ready
market for this much-prized product long before the Phoenicians
dreamed of Tyrian purple. Minoan pottery was manifestly also an
article of export--a fragile cargo for those days. The fact that
two of the Keftiu envoys in the Rekh-ma-ra frescoes carry ingots
of copper of the same shape as those found by Dr. Halbherr at Hagia
Triada suggests that Crete may have exported copper to Egypt in the
time of Tahutmes III. as Cyprus exported it in large quantities
in that of Amenhotep III.

[Footnote *: C. H. and H. Hawes, 'Crete the Forerunner of Greece,'
p. 37.]

It is unfortunate that so far we have no large-scale representations
of the ships in which these early masters of the ocean conducted
the sea-borne commerce of the AEgean world. The various seal-stones
and impressions, and the gold ring from Mokhlos, are interesting,
but it would have been much more satisfactory had we been able to
see representations of the Minoan galleys as complete as those which
Queen Hatshepsut has left of the ships of her merchant squadron.
The vessels represented are almost universally single-masted, with
one bank of oars, whose number varies from five to eleven a side,
a high stern, and a bow ending either in a barbed point or an open
beak, which suggests resemblances to the galleys of the sea-peoples
who were defeated by Ramses III. In some instances the length of
the voyage undertaken appears to be indicated. A crescent moon on
the forestay, and another on the backstay of a vessel with seven
oars a side, may point to a two months' voyage, while a disc over
the beak of another which has no oars at all may indicate