s
possible, yet the site seems always to have been kept holy and free from
later building till Roman times, and we know that the tradition of the
mazy halls and corridors of the labyrinth was always clear, and was
evidently based on a vivid reminiscence. Actually, one of the most
prominent characteristics of the Knossian palace is its mazy and
labyrinthine system of passages and chambers. The parallel between the
two buildings, which originally caused the Greek visitors to give the
pyramid-temple of Hawara the name of "labyrinth," has been traced still
further. The white limestone walls and the shining portals of "Parian
marble," described by Strabo as characteristic of the Egyptian
labyrinth, have been compared with the shining white selenite or gypsum
used at Knossos, and certain general resemblances between the Greek
architecture of the Minoan age and the almost contemporary Egyptian
architecture of the XIIth Dynasty have been pointed out.* Such
resemblances may go to swell the amount of evidence already known, which
tells us that there was a close connection between Egyptian and Minoan
art and civilization, established at least as early as 2500 B.C.

* See H. R. Hall, Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1905 (Pt.
ii). The Temple of the Sphinx at Giza may also be compared
with those of Hawara and Knossos. It seems most probable
that the Temple of the Sphinx is a XIIth Dynasty building.

For it must be remembered that within the last few years we have learned
from the excavations in Crete a new chapter of ancient history, which,
it might almost seem, shows us Greece and Egypt in regular communication
from nearly the beginnings of Egyptian history. As the excavations which
have told us this were carried on in Crete, not in Egypt, to describe
them does not lie within the scope of this book, though a short sketch
of their results, so far as they affect Egyptian history in later days,
is given in Chapter VII. Here it may suffice to say that, as far as
the early period is concerned, Egypt and Crete were certainly in
communication in the time of the XIIth Dynasty, and quite possibly in
that of the VIth or still earlier. We have IIId Dynasty Egyptian vases
from Knossos, which were certainly not imported in later days, for no
ancient nation had antiquarian tastes till the time of the Saites in
Egypt and of the Romans still later. In fact, this communication seems
to go so far back in time that we are gradually b