cs has done away with some of the
romantic features of the story. The makers of these early works of
art and the builders of these strong fortresses were no sorcerers, but
simple sailors and traders. They had lived in Crete, and on the many
small islands of the AEgean Sea. They had been hardy mariners and they
had turned the AEgean into a center of commerce for the exchange of
goods between the highly civilised east and the slowly developing
wilderness of the European mainland.

For more than a thousand years they had maintained an island empire
which had developed a very high form of art. Indeed their most important
city, Cnossus, on the northern coast of Crete, had been entirely modern
in its insistence upon hygiene and comfort. The palace had been properly
drained and the houses had been provided with stoves and the Cnossians
had been the first people to make a daily use of the hitherto unknown
bathtub. The palace of their King had been famous for its winding
staircases and its large banqueting hall. The cellars underneath this
palace, where the wine and the grain and the olive-oil were stored, had
been so vast and had so greatly impressed the first Greek visitors, that
they had given rise to the story of the "labyrinth," the name which we
give to a structure with so many complicated passages that it is almost
impossible to find our way out, once the front door has closed upon our
frightened selves.

But what finally became of this great AEgean Empire and what caused its
sudden downfall, that I can not tell.

The Cretans were familiar with the art of writing, but no one has yet
been able to decipher their inscriptions. Their history therefore is
unknown to us. We have to reconstruct the record of their adventures
from the ruins which the AEgeans have left behind. These ruins make it
clear that the AEgean world was suddenly conquered by a less civilised
race which had recently come from the plains of northern Europe. Unless
we are very much mistaken, the savages who were responsible for the
destruction of the Cretan and the AEgean civilisation were none other
than certain tribes of wandering shepherds who had just taken possession
of the rocky peninsula between the Adriatic and the AEgean seas and who
are known to us as Greeks.

THE GREEKS

MEANWHILE THE INDO-EUROPEAN TRIBE OF THE HELLENES WAS TAKING POSSESSION
OF GREECE

THE Pyramids were a thousand years old and were beginning to show the
first signs