The ancient world, from the earliest times to 800 AD . ver wide regionsof the sea. The city hadno walls to shut out anenemy: Crete relied uponher sea power to ward offinvaders. We may think of the Cretan lawgiver, Minos, seated on his throne at Knossos,ruling over the surrounding seas, at about the time Abrahamleft Ur to found the Hebrew race, or a little before the law-giver, Hammurabi, established the Old Babylonian Empire, or 1 One old Roman writer (Diodorus Siculus) has preserved the interestingfact that the Cretans themselves in his day claimed to have been the inventorsof the alphabet. H
The ancient world, from the earliest times to 800 AD . ver wide regionsof the sea. The city hadno walls to shut out anenemy: Crete relied uponher sea power to ward offinvaders. We may think of the Cretan lawgiver, Minos, seated on his throne at Knossos,ruling over the surrounding seas, at about the time Abrahamleft Ur to found the Hebrew race, or a little before the law-giver, Hammurabi, established the Old Babylonian Empire, or 1 One old Roman writer (Diodorus Siculus) has preserved the interestingfact that the Cretans themselves in his day claimed to have been the inventorsof the alphabet. He says: Some pretend that the Syrians were the inven-tors of letters, and that the Phoenicians learned from them and brought theart of writing to Greece. . But the Cretans say that the first inventioncame from Crete, and that the Phoenicians only changed the form of the let-ters and made the knowledge of them more general among the Cretans had forgotten this claim for many centuries, but recent dis-coveries go far to prove it Cretan Writing. (Plainly, some of thesecharacters are numerals. Others have astrong likeness to certain Greek letters,especially in the oldest Greek writing.) 112 PREHISTORIC HELLAS [§96 as a contemporary of some of the beneficent pharaohs of theMiddle Kingdom in Egypt. From the palace frescoes, Dr. Arthur J. Evans (the Englishpioneer in Cretan excavation) describes the brilliant life of the lords and ladies of the court: — Sometimes the dependantsof the prince march into thepalace in stately procession,bringing gifts. Sometimes thecourt is filled with gaylyadorned dames and curledgentlemen [Cretan nobles worethe hair in three long curls],standing, sitting, flirting, ges-ticulating [after the fashion(»f southern Europeans in con-versation to-day]. We see theladies , . trying to preservetheir complexion with says another of the dis-coverers, — The women whodance and converse on Knos-sian walls have a self-assuranceand s
Size: 965px × 2590px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjecthistoryancient, booky
