DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9804#0046
22
CANDIA AND KNOSSOS
—we know them by their white skin—is holding out
both hands to catch him in his fall.1
The closer, indeed, that one looks into the excavations
at Knossos, the less wonder is there that they have needed
six seasons' work. To understand them fully we must visit
Candia—easy of access from Athens, even if we hit upon
no special pilgrimage—and see in its now famous museum
the care and skill with which frescoes and vases and porce-
lains and ivories have been pieced together and set and
restored. We must walk out, too, the few miles that
separate Knossos from the sea, and pass through the chain
of hills that envelop it, and look for the conning tower
on the crown of the knoll, from which Mr. Evans, with
his fidus Achates, Dr. Duncan Mackenzie, by his side,
takes his survey of his dominions.
We only then realise how extraordinarily well Mr.
Evans does things. It is not only the luncheon he gives us
under the olive-trees, with the red wine from Mount Ida,
and the droning bagpipe tune of the peasants' mandolins,
and the ring dance, reminiscent in its rhythmical bend of
arm and clap of hand and knee of our own Highland reels,
but tracing, as excavations tell us,' its own native Cretan
pedigree back to the ritual of Minoan times. The absence
of the "dry light'' which we notice as readers and as guests,
is even more noticeable in the way in which Mr. Evans
treats his excavations. He is not content to leave them
clean and well ordered, though the disgracefully untidy
state in which the French have left Delos shows that even
so much is not to be expected of all explorers. He has
1 B.S.A. viL p. 94, viii. p. 74. A copy of the Fresco is in
the Ashmolean Museum. See also the figure turning a somersault
over a bull's back on the clay seal impression, ibid. viii. fig. 43,
p. 78.
2 See B.S.A. x. 1903-4, p. 217, where R. M. Dawkins
describes some figurines discovered by the British School at
Palaikastro, where three votaries arc dancing hand in hand round
a snake goddess. See also Evans's remarks in B.S.A. ix.
pp. 111-2.
CANDIA AND KNOSSOS
—we know them by their white skin—is holding out
both hands to catch him in his fall.1
The closer, indeed, that one looks into the excavations
at Knossos, the less wonder is there that they have needed
six seasons' work. To understand them fully we must visit
Candia—easy of access from Athens, even if we hit upon
no special pilgrimage—and see in its now famous museum
the care and skill with which frescoes and vases and porce-
lains and ivories have been pieced together and set and
restored. We must walk out, too, the few miles that
separate Knossos from the sea, and pass through the chain
of hills that envelop it, and look for the conning tower
on the crown of the knoll, from which Mr. Evans, with
his fidus Achates, Dr. Duncan Mackenzie, by his side,
takes his survey of his dominions.
We only then realise how extraordinarily well Mr.
Evans does things. It is not only the luncheon he gives us
under the olive-trees, with the red wine from Mount Ida,
and the droning bagpipe tune of the peasants' mandolins,
and the ring dance, reminiscent in its rhythmical bend of
arm and clap of hand and knee of our own Highland reels,
but tracing, as excavations tell us,' its own native Cretan
pedigree back to the ritual of Minoan times. The absence
of the "dry light'' which we notice as readers and as guests,
is even more noticeable in the way in which Mr. Evans
treats his excavations. He is not content to leave them
clean and well ordered, though the disgracefully untidy
state in which the French have left Delos shows that even
so much is not to be expected of all explorers. He has
1 B.S.A. viL p. 94, viii. p. 74. A copy of the Fresco is in
the Ashmolean Museum. See also the figure turning a somersault
over a bull's back on the clay seal impression, ibid. viii. fig. 43,
p. 78.
2 See B.S.A. x. 1903-4, p. 217, where R. M. Dawkins
describes some figurines discovered by the British School at
Palaikastro, where three votaries arc dancing hand in hand round
a snake goddess. See also Evans's remarks in B.S.A. ix.
pp. 111-2.