DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9804#0186
i6o THE COMING OF THE GREEKS
That Crete was markedly affected by the movement
of peoples which issued in this result is clear from the
witness of the Homeric poems. We find in them a sug-
gestion of mixture of races in other parts of the ^Egean
area, but nowhere is it so explicit as in the case of Crete.
The island, indeed, is thought of as " the mixed land,"
by a perhaps only half-serious popular etymology.1 It
is the only place, too, in which the poems recognise the
existence of Dorians. Just as the tradition which places
Minos before Agamemnon is a vague memory of the fact
that the great days of Knossos were prior to those of
Mycenae, so here, too, we have evidence that Crete was
a prize much fought over by the Northern raiders.
It is possible that, in the sack of Knossos, at the end
of Late Minoan II., we should see some such raid, although
wc have no evidence as to the direction from which the
raiders came. Was it from the Adriatic, or from Thessaly,2
or from the Argolid ?
Mr. Evans, who was at first inclined to overestimate
the significance of the sack of Knossos, and ascribe to it
the total overthrow of the old civilisation in Crete, is now
so impressed with the remains of that civilisation which
he finds existing in the next period that he goes equally
far in the other direction and sees nothing here but " an
internal revolution." 1 The fact that the old art, writing,
Minoan III. stretched. The end may have come sooner in some
places than in others. We have as yet found only one mention
of an jEgean people, the Tchakaray or Zakaray, as late as the
XXIst Dynasty, and that in its earliest years. See Hall, op.
cit. Petrie, Hist. iii. pp. 197-201.
1 Od. xix. 170 seq. Kpr)TT) rtt ytU, cori . . . aK\r] b' SX\u>v yKwatrti
iKfiiyiiepi]. Is R. Meister the first (S.G.W. xxiv. pt. 3, 1904,
p. 63, n. 1) who suggested that there is a play on tyMp^Mpdnwju)?
2 See Andron, ap. Steph. Byz. p. 254, ad voc. Aupuiv. The
mixture of races to which he assigned it—" Dorians and Achaeans
and the Pelasgians who had not set off for Tyrrhcnia "—shows
how cautiously we must use such traditions.
3 Contrast M.R. March 1901, pp. 121, 131, with Tunes, Oct. 31,
1905, and B.S.A. xi. p. 14.
That Crete was markedly affected by the movement
of peoples which issued in this result is clear from the
witness of the Homeric poems. We find in them a sug-
gestion of mixture of races in other parts of the ^Egean
area, but nowhere is it so explicit as in the case of Crete.
The island, indeed, is thought of as " the mixed land,"
by a perhaps only half-serious popular etymology.1 It
is the only place, too, in which the poems recognise the
existence of Dorians. Just as the tradition which places
Minos before Agamemnon is a vague memory of the fact
that the great days of Knossos were prior to those of
Mycenae, so here, too, we have evidence that Crete was
a prize much fought over by the Northern raiders.
It is possible that, in the sack of Knossos, at the end
of Late Minoan II., we should see some such raid, although
wc have no evidence as to the direction from which the
raiders came. Was it from the Adriatic, or from Thessaly,2
or from the Argolid ?
Mr. Evans, who was at first inclined to overestimate
the significance of the sack of Knossos, and ascribe to it
the total overthrow of the old civilisation in Crete, is now
so impressed with the remains of that civilisation which
he finds existing in the next period that he goes equally
far in the other direction and sees nothing here but " an
internal revolution." 1 The fact that the old art, writing,
Minoan III. stretched. The end may have come sooner in some
places than in others. We have as yet found only one mention
of an jEgean people, the Tchakaray or Zakaray, as late as the
XXIst Dynasty, and that in its earliest years. See Hall, op.
cit. Petrie, Hist. iii. pp. 197-201.
1 Od. xix. 170 seq. Kpr)TT) rtt ytU, cori . . . aK\r] b' SX\u>v yKwatrti
iKfiiyiiepi]. Is R. Meister the first (S.G.W. xxiv. pt. 3, 1904,
p. 63, n. 1) who suggested that there is a play on tyMp^Mpdnwju)?
2 See Andron, ap. Steph. Byz. p. 254, ad voc. Aupuiv. The
mixture of races to which he assigned it—" Dorians and Achaeans
and the Pelasgians who had not set off for Tyrrhcnia "—shows
how cautiously we must use such traditions.
3 Contrast M.R. March 1901, pp. 121, 131, with Tunes, Oct. 31,
1905, and B.S.A. xi. p. 14.