Evans, Arthur J.: The Palace of Minos: a comparative account of the successive stages of the early Cretan civilization as illustred by the discoveries at Knossos (Band 1): The Neolithic and Early and Middle Minoan Ages (London, 1921)

326

THE PALACE OF MINOS, ETC.

Miner's to the risk of bringing down the stairway above, and necessitated a constant

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succession of wooden props. It was therefore a happy circumstance that
two of the workmen had worked in the Laurion mines. Eight days of
dangerous tunnelling brought us beyond the second landing, down another

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flight of twelve steps, to what, after long additional excavation, proved to
be a columnar court lighting the successive flights of the Grand Staircase.

Fig. 238. View of Lower Flights of Grand Staircase and Surrounding Region
of Domestic Quarter, as provisionally supported; from Look-out Station on
Central Court.

A sketch of this light-court, known as the ' Hall of the Colonnades
taken by Mr. Fyfe at the time of the excavation and before the interval
between the first and third flight of stairs had been opened out, is given in
Suppl. PI. V. The wooden columns both of the Hall itself and of the
stair-case balustrades were here as elsewhere subsequently restored in
stonework with a plaster coating. The photographic view, Fig. 238, taken
from a look-out station on the terrace of the Central Court immediately