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)

M. M. HI: SURVIVALS OF CERAMIC POLYCHROMY 601

ceramic polychromy at the beginning of the Middle Minoan Age.1 Thus
the stamp of its origin still marks the latest products of this class. At the
same time the taste for brilliant colours on vases of which we here find
the surviving traces recalls the much more remote historical connexion
in which the beautiful stone-ware vessels of Early Minoan Crete have been
themselves shown to stand. That they must, in fact, be regarded as the

1

Fig. 442. Part of Jar with Branched Veined
Decoration filled with Barbotine.

reflection and in part as the direct copies of a pre-dynastic Egyptian class
of variegated stone vases has been shown in detail in an earlier Section influence
of this work. At the same time, the extraordinary vogue and perfection of Nilotic
this fabric among the old inhabitants of the Nile valley was itself due to Stone-

. ware.

the accessibility, through river traffic or by other means of transport,
of natural stores of these gay materials.

Abundant deposits of a very brilliant kind of breccia occur in different

1 See above, p. 177.