DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1066#0016
CRETE, FORERUNNER OF GREECE
Even to classical students twenty, nay, ten
years ago, Crete was scarcely more than a land of
legendary heroes and rationalized myths. It is
true that the first reported aeronautical display
was. made by a youth of Cretan parentage, but in
the absence of authenticated records of the time
and circumstances of his flight, scholars were
sceptical of his performance. And yet within less
than ten short years we are faced by a revelation
hardly more credible than this story; we are
asked by archaeologists to carry ourselves back
from a.d. 1910 to 1910 B.C., and witness a highly
artistic people with palaces and treasures and
letters, of whose existence we had not dreamed.
And, observe, we have leapt over the heads of
the Greeks; we have excelled even Icarus in
audacity. We have committed an affront in the
eyes of some conservative Greek scholars, who
still cling to the miraculous creation of Greek art.
The theme is a fresh one, because nothing was
known of the subject before 1900 ; it is important,
because the Golden Age of Crete was the forerunner
of the Golden Age of Greece, and hence of all our
western culture. The connection between Minoan
and Hellenic civilization is vital, not one of locality
alone, as is the tie between the prehistoric and
the historic of America, but one of relationship.
Egypt may have been foster-mother to classical
Greece, but the mother, never forgotten by her
child, was Crete. Before Zeus, was the mother
who bore him in that mysterious cave of Dicte.
The revelation of a pre-Hellenic culture in the
JEgeaxi area is due in the first place to Dr. Schlie-
mann, whose great discoveries on the site of Troy,
Even to classical students twenty, nay, ten
years ago, Crete was scarcely more than a land of
legendary heroes and rationalized myths. It is
true that the first reported aeronautical display
was. made by a youth of Cretan parentage, but in
the absence of authenticated records of the time
and circumstances of his flight, scholars were
sceptical of his performance. And yet within less
than ten short years we are faced by a revelation
hardly more credible than this story; we are
asked by archaeologists to carry ourselves back
from a.d. 1910 to 1910 B.C., and witness a highly
artistic people with palaces and treasures and
letters, of whose existence we had not dreamed.
And, observe, we have leapt over the heads of
the Greeks; we have excelled even Icarus in
audacity. We have committed an affront in the
eyes of some conservative Greek scholars, who
still cling to the miraculous creation of Greek art.
The theme is a fresh one, because nothing was
known of the subject before 1900 ; it is important,
because the Golden Age of Crete was the forerunner
of the Golden Age of Greece, and hence of all our
western culture. The connection between Minoan
and Hellenic civilization is vital, not one of locality
alone, as is the tie between the prehistoric and
the historic of America, but one of relationship.
Egypt may have been foster-mother to classical
Greece, but the mother, never forgotten by her
child, was Crete. Before Zeus, was the mother
who bore him in that mysterious cave of Dicte.
The revelation of a pre-Hellenic culture in the
JEgeaxi area is due in the first place to Dr. Schlie-
mann, whose great discoveries on the site of Troy,