Waterhouse, Percy Leslie: The story of architecture throughout the ages: an introduction to the study of the oldest of the arts for students and general readers (London: B. T. Batsford, 1924)

IL
CRETAN AND GREEK
ARCHITECTURE.
Until recent years it was generally accepted
as a fact that while Egypt, by its imposing
architectural monuments, revealed to us a
civilisation dating back thousands of years
before our era, Europe was, by contrast, the
real “ Dark Continent/’ which had not at that
time emerged from its primitive conditions.
The discoveries in Crete have, however, opened
out a new horizon and have given us a new
standpoint from which to survey early European
history. In the remains of the mighty palaces
of Knossos and elsewhere in Crete it has been
possible to trace a European civilisation co-
equal with that of Egypt, and in some respects
surpassing in its achievements the works of the
early Egyptian builders.
Sir Arthur Evans, who has been so successful
in his Cretan excavations, has made this subject
peculiarly his own, so that we may be allowed
to use his own words to illustrate the importance
of the discoveries made by himself and his
fellow-explorers. To this early civilisation he
applied the name of “ Minoan,” from Minos,

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