The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 1909. A BURIED EMPIRE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2480, 20 April 1909, Page 4

The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 1909. A BURIED EMPIRE.

There is scarcely any more interesting occupation than the investigation of the past history of the. earth and its inhabitants and the study thereof is constantly bringing to light quite unexpected facts. The latest information under this head has been furnished by the distinguished archeologist, Dr Evans, who lias for years been investigating in the vicinity of the Island of Crete. The result of his labors is that the existence has been established of a kingdom which as far back as 1000 me. ruled over all the coast and islands of the Mediterranean, as far as Egypt on the east, and beyond'the pillars of Hercules on the west. The history of this kingdom has now been traced with some certainty through three stages, which were contemporary with the three great periods of Egyptian civilisation. It is evident from the remains found on the site of Knossus, the ancient capital, that the island was very wealthy, and that its trade, which was confined to the Mediterranean peoples, depended on the maintenance of sea power. There is also evidence that the sea power was suddenly destroyed, and that with it the power of the island kingdom was gone. The island was desolated, and the capital sacked by a raid and shortly afterwards the whole of its civilisation decayed, and finally Vanished. In the place of the Minoans came tho Phoenicians, the “lone Tyrian traders,” who cared little for anything but commerce, and whose colonies were the outposts which the Greeks found when they in their turn “ventured beyond tho Syrtes, and soft Sicily, to where the Atlantic roves.” The evidence produced by tlic archeologists is of course supplemented and confirmed by the written word. The Minoans themselves left no* literature behind them, none at least that has been preserved. From their many storied palaces, tlicir pottery, and tho dresses of their ladies, it is possible to reconstruct a form of daily life which is strikingly modern, and which in some of its forms is preserved almost as perfectly as that described in Keats’s imTnortal ode. But when tho archeologists seek to confirm their conclusions by history and legends, they have to rely not on what the Minoans have said themselves, but on what other peoples have said about- them. In Greek literature there is ample evidence of the hold which tho tradition of their ,sea power exercised over the mind of antiquity. Many stories such as the legend of Theseus remain to show what wonders were told throughout Greece and the Levant of the splendours of Crete, and of the strange- amusements of its people, especially of their hull fights. In Egypt thero is an inscription to record the defeat of a coalition of the Minoan peoples by Raineses HE, in what js the first decisive battle of tho world of which any record remains. Bub perhaps tho most interesting of all the traditional records is that to bo found in Plato’s dialogues. In one of them there is a reference to a poem of Solon’s left unfinished at his death. The poem was begun after a visit by Solon to Egypt, where he was addressed by an Egyptian priest in words which a Chinese mandarin might well address to'an Englishman. The priest tells 1 ..

Solon that the Creeks have no notion of what antiquity is. Their traditions have been blotted out by the visitations of fire and water, which at intervals visit every country, and from which Egypt alone is preserved by the proaction of the Nile. Hence it has happened that they know nothing of in Athens which in a sea fight overturned and obliterated the greatest of the ancient monarchies when its people through excess of pride had neglected their ships and fortifications. That kingdom, lie said, once was in extent greater than Libya and Asia. It was called the Island of Atlantis It- is now sunk beyond the level of the sea, and its site is now marked only by the shallows of the Atlantic Ocean. There will be little hesitation now in accepting the theory that the island kingdom of the Egyptian was identical with that which Dr Evans and his associates have revealed. Dr Evans’s work is a marvellous pieco of patient investigation and reconstruction, unrewarded except by the. satisfaction of having added !o the sum of human knowledge and of having vindicated the justice of t'me..