History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light of Recent DiscoveryKing, L. W. (Leonard William)
History
History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery
King, L. W. (Leonard William)
Egypt -- History -- To 332 B.C.; History, Ancient
In view of this connection, and the known close relations between Crete
and Egypt, from the end of the XIIth Dynasty to the end of the XVIIIth,
we might have hoped to recover at Knossos a bilingual inscription in
Cretan and Egyptian hieroglyphs which would give us the key to the
Minoan script and tell us what we so dearly wish to know. But this hope
has not yet been realized. Two Egyptian inscriptions have been found at
Knossos, but no bilingual one. A list of Keftian names is preserved in
the British Museum upon an Egyptian writing-board from Thebes with what
is perhaps a copy of a single Cretan hieroglyph, a vase; but again,
nothing bilingual. A list of “Keftian words” occurs at the head of a
papyrus, also in the British Museum, but they appear to be nonsense,
a mere imitation of the sounds of a strange tongue. Still we need
not despair of finding the much desired Cretan-Egyptian bilingual
inscription yet. Perhaps the double text of a treaty between Crete and
Egypt, like that of Ramses II with the Hittites, may come to light.
Meanwhile we can only do our best with the means at our hand to trace
out the history of the relations of the oldest European culture with
the ancient civilization of Egypt. The tomb-paintings at Thebes are very
important material. Eor it is due to them that the voice of the doubter
has finally ceased to be heard, and that now no archaeologist questions
that the Egyptians were in direct communication with the Cretan
Mycenæans in the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty, some fifteen hundred years
before Christ, for no one doubts that the pictures of the Keftiu are
pictures of Mycenaeans.
As we have seen, we know that this connection was far older than the
time of the XVIIIth Dynasty, but it is during that time and the Hyksos
period that we have the clearest documentary proof of its existence,
from the statuette of Abnub and the alabastron lid of King Khian,
found at Knossos, down to the Mycenaean pottery fragments found at Tell
el-Amarna, a site which has been utterly abandoned since the time of
the heretic Akhunaten (B.C. 1430), so that there is no possibility of
anything found there being later than his time. That the connection
existed as late as the time of the XXth Dynasty we know from the
representations of golden _Bügelkannen_ or false-necked vases of
Mycenaean form in the tomb of Ramses III in the Bibân el-Mulûk, and of
golden cups of Vaphio type in the tomb of Imadua, already mentioned.
This brings the connection down to about 1050 B.C.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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