A special form of fetish for the two principal divinities was that of the double axes: one double-headed axe above another on the same handle. “It has been discovered,” says the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition), “that the great Minoan foundation at Cnossus was at once a palace and a sanctuary of the Double Axe. We can hardly any longer hesitate to recognise in this vast building, with its winding corridors and subterranean ducts, the Labyrinth of later tradition. It is difficult, also, not to connect the repeated wall-paintings and reliefs of the palace, illustrating the cruel bull sports of the Minoan arena, in which girls as well as youths took part, with the legend of the Minotaur, or Bull of Minos, for whose grisly meals Athens was forced to pay annual tribute of her own sons and daughters.” Actual figures of a monster with a bull’s head and man’s body have been found on seals in Crete, and evidence points to these bull sports being part of a religious ceremony. Even the smaller houses were of stone, plastered within, while the palaces suggest a luxurious mode of living; being richly decorated, with separate sleeping apartments and large halls, fine stairways, bath-chambers, windows, folding and sliding doors, and remarkably modern arrangements for water supply and drainage. The furniture included thrones, tables, seats, constructed of stone or plastered terra-cotta; a great variety of cooking utensils and vessels of all sorts from stone wine jars, ten feet high, to the tiniest ointment-holders. Ladies, in curiously modern costumes, formed a favourite subject both for wall-decoration and miniature painting; many of the latter showing groups with architectural and landscape surroundings, done with remarkable spirit and naturalness. The clay tablets are almost exclusively concerned with inventories and business transactions, and prove that a decimal system of numeration was used. Next to Cnossus the most important sources of knowledge concerning this ancient civilisation have been Hissarlik, Mycenæ, Phæstus, Hagia Triada, and Tiryns. [Illustration: WALL DECORATION IN PALACE OF CNOSSUS SHOWING MALE AND FEMALE BULL-FIGHTERS. P. 93] [Illustration: LYON GATEWAY AT MYCENÆ P. 98] [Illustration: PLAN OF THE ACROPOLIS OF TIRYNS P. 100] [Illustration: PARTS OF STAIRCASE IN PALACE OF CNOSSUS P. 96] [Illustration: COUNCIL CHAMBER WITH GYPSUM THRONE IN PALACE OF CNOSSUS. P. 96] CHAPTER VIII MINOAN OR ÆGEAN ARCHITECTURE In so far as the prehistoric remains of Minoan or civilisation belonged to the Polished Stone Age and Bronze Age, they are in the phase of development that is represented in the Peruvian remains of the city of Machu Picchu. Meanwhile, in its active consciousness of beauty as a motive, the Minoan reached a perfection within the limits of its possibilities that carried it far beyond the Peruvian.