We cannot be sure of that. What we can be sure of is that an enormous number of years ago they were marvellous engineers and architects, as well as workers of ornaments, and of fine pottery and glazed ware. The palace at Knossos is an immense place, with great columns, walls, halls. We wonder as much at the splendid imagination of the architect who could plan buildings on such a grand scale so very long ago as we do at the engineer's power to work and lift into position such huge stones as we find were used in the building. And {78} the delicacy of the finish is wonderful too. It is not only the vastness of the size that amazes us. That is the chief wonder of the Egyptian pyramids. But the buildings and other remains in Crete are more wonderful still. This Cretan civilisation at so very early a date makes an extraordinary chapter in the world's story. It would still have been a story very extraordinary if it had been only just the story of what happened in the island of Crete, and did not spread beyond it. But, as a matter of fact, it did spread very far beyond that island. It spread out north, east, south, and west--up into Greece, across to Syria, down to Egypt, and away to Sicily. In your books you are likely to read about all this as "the Minoan civilisation." Probably there really was some great king of old in Crete whose name was Minos. It is possible that there were many of the name, and that all the kings of his dynasty were called Minos, with some other name besides to distinguish them. However that may be, the Cretan legendary story was that Minos was a very great king, half divine, who gave laws and the arts of civilisation to his people, rather as Khammurabi was supposed to have given laws to the Babylonians. And, again like Khammurabi, Minos was supposed to have received these laws from a deity, the greatest deity that the Minoans, as they were called, knew. But this deity of theirs was supposed to be female, a goddess, the goddess Ishtar of the Babylonians--the Ashtaroth of the Bible. The Cretans, however, made her the chief of all the gods. The Babylonians held her in second place, as spouse of the chief god Shamash, the sun-god.