The Minoans [Illustration: A LADY OF THE MINOAN COURT From _The Annual of the British School at Athens_ [_Frontispiece_] The Minoans _by_ George Glasgow [Illustration] Jonathan Cape Eleven Gower Street, London _First published March_, 1923 _Second impression April_, 1923 _All rights reserved_ _Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner, _Frome and London_ THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO RONALD MONTAGU BURROWS MY GREAT FRIEND AND TEACHER PREFACE Sir Arthur Evans’ renewed campaign of excavation in Crete has again attracted considerable public attention to the remarkable disclosures of the last twenty years. Sir Arthur Evans himself is at present engaged in compiling in three big volumes the consecutive story of Minoan civilization as revealed by his own excavations. The present writer is convinced that the story of Cretan discovery is such as to appeal to the imagination of a wide public who have no specialist interest in archæology. The story has all the interest of adventure and exploration. This book is an attempt to meet what such a public wants. I have tried to give a general picture of the world which existed in the Mediterranean four thousand years ago, and of the amazing process by which it has been revealed, so that it can be understood by those totally unacquainted with classical study, and I have tried to give it in one hour’s reading. For those who want to go further I give references to other books. It must be understood that this book does not aim at an exact account of the archæological position as it exists to-day. With new excavations being carried out this very year, and with new material in the hands of the excavators, as yet unpublished and undigested, any attempt to be strictly up to date would merely mean the progressive and indefinite postponement of the book. The broad lines of the discovery of Minoan civilization are clear, and in the writer’s opinion, even because a new campaign of excavation is now started, ought to be presented now in a form to be easily understood. The results of the discoveries of this spring, for instance, add important details to our knowledge--some of which I have incorporated--but do not affect fundamentals. Some of the substance of the following chapters was published in 1920 and 1921 in _Discovery_, to the Editor of which I am grateful for permission to re-publish them. In a somewhat different form the substance was also published by me in 1914-1915 in the _National Home Reading Magazine_.