On the other side of the central corridor of the west wing are the rooms in which State and religious functions were held. In the Throne Room, which is almost intact, the magnificent throne of Minos is still standing, carved out of solid stone, and along the wall on each side of it are the stone benches on which his counsellors sat. This would be the chief room of the Minoan Government, in which foreign ambassadors were received and the affairs of State generally administered; important cases of justice would also be settled there, and Minos would be Supreme Judge. It will be remembered that Minos was not only the legislative head of a great sea empire. Being of divine origin himself, he is represented as a great Law-giver and Priest of Zeus, holding converse with the god every nine years in the Dictæan cave and receiving from him, like the Moses of the Old Testament, a famous code of laws which held good throughout the period of the Minoan Empire. At his death, in accordance with the belief that men in the Lower World carried on the duties of their lifetime, he became a Judge of the Dead. Recounting his visit to the nether regions, Odysseus says: “Then I saw Minos, the famed son of Zeus, with his golden sceptre, dealing out justice to the dead, as he sat there; and around him, their King, the dead asked concerning their rights, sitting and standing, in the wide-gated house of Hades” (Homer, “Odyssey,” xi. 568-571). Leaving the west wing of the palace and crossing the central court, you descend into the east wing by the Great Staircase which, even when found, was in a surprising state of preservation, and which by the end of 1910 had had the remains of no fewer than five flights restored to their original position. This staircase was traversed, as its discoverer said, “some three and a half millenniums back by kings and queens of Minos’ stock, on their way from the scenes of their public and sacerdotal functions in the west wing of the palace to the more private quarters of the royal household.” These quarters occupy the south-east corner of the palace, built on the slope of the hill and overlooking the valley. Approaching them from the central corridor which runs due east from the central court, you pass first through the men’s halls--the Hall of the Colonnades and the Hall of the Double Axes--and thence by a dark crooked corridor, called from its shape the Dog’s Leg Corridor, the effect of which was “to enhance the privacy of the rooms beyond,” you come to the Queen’s Megaron, and the ladies’ apartments. A megaron was a sort of hall with columns across it, open at one end to let in the light. In other parts of the building, light was admitted by means of shafts sunk from the roof to the ground floor.