Among the other finds of this wonderful season's work were several stone vases, of masterly workmanship, in marble, alabaster, and steatite, a few vases in pottery of the stirrup type (a type common on other Mycenaean sites, but noticeably rare at Knossos, probably because in the great palace the bulk of such vases were of metal, and were carried off by plunderers in the sack), and a noble head of a lioness, with eyes and nostrils inlaid, which had evidently once formed part of a fountain. One other discovery was most precious, not for its own artistic value, which is slight enough, but for the link which it gives with one of the other great sister civilizations of the ancient world. This was the lower part of a small diorite statuette of Egyptian workmanship, with an inscription in hieroglyphic which reads: 'Ab-nub-mes-Sebek-user maat-kheru' (Ab-nub's child, Sebek-user, deceased). The name of the individual and the style of the statuette point to Sebek-user, whoever he may have been, having been an Egyptian of the latter days of the Middle Kingdom, probably about the Thirteenth Dynasty. This is the first link in the chain of evidence, which, as we shall see later, shows the continuous connection between the Minoan and Nilotic civilizations. Nine weeks after the excavations on the hill of Kephala had begun, the season's work was closed, and, surely, never had a like period of time been more fruitful of fresh knowledge, more illuminative as to the conditions of ancient life, or more destructive of hoary prejudices. It was a new world, new because of its very ancientry, that had begun to rise out of the buried past at the summons of the patient explorer. CHAPTER V THE PALACE OF 'BROAD KNOSSOS' (_continued_)