As the Minoan road was followed up in 1905, it led the explorers towards an important building in the face of the hill to the north-west. Its exploration was rendered extremely difficult by the fact that its masonry ran right back into the side of the hill, which was covered by an olive wood, beneath whose roots lay a stratum made up of the remains of Graeco-Roman houses. But the building, when explored, proved to be well worth the labour, for the Little Palace, as it is called, was an important structure with a frontage of over 114 feet, and its pillared hall was worthy of comparison even with the fine rooms of its great neighbour. In Late Minoan times part of this fine hall had been used as a shrine, and in it were found, along with the usual 'horns of consecration,' three fetish idols, grotesque natural concretions of quasi-human type. Of these, the largest had some resemblance to a woman of ample contours, while a smaller nodule suggested the figure of an infant, and near it was a rude representation of a Cretan wild-goat. The third nodule was of apelike aspect. In view of all the religious associations of Crete, it can scarcely be doubted that these grotesque images, 'not made with hands,' represent Mother Rhea, the infant Zeus, and the goat Amaltheia. The cult of stones, meteorites and concretions such as these of the Little Palace, has been widespread in all ages; one has only to remember the black stone which forms the most sacred treasure of Mecca, the black stone which stood in the Temple of the Great Mother at Rome, and the image of the great goddess Diana at Ephesus, 'which fell down from Jupiter.' Hesiod's story of how Kronos or Saturn devoured a stone under the belief that he was swallowing the infant Zeus evidently belongs to the recollections of a worship in which such natural idols as these were adored.