Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/160

 122 Outlines of European History their influence and their art far and wide through the Mediterra- nean. At the highest level of their civilized development, however, the kings of Crete were vassals of the Pharaoh, and the Cretan cities were not free. An Eg}^ptian general of Thutmose III (p. 46) bore the title of "gov- %f^% M fe"^ Fig. 66. Tile Drainpipes from the Cretan Palace of Cnossus These joints of pottery drainpipe (two and one half feet long and four to six inches across) are part of an elaborate system of drainage in the palace, the oldest drainage system in the European world. The oldest- known system of drainpipe (copper) is in the pyramid-temple of Abusir, Egypt (see Fig. 22), about a thousand years earlier than this system at Cnossus ernor of the islands in the midst of the sea," as the Eg}'ptians called the islands of the ^gean. Here, a new world, shaking off the old Stone Age lethargy of early Europe, under the magic touch of riper Egyptian culture, sprang into vigorous life. Beside the two older centers of civi- lization on the Nile and the Euphrates in this age, there thus arose here in the eastern Mediterranean, as a third great civilization, this splendid world of Crete and the ^gean Sea, to cany us from the Orient to Greece and later to Europe.^ 1 An interesting evidence of the transmission of oriental civilization from the Nile to Crete and Europe will be found in a scene carved on a stone vase in Crete, about 1800 B.C. (see cut, p. 135). It depicts a harvest festival procession in Crete, the men marching with wooden pitchforks over their shoulders, and a chorus of open-mouthed singing youths, led by a shaven-headed Egyptian priest with a sistrum (an Egyptian musical rattle) in his hand.