Here it may suffice to say that, as far as
the early period is concerned, Egypt and Crete were certainly in
communication in the time of the XIIth Dynasty, and quite possibly in
that of the VIth or still earlier. We have IIId Dynasty Egyptian vases
from Knossos, which were certainly not imported in later days, for no
ancient nation had antiquarian tastes till the time of the Saites in
Egypt and of the Romans still later. In fact, this communication seems
to go so far back in time that we are gradually being led to perceive
the possibility that the Minoan culture of Greece was in its origin an
offshoot from that of primeval Egypt, probably in early Neolithic times.
That is to say, the Neolithic Greeks and Neolithic Egyptians were both
members of the same "Mediterranean" stock, which quite possibly may have
had its origin in Africa, and a portion of which may have crossed the
sea to Europe in very early times, taking with it the seeds of culture
which in Egypt developed in the Egyptian way, in Greece in the Greek
way. Actual communication and connection may not have been maintained
at first, and probably they were not. Prof. Petrie thinks otherwise, and
would see in the boats painted on the predynastic Egyptian vases (see
Chapter I) the identical galleys by which, in late Neolithic
times, commerce between Crete and Egypt was carried on across the
Mediterranean.
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