There is
no doubt whatever that these Keftiu of the Egyptians were Cretans of the
Minoan Age. They used to be considered Phoenicians, but this view was
long ago exploded. They are not Semites, and that is quite enough.
Neither are they Asiatics of any kind. They are purely and simply
Mycenaean, or rather Minoan, Greeks of the pre-Hellenic period--Pelasgi,
that is to say.
Probably no discovery of more far-reaching importance to our knowledge
of the history of the world generally and of our own culture especially
has ever been made than the finding of Mycenae by Schliemann, and
the further finds that have resulted therefrom, culminating in the
discoveries of Mr. Arthur Evans at Knossos. Naturally, these discoveries
are of extraordinary interest to us, for they have revealed the
beginnings and first bloom of the European civilization of to-day. For
our culture-ancestors are neither the Egyptians, nor the Assyrians, nor
the Hebrews, but the Hellenes, and they, the Aryan-Greeks, derived most
of their civilization from the pre-Hellenic people whom they found in
the land before them, the Pelasgi or "Mycenaean" Greeks, "Minoans," as we
now call them, the Keftiu of the Egyptians. These are the ancient Greeks
of the Heroic Age, to which the legends of the Hellenes refer; in their
day were fought the wars of Troy and of the Seven against Thebes, in
their day the tragedy of the Atridse was played out to its end, in their
day the wise Minos ruled Knossos and the _AEgean_.
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