ABSTRACT
The Later Bronze Age reverted to the plain technique of dark on light, which had never died, and preferred more sober and refined effects. The riotous character of the Middle Minoan pottery was a youthful excess. To the Third Early Minoan period belongs an extraordinary vaulted hypogaeum, circular and of beehive shape with a descending staircase on one side of it from which windows lookout into the chambers. The Egyptians had made their great invention of true glaze, in blue, which they had used for faience and to glaze steatite and quartzite, as early as the pre-dynastic period. This in the Early Minoan period was communicated to Crete, where it appears usually as a glaze paste for beads, in the pale blue colour characteristic of Old Kingdom faience. The consideration of Middle Minoan pottery shews us what a great advance in art was effected in this period in Crete, an advance paralleled in other branches of handicraft and culture.
