bills and business documents written in cuneiform (wedge-writing), on clay tablets (Fig. 37). They therefore began to write the Babylonian cuneiform also. Their capital in central Asia Minor (Fig. 59), recently excavated, has furnished great numbers of such clay tablets, but they cannot yet be read. 
Fig. 64. A Colonnaded Hall and Staircase in the Cretan Palace at Cnossus
The columns and roof of the hall are modern restoration. The hall is in the lower portion of the palace, and the stairway, concealed by the balustrade at the back of the hall, led up, by five flights of fifty-two massive steps, to the main floor of the palace When they have been deciphered we shall learn many of the secrets of this great world of Asia Minor, which links the Ægean with the Asiatic Orient.
As Asia Minor was the link between the Ægean on the west and the Euphrates world on the east, so Crete was the link between Egypt on the South and the Ægean Sea on the north. This large island lies so far out in the Mediterranean that one is almost in doubt whether it belongs Importance of the position of Crete to Europe or Africa. Even in ancient ships the mariners issuing from the mouths of the Nile and steering northwestward would sight the Cretan mountains in a few days. Excavations in this island since 1900 have uncovered the ruins of palace after palace and revealed a new chapter in the story of the ancient world.
Advance of civilization in Crete by 2000 B.C.For a thousand years after Crete had received copper her people showed but little sign of progress. While the great pyramids of Egypt were being built (p. 29), the Cretan craftsman