PREFACE
I

Just forty years from the beginning of my first exploration of the site
of Knossos it has been given me to complete this final Volume of the
' Palace of Minos '.

The broad treatment necessary for the interpretation of the varied
evidence has indeed entailed a survey extending far beyond the Aegean
and even the Libyan Sea, and constant reference has been found necessary
to contemporary and still earlier civilizations from the Nile Valley to the
Euphrates. Such conditions, indeed, transcend the limits of individual
capacity, and in the small measure in which it may have been possible to
fulfil them the notes appended to these Volumes record my repeated
acknowledgements to the work of fellow explorers in this wide area.

This broad survey and the explanatory materials thus included may
give the successive Volumes of this Work—though always centring round
the Great Palace—some title to be regarded as an Encyclopaedia of
Minoan cultural features, of its Art, and of its Religion. The Index Volume
to the whole work, kindly undertaken by my sister, Dr. Joan Evans, and
already well advanced, will greatly help to make it generally serviceable.

In the endeavour to carry out this comprehensive task it has been my
grave misfortune to have been deprived through a now lengthening space
of years—owing to a mental affection that had left no avenue for hope—
of the invaluable services of my friend and colleague Duncan Mackenzie.
Called to my assistance at an early stage of the excavation, himself an
M.A. of Edinburgh University, and at Vienna (where he graduated), a pupil
of Benndorf, he had already given proof of his qualities as an excavator
under the British School at Melos. What, however, no training could have
produced was his original and gifted nature, his whole-hearted devotion
to the work, and his subtle artistic perception. In a material way, indeed,
I have still gained frequent help from the rough notes in his ' day-
books ', chronicling progress made on various lines together with neat
sketches of half-exposed plans. But nothing could replace the friendly
personal contact and availability for consultation on difficult points with
one of such great special knowledge.