Was there really a minatour on Crete??

Waiting for the future[edit]

A portion of Arthur Evans's reconstruction of the Minoan palace at Knossos. This is Bastion A at the North Entrance, noted for the Bull Fresco above it.

After Margaret's death Arthur wandered aimlessly around Liguria ostensibly looking at Terramare Culture sites and for Neolithic remains in Ligurian caves. Then he revisited the locations of his youthful explorations in Zagreb. Finally he returned to live a hermit-like existence in the cabin he had built for her. The Ashmolean no longer interested him. He complained petulantly to Fortnam in a late, childish display of sibling rivalry, that his father had had another child, his half-sister Joan.^[41] After a year of grief the mounting tension in Crete began to attract his interest. Knossos was now known to be a major site, thanks to Arthur's old friend and fellow journalist in Bosnia, William James Stillman. Another old friend, Federico Halbherr, the Italian archaeologist and future excavator of Phaistos, was keeping him posted on developments at Knossos by mail.

Archaeologists from the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Italy were in attendance at the site watching the progress, so to speak, of "the sick man of Europe", a metaphor of the dying Ottoman Empire. The various pashas, eager not to offend the native Cretan parliament, were encouraging foreigners to apply for a firman to excavate, and then not granting any. The Cretans were afraid of the Ottomans' removing any artifacts to Istanbul. The Ottoman method of stalling was to require any would-be excavators to buy the site from its native owners first. The owners in turn were coached to charge so much money that none would think it worthwhile to apply in such uncertain circumstances. Even the wealthy Schliemann had given up on the price in 1890 and had gone home to die in that year.^[42]

In 1894, Arthur, always an active man, intrigued by the idea that the script engraved on the stones he had purchased before Margaret's death might be Cretan, his grief abated, steamed off to Heraklion to join the circle of watchers. During his year of tending to the details of Youlbury, administering the Ashmolean, and writing some minor papers, he had also discovered the script on some other jewelry that came to the museum from Myres in Crete. He announced that he had concluded to a Mycenaean hieroglyphic script of about 60 characters. Shortly he wrote to his friend and patron at the Ashmolean, Charles Fortnum, that he was "very restless" and must go to Crete.^[43]

Arriving in Heraklion he did not connect with his friends immediately, but took the opportunity to examine the excavations at Knossos. Seeing the sign of the double axe almost immediately he knew that he was at the home of the script. If he did not formulate the intent to excavate at that moment it must have been shortly after, when his friends gave him the tour. He turned some original thinking on the problem of succeeding in acquiring the site when all others had failed. His solution was the Cretan Exploration Fund, devised on the model of the Palestine Exploration Fund. The owners would not sell to individuals, who could not afford it, but they would sell to a fund. Apparently Arthur did not bother to explain that he was the only contributor. He bought 1/4 of the site with first option to buy the rest later. The firman was still in deficit. Politics in Crete were taking a violent turn however. Anything might happen. Arthur returned to London to wind up his affairs there and make sure the Ashmolean had suitable direction in the event of his further absence.