It is certain that artistic ideas were exchanged between them at this period.  How communication was carried on we do not know, but it was probably rather by way of Cyprus and the Syrian coast than directly across the open sea.  We shall revert to this point when we come to describe the connection between Crete and Egypt in the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty, when Cretan ambassadors visited the Egyptian court and were depicted in tomb paintings at Thebes.  Between the time of the XIIth Dynasty and that of the XVIIIth this connection seems to have been very considerably strengthened; for at Knossos have been found an Egyptian statuette of an Egyptian named Abnub, who from his name must have lived about the end of the XIIIth Dynasty, and the top of an alabastron with the royal name of Khian, one of the Hyksos kings.

Quite close to Hawara, at Illahun, in the ruins of the town which was built by Usertsen’s workmen when they were building his pyramid, Prof.  Petrie found fragments of pottery of types which we now know well from excavations in Crete and Cyprus, though they were then unknown.  They are fragments of the polychrome Cretan ware called, after the name of the place where it was first found in Crete, Kamares ware, and of a black ware ornamented with small punctures, which are often filled up with white.  This latter ware has been found elsewhere associated with XIIIth Dynasty antiquities.  The former is known to belong in Crete to the “early Minoan” period, long anterior to the “late Minoan” or “Palace” period, which was contemporary with the Egyptian XVIIIth Dynasty.  We have here another interesting proof of a connection between XIIth Dynasty Egypt and early Minoan Crete.  The later connection, under the XVIIIth and following dynasties, is also illustrated in the same reign by Prof.  Petrie’s finds of late Mycenaean objects and foreign graves at Medinet Gurob.*

     * One man who was buried here bore the name An-Tursha,
     “Pillar of the Tursha.”  The Tursha were a people of the
     Mediterranean, possibly Tylissians of Crete.

These excavations at Hawara, Illahun, Kahun, and Gurob were carried out in the years 1887-9.  Since then Prof.  Petrie and his co-workers have revisited the same district, and Gurob has been re-examined (in 1904) by Messrs. Loat and Ayrton, who discovered there a shrine devoted to the worship of fish.  This work was carried on at the same time as Prof.  Petrie’s main excavation for the Egypt Exploration Fund at Annas, or Ahnas-yet el-Medina, the site of the ancient Henensu, the Herakleopolis of the Greeks.  Prof.  Naville had excavated there for the Egypt Exploration Fund in 1892, but had not completely cleared the temple.  This work was now taken up by Prof.  Petrie, who laid the whole building bare.  It is dedicated to Hershefi, the local deity of Herakleopolis.  This god, who was called Ar-saphes by the Greeks, and identified with Herakles, was in fact a form of Horus