Tracing the Source of the Elephant And Hippopotamus Ivory from ...

clockwise route around the eastern Mediterranean (see Figure 21). Other arguments for
contact between the Aegean and North Africa rely on similarities between eastern Libyan
and Minoan cultures, ancient Greek legends (i.e. Jason and the Argonauts), the Akrotiri
frescoes, and later contact with the Sea Peoples (Hayward 1990: 105). The subject is
addressed by Knapp (1981), who after reviewing the above points in favor of such a
contact, flatly dismisses the hypothesis as unsupportable based on the available
archaeological record in North Africa.
Thera, an island in the Cyclades, was destroyed by a volcano (circa 1700 B.C.)
which fortunately preserved many frescoes. The frescoes were described by the
excavator Marinatos (1974a, 1974b, cited by Knapp 1981: 249) as having “Libyan” or
“African” elements. The fresco cited most often is the “Miniature Fresco”, which
purportedly depicts tunics similar to those worn by North Africans, a desert replete with
plants and animals (such as a cheetah, lion, and horned Berbery sheep) found in an
African environment, and a type of shield similar to that used by a Libyan tribe, as
described by Herodotus. The fresco is interpreted as depicting the arrival of Minoan
ships at a settlement on the Libyan coast (Hayward 1990: 105), but Knapp (1981: 250-
251) argues that all of the “Libyan” elements on the frescoes were either native to the
Aegean or suggest sporadic and infrequent contact or exchange with the coast of North
Africa west of Egypt. Furthermore, the handful of Bronze Age Aegean artifacts in Libya
(Cyrenaica) have not been recovered from Bronze Age contexts. Yet Knapp (1981: 258)
also states that the archaeological evidence for the third and second millennia B.C. is
“lacking almost entirely in Libya.” So the problem is not so much that Aegean materials
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