The Minoan
civilization was an Aegean Bronze Age civilization that
arose on the island of Crete and other Aegean islands such
as Santorini and flourished from approximately 2600 to 1400
BC. It was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th
century through the work of British archaeologist Arthur
Evans.... There is recent stone tool evidence that humans -
either prehuman homonids or early modern humans - reached
the island of Crete perhaps as late as 130,000 years ago;
however, the evidence for the first anatomically modern
human presence dates to 10,000-12,000 years ago. It
was not until 5000 BC in the Neolithic period that the first
signs of advanced agriculture appeared in the Aegean,
marking the beginning of civilization.... The term "Minoan" refers to the mythic "king" Minos
of Knossos;
who first coined the term is debated. It is commonly
attributed to famed Minoan archeologist Arthur Evans
(1851-1941). Minos was associated in Greek myth with
the labyrinth, which Evans identified with the site at
Knossos. However, Karl Hoeck used the name Das Minoische
Kretas in 1825 for Volume II of his major work, Kreta, which
would appear to be the first known use of the term Minoan to
mean ancient Cretan. Likely, Arthur Evans read the book,
continuing the use of the term in his own writings and
findings. Evans said:
"To this early civilization of Crete as a
whole I have proposed — and the suggestion has been
generally adopted by the archaeologists of this and other
countries — to apply the name 'Minoan.'"
Evans claims to have applied it, but not to have
invented it....
_______________________________________________________________________
The Minoan civilization
was an Aegean Bronze Age
civilization that arose on the island of Crete and
other Aegean islands
such as Santorini
and flourished from approximately 2600 to 1400 BC.[1] It
was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century
through the work of British archaeologist Arthur Evans. Will Durant
referred to it as "the first link in the European chain."[2]
There is recent stone tool
evidence that humans - either prehuman homonids or early
modern humans - reached the island of Crete
perhaps as late as 130,000 years ago; however, the
evidence for the first anatomically modern human presence
dates to 10,000-12,000 years ago.[3][4] It
was not until 5000 BC in the Neolithic
period that the first signs of advanced agriculture
appeared in the Aegean, marking the beginning of
civilization.
Contents
1
Overview
2
Etymology
3
Chronology and history
3.1
History
4
Geography
4.1
Minoans beyond Crete
5
Settlements of the Minoan civilization
6
Society and culture
7
Language and writing
8
Art
8.1
Pottery
9
Religion
10
Warfare and the "Minoan Peace"
11
Architecture
11.1
Palaces
11.2
Columns
11.3
Villas
12
Agriculture and subsistence
12.1
Evolution of agricultural tools in Minoan Crete
13
Minoan demise theories
14
Population genetics studies
15
See also
16
Notes
17
References
18
External links
Overview
Palaces (anaktora)
are the best-known Minoan building types excavated on Crete. They
are monumental buildings serving administrative purposes, as
evidenced by the large archives
unearthed by archaeologists.
Each of the palaces excavated to date has its own unique
features, but they also share features that set them apart
from other structures. The palaces are often
multi-storied, with interior and exterior staircases,
light wells, massive columns,
storage magazines, and courtyards.
Etymology
The term "Minoan" refers to the
mythic "king"
Minos
of Knossos;
who first coined the term is debated. It is commonly
attributed to famed Minoan archeologist Arthur Evans
(1851-1941).[5]
Minos was associated in Greek myth with the labyrinth,
which Evans identified with the site at Knossos.
However, Karl Hoeck used the
name Das Minoische Kretas in 1825 for Volume II of
his major work, Kreta, which would appear to be
the first known use of the term Minoan to mean ancient
Cretan. Likely, Arthur Evans read the book, continuing the
use of the term in his own writings and findings. [6] Evans said:[7]
"To this early civilization of
Crete as a whole I have proposed — and the suggestion has
been generally adopted by the archaeologists of this and
other countries — to apply the name 'Minoan.'"
Evans claims to have applied it,
but not to have invented it. Hoeck had in mind the Crete
of mythology. He had no idea that the archaeological Crete
had existed. Evans' 1931 claim that the term was
"unminted" before his use of it has been tagged a "brazen
suggestion" by Karadimas and Momigliano.[6]
However, Evans' statement applies to archaeological
contexts. Since he was the one who discovered the
civilization, and the term could not have been in use to
mean it previously, he did coin that specific meaning.
Rather than associate absolute
calendar dates for the Minoan period, archaeologists use
two systems of relative chronology.
The first, created by Evans and modified by later
archaeologists, is based on pottery
styles and the presence of imported Egyptian artifacts,
which can be correlated with the chronology of Ancient
Egypt. Evans's scheme divides the Minoan period into three
main eras: Early Minoan (EM), Middle Minoan (MM), and Late
Minoan (LM). These eras are further subdivided, for
instance into Early Minoan I, II, III (EMI, EMII, EMIII).
Another dating system, proposed
by the Greek archaeologist Nicolas Platon, is based
on the development of the architectural complexes known as
"palaces" at Knossos,
Phaistos,
Malia
and Kato Zakros.
He divides the Minoan period into Pre-palatial,
Proto-palatial, Neo-palatial and Post-palatial subperiods.
The relationship between these two systems is given in the
accompanying table, with approximate calendar dates drawn
from Warren and Hankey (1989).
The Thera eruption
occurred during a mature phase of the LM IA period.
Efforts to establish the calendar date of the volcanic
eruption have been extremely controversial. Radiocarbon dating
has indicated a date in the late 17th century BC;[8][9]
those radiocarbon dates, however, conflict with the
estimates of archaeologists, who synchronize the eruption
with the Conventional Egyptian
chronology and
obtain a date of around 1525–1500 BC.[10][11][12] See the
article on dating the Thera eruption for more
discussion. The eruption often is identified as a natural
event catastrophic for the culture, leading to its rapid
collapse.
History
Minoan
chronology
3650–3000
BC
EMI
Prepalatial
2900–2300
BC
EMII
2300–2160
BC
EMIII
2160–1900
BC
MMIA
1900–1800
BC
MMIB
Protopalatial
(Old
Palace Period)
1800–1700
BC
MMII
1700–1640
BC
MMIIIA
Neopalatial
(New
Palace Period)
1640–1600
BC
MMIIIB
1600–1480
BC
LMIA
1480–1425
BC
LMIB
1425–1390
BC
LMII
Postpalatial
(At
Knossos, Final Palace Period)
1390–1370
BC
LMIIIA1
1370–1340
BC
LMIIIA2
1340–1190
BC
LMIIIB
1190–1170
BC
LMIIIC
1100
BC
Subminoan
The oldest evidence of
inhabitants on Crete are preceramic Neolithic farming
community remains that date to approximately 7000 BC.[13] A
comparative study of DNA haplogroups of modern Cretan men
showed that a male founder group, from Anatolia
or the Levant,
is shared with the Greeks.[14] The
neolithic population dwelt in open villages. Fishermen's
huts were built on the shores, while the fertile Mesara Plain
was used for agriculture.[15]
The Bronze Age
began in Crete
around 2700 BC.[16] In the late
3rd millennium BC, several localities on the island
developed into centers of commerce and handwork. This
enabled the upper classes to continuously practice
leadership activities and to expand their influence. It is
likely that the original hierarchies of the local elites
were replaced by monarchist power structures – a
precondition for the creation of the great palaces.[17]
From the Early Bronze Age (3500 BC to 2600 BC), the Minoan
civilization on Crete showed a promise of greatness.[18]
At the end of the MMII period
(1700 BC), there was a large disturbance in Crete,
probably an earthquake, or possibly an invasion from Anatolia.[19] The
palaces at Knossos, Phaistos, Malia, and Kato Zakros were
destroyed. But with the start of the Neopalatial period,
population increased again,[20] the
palaces were rebuilt on a larger scale and new settlements
were built all over the island. This period (the 17th and
16th centuries BC, MM III / Neopalatial) represents the
apex of the Minoan civilization. There was another natural
catastrophe around 1600 BC, possibly an eruption of the Thera volcano.
The Minoans rebuilt the palaces, however they drastically
changed.[17][21]
The influence of the Minoan
civilization outside Crete has been seen in the evidence
of valuable Minoan handicraft items on the Greek mainland.
It is likely that the ruling house of Mycenae was
connected to the Minoan trade network. After around 1700
BC, the material culture on the Greek mainland achieved a
new level due to Minoan influence.[17]
Connections between Egypt
and Crete are prominent. Minoan ceramics are found in
Egyptian cities and the Minoans imported several items
from Egypt, especially papyrus,
as well as architectural and artistic ideas. The Egyptian
hieroglyphs served as a
model for the Minoan pictographic writing,
from which the famous Linear A and Linear B
writing systems later developed.[15]
Bengtson has also demonstrated Minoan influence among Canaanite
artifacts.
Around 1450 BC, Minoan culture
experienced a turning point due to a natural catastrophe,
possibly an earthquake. Another eruption of the Thera volcano has
been linked to this downfall, but its dating and
implications remain controversial. Several important
palaces in locations such as Mallia, Tylissos, Phaistos,
Hagia Triade as well as the living quarters of Knossos
were destroyed. The palace in Knossos seems to have
remained largely intact. This resulted in the Dynasty in
Knossos being able to spread its influence over large
parts of Crete, until it was overrun by Mycenaean Greeks.[17]
The Minoan palace sites were
occupied by the Mycenaeans around 1420 BC[22] (1375 BC
according to other sources),[17] who adapted
the Linear A
Minoan script to the needs of their own Mycenaean language.
It was a form of Greek,
which was written in Linear B.
The first such archive anywhere is in the LMII-era "Room
of the Chariot Tablets". The Mycenaeans generally tended
to adapt, rather than destroy, Minoan culture, religion
and art.[23]
They continued to operate the economic system and
bureaucracy of the Minoans.[17]
During LMIIIA:1, Amenhotep III
at Kom el-Hatan took note of k-f-t-w (Kaftor) as
one of the "Secret Lands of the North of Asia".
Also mentioned are Cretan cities, such as Ἀμνισός
(Amnisos), Φαιστός (Phaistos), Κυδωνία (Kydonia) and
Kνωσσός (Knossos) and some toponyms
reconstructed as belonging to the Cyclades or the Greek
mainland. If the values of these Egyptian names are
accurate, then this Pharaoh
did not privilege LMIII Knossos above the other states in
the region.
After about a century of partial
recovery, most Cretan cities and palaces went into decline
in the 13th century BC (LHIIIB/LMIIIB). The last Linear A archives
date to LMIIIA (contemporary with LHIIIA).
Knossos remained an
administrative center until 1200 BC. The last of the
Minoan sites was the defensive mountain site of Karfi, a
refuge site which displays vestiges of Minoan civilization
almost into the Iron Age.[24]
Geography
Crete is a mountainous island
with natural harbours.
There are signs of earthquake damage at many Minoan sites
and clear signs of both uplifting of land and submersion
of coastal sites due to tectonic processes
all along the coasts.[25]
Homer recorded a
tradition that Crete had 90 cities.[26] To judge
from the palace sites, the island was probably divided
into at least eight political units during the height of
the Minoan period. The north is thought to have been
governed from Knossos, the south from Phaistos,
the central eastern part from Malia,
the eastern tip from Kato Zakros,
and the west from Chania.
Smaller palaces have been found in other places.
Some of the major Minoan
archaeological sites are:
•Palaces
•Knossos – the
largest[27]
Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete; was purchased for
excavations by Evans on March 16, 1900.
•Phaistos – the
second largest[27]
palatial building on the island, excavated by the Italian
school shortly after Knossos
•Malia
– the subject of French excavations, a palatial centre
which affords a look into the development of the palaces
in the protopalatial period
•Kato Zakros
– a palatial site excavated by Greek archaeologists in the
far east of the island. This is also referred to as
"Zakro" in archaeological literature.
•Galatas
– the most recently[when?]
confirmed palatial site
•Agia Triada
– an administrative centre close to Phaistos
•Gournia – a town
site excavated in the first quarter of the 20th century by
the American School
•Pyrgos
– an early Minoan site on the south of the island
•Vasiliki
– an early Minoan site towards the east of the island
which gives its name to a distinctive ceramic ware
Minoans were traders, and their
cultural contacts reached far beyond the island of Crete —
to Egypt'sOld Kingdom,
to copper-bearing Cyprus,
Canaan,
and the Levantine
coasts beyond, and to Anatolia.
In late 2009, Minoan-style frescoes and other Minoan-style
artifacts were discovered during excavations of the Canaanite
palace at Tel Kabri,
Israel,
leading archaeologists to conclude that the Minoan
influence was the strongest foreign influence on that Caananite
city state. These are the only Minoan remains ever found
in Israel.[28]
Minoan techniques and styles in
ceramics also provided models, of fluctuating influence,
for Helladic Greece.
Along with the familiar example of Thera,
Minoan "colonies" can be found first at Kastri
on Cythera,
an island close to the Greek mainland that came under
Minoan influence in the mid-third millennium (EMII) and
remained Minoan in culture for a thousand years, until
Mycenaean occupation in the 13th century. The use of the
term "colony", however, like "thalassocracy", has been
criticized in recent years.[29] The
Minoan strata there replace a mainland-derived culture in
the Early Bronze Age, the earliest Minoan settlement
outside Crete.[30]
The Cyclades
were in the Minoan cultural orbit, and, closer to Crete,
the islands of Karpathos,
Saria
and Kasos,
also contained Minoan colonies, or settlements of Minoan
traders, from the Middle Bronze Age (MMI-II). Most of them
were abandoned in LMI, but Minoan Karpathos recovered and
continued with a Minoan culture until the end of the
Bronze Age.[31]
Other supposed Minoan colonies, such as that hypothesised
by Adolf Furtwängler for Aegina,
were later dismissed by scholars.[32]
There was a Minoan colony at Ialysos on Rhodes.[33]
Minoan cultural influence
indicates an orbit that extended not only throughout the Cyclades
(so-called Minoanisation), but in locations such
as Egypt and Cyprus. Paintings from the 15th century BC in
Thebes, Egypt
depict a number of individuals, who are Minoan in
appearance, bearing gifts. Inscriptions record these
people as coming from Keftiu, or the "islands in
the midst of the sea", and may refer to gift-bringing
merchants or officials from Crete.[34]
Certain locations within Crete
emphasize it as an "outward looking" society. The
Neopalatial site of Kato Zakros,
for instance, is located within 100 metres of the modern
shore-line, situated within a bay. Its large number of
workshops and the richness of its site materials indicate
a potential 'entrepôt' for import and export. Such
activities are elaborated in artistic representations of
the sea, including the 'Flotilla' fresco from room 5, in
the west house at Akrotiri.
Settlements of the Minoan civilization
These are the estimated
populations of hamlets,
villages,
and towns of
the Minoan civilization over time. Note that there are
several problems with estimating the sizes of individual
settlements, and the highest estimates for a given
settlements, in a given period, may be several times the
lowest.
The Minoans were primarily a mercantile
people engaged in overseas trade. Their culture, from 1700
BC onward, shows a high degree of organization.
The Minoan trade in saffron,
the stigma of a mutated crocus
which originated in the Aegean basin as a natural
chromosome mutation, has left fewer material remains: a
fresco of saffron-gatherers at Santorini
is well-known. This inherited trade pre-dated Minoan
civilization: a sense of its rewards may be gained by
comparing its value to frankincense,
or later, to pepper.
Archaeologists[who?]
tend to emphasize the more durable items of trade:
ceramics, copper, and tin, and dramatic luxury finds of gold and
silver.
Minoan men wore loincloths
and kilts.
Women wore robes that had
short sleeves and layered flounced skirts. The robes were
open to the navel, allowing their breasts to be left
exposed.[47] Women also
had the option of wearing a strapless fitted bodice.
The patterns on clothes emphasized symmetrical
geometric designs. Given the fragility of organic
materials, other forms of dress may have been worn of
which no archeological evidence exists.
The Minoan religion
focused on female deities, with females officiating.[48] The
frescos include many depictions of people, with the
genders distinguished by colour: the men's skin is
reddish-brown, the women's white.[49]
Language and writing
Knowledge of the spoken and
written language of the Minoans is scant, due to the small
number of records found. Clay tablets dating to around
3000 BC were found with the various Cretan scripts.[50]
Clay tablets seem to have been in use from around 3000 BC
or earlier. Two clay cups from Knossos have been found to
have remnants of ink, and inkwells similar to the
animal-shaped inkstands from Mesopotamia have also been
found.[51]
Sometimes the Minoan language is
referred to as Eteocretan,
but this confuses the language written in Linear A scripts
and the language written in a Euboean-derived
alphabet after the Greek Dark Ages.
While the Eteocretan language is believed to be a
descendant of Minoan, there is not enough source material
in either language to allow conclusions to be made.
The earliest dated writing found
on Crete is the Cretan hieroglyphs.
It is not known whether this language is Minoan or not and
its origin is still a topic of debate. These hieroglyphs
are often associated with the Egyptians, but they also
show relation to several other writings from the region of
Mesopotamia.[51] The
hieroglyphs came into use from MMI; they were used at the
same time as the emerging Linear A from the 18th century
BC (MM II). The hieroglyphs disappeared at some point
during the 17th century BC (MM III).
In the Mycenean period, Linear A
was replaced by Linear B,
recording a very archaic version of the Greek language.
Linear B was successfully deciphered by Michael Ventris
in 1952, but the earlier scripts remain a mystery. The
overwhelming majority of tablets are written in the Linear
B script, apparently being inventories of goods or
resources. Others are inscriptions on religious objects
associated with a cult.[which?]
Because most of these inscriptions are concise economic
records rather than dedicatory inscriptions, the
translation of Minoan remains a challenge.
Unless Eteocretan
truly is its descendant, the Minoan language may have
become extinct during the Greek Dark Ages,
a time of economic and socio-political collapse.
Art
The greatest collection of Minoan
art is in the museum at Heraklion, near
Knossos on the north shore of Crete. Minoan art, with
other remains of material culture,
especially the sequence of ceramic styles, has been used
by archaeologists to define the three phases of Minoan
culture (EM, MM, LM) discussed above.
Since wood and textiles have
vanished through decomposition, the best preserved, and so
most easily learned from, surviving examples of Minoan art
are its pottery,
the palace architecture with frescos
that include landscapes, stone carvings,
and intricately carved seal stones.
In the Early Minoan period
ceramics were characterised by linear patterns of spirals, triangles,
curved lines, crosses, fish bone
motifs, and such. In the Middle Minoan period,
naturalistic designs such as fish, squid, birds, and
lilies were common. In the Late Minoan period, flowers and
animals were still the most characteristic, but the
variability had increased. The 'palace style' of the
region around Knossos is characterised by a strong
geometric simplification of naturalistic shapes and
monochromatic paintings. Notable are the similarities
between Late Minoan and Mycenaean art. Frescoes were the
main form of art during these times of the Minoan culture.
This jug on the left is dated
from the Late Minoan IB, or sixteenth century B.C.E. On
Crete, the Minoans led an apparently peaceful and
prosperous existence that thrived on their sea-girt
island. That contacts between the island inhabitants and
their neighbors in the Eastern Mediterranean were
widespread is attested to the fact that this jug was found
in Egypt. Minoan knowledge of the sea was continued by the
Mycenaeans in their frequent use of marine forms among the
many natural motifs employed in the decoration of
beautifully designed utilitarian and decorative objects.
The four large creatures on this spouted pitcher are
nautiluses (sometimes called Argonauts) which jauntily
wave their tentacles in a rhythmic in unrealistic fashion.
Corals, algae, and other sea life fill every space in an
underwater composition bursting with vitality.
The Minoans seem to have
worshipped primarily goddesses, and their culture has been
described as being based on a "matriarchal religion."[52][53]
Professor Nanno
Marinatos stated: "The hierarchy and relationship of gods
within the pantheon is difficult to decode from the images
alone." She denies earlier descriptions of Minoan religion
as primitive, saying that it "was the religion of a
sophisticated and urbanized palatial culture with a
complex social hierarchy. It was not dominated by
fertility any more than any religion of the past or
present has been, and it addressed gender identity, rites
of passage, and death. It is reasonable to assume that
both the organization and the rituals, even the mythology,
resembled the religions of Near Eastern palatial
civilizations."[53]
Although there is some evidence
of male gods, depictions of Minoan goddesses vastly
outnumber depictions of anything that could be considered
a Minoan god. While some of these depictions of women may
be images of worshippers and priestesses officiating at
religious ceremonies, as opposed to deities, several
goddesses appear to be portrayed. These include a Mother Goddess of fertility,
a Mistress of the Animals, a
protectress of cities, the household,
the harvest,
and the underworld,
and more. They are often represented by serpents,
birds, poppies, and a somewhat vague shape of an animal
upon the head.
A major festive celebration was
exemplified in the famous athletic Minoan bull dance,
represented at large in the frescoes of Knossos[54] and
inscribed in miniature seals.[55]
The Minoan horn-topped altars,
conventionally called "Horns of Consecration"
ever since Evans coined the
term, are represented in seal impressions, and survive in
examples as far afield as Cyprus. Minoan sacred symbols
include the bull
and its horns of consecration, the labrys
(double-headed axe), the pillar,
the serpent, the sun-disk, and the tree.
Haralampos V. Harissis and
Anastasios V. Harissis have suggested a completely
different interpretation of these symbols. They argue that
they were based on apiculture
rather than religion.[56]
Evidence of human sacrifice by
the Minoans has been found at three sites: (1) Anemospilia,
in a MMII building near Mt. Juktas, interpreted as a
temple, (2) an EMII sanctuary complex at Fournou Korifi
in south central Crete, and (3) Knossos,
in an LMIB building known as the "North House."
Similar to archaeological finds
of the Bronze Age, burial remains constitute much of the
material and archaeological evidence for the period. By
the end of the Second Palace Period, Minoan burial
practice was dominated by two broad forms: 'Circular
Tombs', or Tholoi, (located in South Crete) and
'House Tombs', (located in the north and the east). Many
trends and patterns within Minoan mortuary practice do not
conform to this simple breakdown. Overall, inhumation was
the most popular form of burial; cremation does not seem
to have been as popular.[57]
Throughout this period the trend was towards individual
burials, with some distinguished exceptions. These include
the much-debated Chrysolakkos complex, Mallia, consisting
of a number of buildings forming a complex. This is
located in the centre of Mallia's burial area and may have
been the focus for burial rituals, or the 'crypt' for a
notable family.
Warfare and the "Minoan Peace"
Though the vision created by Arthur Evans
of a Pax Minoica,
a "Minoan peace", has been criticised in recent years,[58] it is
generally assumed there was little internal armed conflict
in Minoan Crete itself, until the following Mycenaean
period.[59] As with
much of Minoan Crete, however, it is hard to draw any
obvious conclusions from the evidence. New excavations
sustain scholarly interest and document the culture's
influence around the Aegean.[60]
Despite having found ruined
watchtowers and fortification walls,[61] Evans
argued that there was little evidence for ancient Minoan
fortifications. But as S. Alexiou has pointed out (in Kretologia
8), a number of sites, especially Early and Middle Minoan
sites such as Aghia Photia, are built on hilltops or are
otherwise fortified. As Lucia Nixon said, "...we may have
been over-influenced by the lack of what we might think of
as solid fortifications to assess the archaeological
evidence properly. As in so many other instances, we may
not have been looking for evidence in the right places,
and therefore we may not end with a correct assessment of
the Minoans and their ability to avoid war."[62]
Chester Starr points out in
"Minoan Flower Lovers" (Hagg-Marinatos eds. Minoan
Thalassocracy) that Shang China
and the Maya
both had unfortified centers and yet engaged in frontier
struggles, so the lack of fortifications alone cannot be
enough to conclude that the Minoans were a peaceful
civilization unparalleled in history.
In 1998, however, when Minoan
archaeologists met in a conference in Belgium to discuss
the possibility that the idea of Pax Minoica was outdated,
the evidence for Minoan war still proved to be scanty.
Archaeologist Jan Driessen, for example, said the Minoans
frequently show 'weapons' in their art, but only in ritual
contexts. He said,
"The
construction of fortified sites is often assumed to
reflect a threat of warfare, but such fortified centres
were multifunctional; they were also often the embodiment
or material expression of the central places of the
territories at the same time as being monuments glorifying
and merging leading power" (Driessen 1999, p. 16).
On the other hand, Stella
Chryssoulaki's work on the small outposts or
'guard-houses' in the east of the island represent
possible elements of a defensive system. Claims that they
produced no weapons are erroneous; type A Minoan swords
(as found in palaces of Mallia and Zarkos) were the finest
in all of the Aegean (See Sanders, AJA 65, 67, Hoeckmann,
JRGZM 27, or Rehak and Younger, AJA 102).
Keith Branigan claimed that 95%
of so-called Minoan weapons possessed hafting (hilts,
handles) that would have prevented their use as weapons
(Branigan, 1999). But, recent experimental testing of
accurate replicas has shown this to be incorrect; these
weapons were capable of cutting flesh down to the bone
(and scoring the bone's surface) without any damage to the
weapons themselves.[63]
Archaeologist Paul Rehak maintains that Minoan
figure-eight shields could not have been used for fighting
or hunting, since they were too cumbersome (Rehak, 1999).
And archaeologist Jan Driessen says the Minoans frequently
show 'weapons' in their art, but only in ritual contexts
(Driessen 1999). Finally, archaeologist Cheryl Floyd
concludes that Minoan "weapons" were tools used for
mundane tasks such as meat-processing (Floyd, 1999). But,
this theory is questionable given the evidence of "rapiers
nearly three feet in length"[64]
dated to the Middle Minoan period.
About Minoan warfare, Branigan
concludes that "The quantity of weaponry, the impressive
fortifications, and the aggressive looking long-boats all
suggested an era of intensified hostilities. But on closer
inspection there are grounds for thinking that all three
key elements are bound up as much with status statements,
display, and fashion as with aggression.... Warfare such
as there was in the southern Aegean EBA early Bronze Age
was either personalized and perhaps ritualized (in Crete)
or small-scale, intermittent and essentially an economic
activity (in the Cyclades and the Argolid/Attica) " (1999,
p. 92). Archaeologist Krzyszkowska concurs: "The
stark fact is that for the prehistoric Aegean we have no
direct evidence for war and warfare per se" (Krzyszkowska,
1999).
No evidence has been found of a
Minoan army, or for Minoan domination of peoples outside
Crete. Few signs of warfare appear in Minoan art.
"Although a few archaeologists see war scenes in a few
pieces of Minoan art, others interpret even these scenes
as festivals, sacred dance, or sports events" (Studebaker,
2004, p. 27). Although armed warriors are depicted
being stabbed in the throat with swords, violence may
occur in the context of ritual or blood sport.
On the Mainland of Greece at the
time of the Shaft Graves at Mycenae, there is little
evidence for major fortifications among the Mycenaeans
there. (The famous citadels post-date the destruction of
almost all Neopalatial Cretan sites.) The constant
warmongering of other contemporaries of the ancient
Minoans – the Egyptians and Hittites, for example – is
well documented.
Architecture
The Minoan cities were connected
with stone-paved roads,
formed from blocks cut with bronze saws.
Streets were drained and water and sewer
facilities were available to the upper class, through clay
pipes.[65]
Minoan buildings often had flat
tiled roofs; plaster,
wood, or flagstonefloors,
and stood two to three stories high. Typically the lower walls
were constructed of stone and rubble,
and the upper walls of mudbrick.
Ceiling timbers held up the roofs.
The materials used in
constructing the villas and palaces varied, and could
include sandstone, gypsum, or limestone. Equally, building
techniques could also vary between different
constructions; some palaces used ashlar masonry while
others used roughly hewn megalithic blocks.
Palaces
The first palaces were
constructed at the end of the Early Minoan period in the
third millennium BC (Malia).
While it was formerly believed that the foundation of the
first palaces was synchronous and dated to the Middle
Minoan at around 2000 BC (the date of the first palace at
Knossos), scholars now think that palaces were built over
a longer period in different locations, in response to
local developments. The main older palaces are Knossos,
Malia, and Phaistos. Some of the elements recorded in the
Middle Minoan 'palaces' (Knossos, Phaistos and Mallia, for
example) have precedents in earlier styles of construction
in the Early Minoan period.[66] These
include the indented western court, and the special
treatment given to the western façade. An example of this
is seen at the "House on the Hill" at Vasiliki, dated to
the Early Minoan II period.
The palaces fulfilled a plethora
of functions: they served as centres of government,
administrative offices, shrines,
workshops, and storage spaces (e.g., for grain). These
distinctions might have seemed artificial to Minoans.
The use of the term 'palace' for
the older palaces, meaning a dynastic residence and seat
of power, has recently come under criticism (see Palace), and the
term 'court building' has been proposed instead. However,
the original term is probably too well entrenched to be
replaced. Architectural features such as ashlar
masonry, orthostats,
columns, open courts, staircases (implying upper stories),
and the presence of diverse basins have been used to
define palatial architecture.
Often the conventions of the
better-known, younger palaces have been used to
reconstruct older ones, but this practice may be obscuring
fundamental functional differences. Most older palaces had
only one story and no representative facades. They were
U-shaped, with a big central court, and generally were
smaller than later palaces.
Late palaces are characterised by
multi-story buildings. The west facades had sandstone
ashlar masonry. Knossos
is the best-known example. Further building conventions
could include storage magazines, a north-south
orientation, a pillar room, a Minoan Hall system, a
western court, and pier-and-door entrance ways. Palatial
architecture in the First Palace Period is identified by
its 'square within a square' style, whilst later, Second
Palace Period constructions incorporated more internal
divisions and corridors.[67]
A common architectural standard
among the Middle Minoan 'palaces' was that they are
aligned with their surrounding topography. The MM palatial
structure of Phaistos appears to align with Mount Ida,
whilst Knossos is aligned with Juktas.[68] These are
oriented along a north-south axis. Scholars suggest the
alignment was related to the sacred or ritual significance
of the mountain, where a number of Peak Sanctuaries
(spaces for public ritual) have been excavated (i.e.,
Petsophas). The material record for these sites show
clusters of clay figurines and evidence of animal
sacrifice.
Columns
One of the most notable
contributions of Minoans to architecture is their unique
column, which was wider at the top than the bottom. It is
called an 'inverted' column because most Greek columns are
wider at the bottom, creating an illusion of greater
height. The columns were also made of wood as opposed to
stone, and were generally painted red. They were mounted
on a simple stone base and were topped with a pillow-like,
round piece as a capital.[69][70]
Villas
A number of compounds interpreted
as 'Villas' have been excavated in Crete. These structures
share many features with the central Palaces (i.e., a
conspicuous western facade, storage facilities, and a
'Minoan Hall') of the Neopalatial era. These features may
indicate either that they performed a similar role, or
that the structures were artistic imitations, suggesting
that their occupants were familiar with palatial culture.
These villas are often richly decorated (see the frescos
of Haghia Triadha Villa A).
Crops including lettuce, celery,
asparagus and carrots grow wild in Crete. Pear, quince,
and olive trees were also native. The people imported date
palm trees, and cats (used for hunting purposes) from
Egypt.[72]
They adopted pomegranates from the
Near East, although not lemons
and oranges,
as is often thought.
They developed Mediterranean
polyculture,[73] the
practice of growing more than one crop at a time. Their
more varied and healthy diet resulted in the growth of
population. Theoretically this method of farming would
maintain the fertility of the soil, as well as offer
protection against low yields in any single crop. Linear B
tablets indicate the importance of orchard farming (i.e.,
figs, olives and grapes) in processing crops for
"secondary products".[74] Olive oil
in the Cretan diet (or more widely, the Mediterranean
diet) is comparable to butter in the Northern diet.[75] The process
of fermenting wine from grapes is likely to have been a
concern of the "Palace" economies, whereby such prestige
goods would have been both important trade commodities as
well as culturally meaningful items of consumption.[76]
Equally, it is likely that the consumption of exotic or
expensive products would have played a role in the
presentation and articulation of political and economic
power.
Farmers used wooden plows,
bound by leather to wooden handles, and pulled by pairs of
donkeys
or oxen.
Marine
resources were
also important in the Cretan diet. The
prevalence of edible molluscs in site material,[77] and
artistic representations of marine fish and animals,
including the distinctive "Octopus" stirrup jar (LM IIIC),
indicate an appreciation and occasional use of fish within
the economy. But scholars believe these resources were not
as significant in relation to grain, olives and animal
produce. The intensification of agricultural activity is
indicated by the construction of terraces and dams at
Pseira in the Late Minoan period.
The Cretan diet included wild
game. Cretans hunted and ate wild deer and boar along with
the meats made available to them by their livestock. Wild
game can no longer be found on Crete.[78]
Not all plants and flora would
have a purely functional or economic utility. Artistic
depictions often show scenes of lily gathering and
performances within 'green' spaces. The fresco known as
the Sacred Grove at Knossos, for instance, depicts
a number of female figures facing towards the
left-hand-side of the scene, flanked by a copse of trees.
Some scholars have suggested that these depictions
represent the performance of 'harvest festivals' or
ceremonies, as a means to honour the continued fertility
of the soil. Artistic depictions of farming scenes also
appear on the Second Palace Period "Harvester Vase" (an
egg-shaped rhyton, or pouring vessel), where 27
male figures, led by another, each carry hoes. This
suggests the importance of farming as an artistic motif.
The discovery of storage
magazines within the palace compounds has prompted much
debate. At the second 'palace' at Phaistos, for instance,
a range of rooms in the western side of the structure have
been identified as a magazine block. Within these storage
areas, numerous jars, jugs and vessels have been
recovered, indicating the role of the complex as a
potential re-distribution centre of agricultural produce.
Several possibilities may be suggested, including a model
where all economic and agricultural produce was controlled
by the Palace and re-distributed by it. At sites such as
Knossos, where the town had developed to a considerable
size, there is evidence of craft specialisation,
indicating workshops. The Palace of Kato Zakro, for
instance, indicates workshops that were integrated into
the structure of the palace. Such evidence contributes to
the theory that the Minoan palatial system developed
through economic intensification, where greater
agricultural surplus could support a population of
administrators, craftsmen and religious practitioners. The
number of domestic, or sleeping, chambers at the Palaces
indicate that they could have supported a large population
of individuals who were removed from manual labour.
Evolution of
agricultural tools in Minoan Crete
Originally the tools were made of
wood or bone, and bound to the handle with leather straps.
During the Bronze Age,
the tools were upgraded to bronze,
with wooden handles. Due to its circular hole, the tool
head would spin around on the handle. The Minoans
developed oval- shaped holes in their tools to fit
oval-shaped handles. This stopped the spinning.[71]
Between 1935 and 1939, the Greek
archaeologist Spyridon Marinatos came up with the theory
of the Minoan Eruption. The Minoan eruption
on the island of Thera
(present-day Santorini
about 100 km distant from Crete) occurred during the
LM IA period. This eruption was among the largest
volcanic explosions in the history of civilization,
ejecting approximately 60 km3 of material
and rating a 7 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index.[79][80][81] The
eruption devastated the nearby Minoan settlement at Akrotiri
on Santorini, which was entombed in a layer of pumice.[82] The
eruption is believed to have severely affected the Minoan
culture on Crete, although the extent of the effects has
been debated. Early theories proposed that ashfall from
Thera on the eastern half of Crete choked off plant life,
causing starvation of the local population.[83] More
thorough field examinations have determined that no more
than 5 millimetres (0.20 in) of ash fell anywhere on
Crete.[84] Based on
archaeological evidence found on Crete, 21st century
studies indicate that a massive tsunami,
generated by the Theran eruption, devastated the coastal
areas of Crete and destroyed many Minoan settlements.[85][86][87][88][89]
The LM IIIA (Late Minoan) period
is marked by its affluence (i.e., wealthy tombs, burials
and art) and the ubiquity of Knossian ceramic styles.[90] But, by LM
IIIB the importance of Knossos as a regional centre, and
its material 'wealth', seem to have declined.
Significant Minoan remains have
been found above the Late Minoan I era Thera ash layer,
implying that the Thera eruption did not cause the
immediate downfall of the Minoans. As the Minoans were a
sea power and depended on naval and merchant ships for
their livelihood, the Thera eruption likely caused
significant economic hardship to the Minoans. Whether
these effects were enough to trigger the downfall of the
civilization is intensely debated. The Mycenaean
conquest of the Minoans occurred in Late Minoan II period.
The Mycenaeans were a military civilization. Using their
functional navy and a well-equipped army they were capable
of an invasion. Mycenaean weaponry has been found in
burials on Crete. This demonstrates Mycenaean military
influence not many years after the eruption.[91]
Many archaeologists speculate that the eruption caused a
crisis in Minoan civilization, making them vulnerable to
conquest by the Mycenaeans.[87]
Sinclair Hood writes that
the destruction of the Minoans was most likely due to an
invading force. Although the demise of the flourishing
civilization was aided by the erupting volcano on Thera,
the ultimate end came from outside conquerors.
Archaeological evidence suggests that the destruction of
the island was due to fire damage. Hood notes that the
palace at Knossos appears to have experienced less damage
than other sites along the island of Crete. As natural
disasters do not choose targets, the uneven destruction
was likely caused by invaders. They would have seen the
usefulness of preserving a palace center like Knossos for
their own use.[92]
Several authors have noted
evidence that the Minoan civilization had exceeded the
environmental carrying capacity.
For example, archaeological recovery at Knossos
shows deforestation
of this part of Crete near the late stages of Minoan
development.[93][94]
Population genetics studies
A 2013 mtDNA (mitochondrial
DNA)
study was conducted by a research team that analyzed DNA
from ancient Minoan skeletons that were sealed in a cave
in Crete's Lassithi Plateau between 3,700 and 4,400 years
ago, as well as other Greek, Anatolian, western and
northern European samples, while being distant from North
African and Egyptian samples.[95][96]
They then compared the skeletal
mitochondrial DNA, which is passed on through the maternal
line, with that found in a sample of 135 modern and
ancient populations from around Europe and Africa. The
researchers found that the Minoan skeletons were
genetically very similar to modern-day Europeans — and
especially close to modern-day Cretans, particularly those
from the Lassithi Plateau. They were also genetically
similar to Neolithic Europeans, but distinct from Egyptian
or Libyan populations.[97]
According to the authors, these results are consistent
with the hypothesis of an indigenous development of the
Minoan civilization from the descendants of the first
Neolithic settlers to the island (who arrived from Anatolia,
present-day Turkey and Iraq, approximately 9,000 years
ago,[98][99]), as
opposed to a North African or Egyptian origin, as
originally hypothesized by Evans.[95] "We
now know that the founders of the first advanced European
civilization were European," said study co-author George
Stamatoyannopoulos, a human geneticist at the University of Washington.
"They were very similar to Neolithic Europeans and very
similar to present day-Cretans."[96
15^
to: ab Hermann
Bengtson: Griechische Geschichte, C.H. Beck,
München, 2002. 9th Edition. ISBN 340602503X. pp.8–15
16 ^ Carl
Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times (Charles
Scribner's Sons: New York, 1966) p. 101.
17^
to: abcdef
Karl-Wilhelm Welwei: Die Griechische Frühzeit,
C.H.Beck, München, 2002. ISBN 3406479855. pp.12–18
18 ^ Hermann
Kinder & Werner Hilgemann, Anchor Atlas of World
History, (Anchor Press: New York, 1974) p. 33.
19 ^ Beck, Roger
B.; Linda Black, Larry S. Krieger, Phillip C. Naylor,
Dahia Ibo Shabaka, (1999). World History: Patterns of
Interaction. Evanston, IL: McDougal Littell. ISBN0-395-87274-X.
20 ^ All
estimates have been revised downward by Todd Whitelaw,
“Estimating the Population of Neopalatial Knossos,” in G.
Cadogan, E. Hatzaki, and A. Vasilakis (eds.), Knossos:
Palace, City, State (British School at Athens
Studies 12) (London 2004); at Moschlos in eastern
Crete, the population expansion was at the end of
the Neoplalatial period (Jeffrey S. Soles and Davaras, Moschlos
IA 2002: Preface p. xvii).
21 ^ (Driesson,
Jan, and MacDonald, Colin F. 2000)
22 ^ Carl
Roebuck, The World of Ancient Times p. 77.
23 ^Ibid.
p. 107.
24 ^BBC "The Minoan Civilisation of Crete":
"The later Minoan towns are in more and more inaccessible
places, the last one being at Karfi, high in the Dikti
Mountains. From that time onward, there are no traces of
the Minoans".
25 ^ For
instance, the uplift as much as 9 metres in western Crete
linked with the earthquake of 365 is discussed in L.
Stathis, C. Stiros, "The 8.5+ magnitude, AD365 earthquake
in Crete: Coastal uplift, topography changes,
archaeological and Ihistorical signature," Quaternary
International (23 May 2009).
30 ^ J. N.
Coldstream and G. L. Huxley, Kythera: Excavations and
Studies Conducted by the University of Pennsylvania
Museum and the British School at Athens (London:
Faber & Faber) 1972.
31 ^ E. M.
Melas, The Islands of Karpathos, Saros and Kasos in
the Neolithic and Bronze Age (Studies in
Mediterranean archaeology 68) (Göteburg)
1985.
32 ^ James
Penrose Harland, Prehistoric Aigina: A History of the
Island in the Bronze Age, ch. V. (Paris) 1925.
33 ^ Arne
Furumark, "The settlement at Ialysos and Aegean history c.
1500-1400 B.B.", in Opuscula archaeologica6 (Lund)
1950;T. Marketou, "New Evidence on the Topography and Site
History of Prehistoric Ialysos." in Soren Dietz and
Ioannis Papachristodoulou (eds.), Archaeology in the
Dodecanese (1988:28–31).
57 ^ Sinclair
Hood (1971) The Minoans; The Story of Bronze Age Crete,
pp. 140
58 ^ Alexiou
wrote of fortifications and acropolises in Minoan Crete,
in Kretologia8 (1979), pp 41–56, and especially in C.G.
Starr, "Minoan flower-lovers" in The Minoan
Thalassocracy: Myth and Reality R. Hägg and N.
Marinatos, eds. (Stockholm) 1994, pp 9–12.
59 ^ W.-B.
Niemeier, "Mycenaean Knossos and the Age of Linear B", Studi
micenei ed egeoanatolici 1982:275.
66 ^ D. Preziosi
and L.A. Hitchcock Aegean Art and Architecture
pg.48-9, Oxford University Press
(1999)
67 ^ Peziosi, D
& L.A. Hitchcock (1999) Pg. 121
68 ^ Preziosi, D
& Hitchcock, L.A. (1999) pg. 86
69 ^ Benton and
DiYanni 1998, p. 67.
70 ^ Bourbon
1998, p 34
71^
to: ab Sinclair
Hood (1971) "The Minoans; the story of Bronze Age Crete"
72 ^ Sinclair
Hood (1971) "The Minoans; the story of Bronze Age Crete"
p.87
73 ^ But,
Hamilakis raised doubts in 2007 that the systematic
exploitation within a Polyculture model was employed at
Crete (Hamilakis, Y (2007) Wiley.com
74 ^ Sherratt,
A. (1981) Plough and Pastoralism: Aspects of the
Secondary Products Revolution
75 ^ Sinclair
Hood (1971), The Minoans; The Story of Bronze Age
Crete, pp. 86
76 ^ Hamilakis,
Y (1999) Food Technologies/Technologies of the Body:
The Social Context of Wine and Oil Production and
Consumption in Bronze Age Crete[1]
77 ^ Dickinson,
O (1994) The Aegean Bronze Age pg. 28)
78 ^ Sinclair
Hood (1971), The Minoans; The Story of Bronze Age
Crete, pp. 83
87^
to: ab
Antonopoulos, J. (1992). "The great Minoan eruption of
Thera volcano and the ensuing tsunami in the Greek
Archipelago". Natural Hazards5 (2):
153–168. doi:10.1007/BF00127003.
88 ^ Pareschi,
MT, Favalli, M & Boschi, E (2006). "Impact of the
Minoan tsunami of Santorini: Simulated scenarios in the
eastern Mediterranean". Geophysical Research Letters33 (18):
L18607. Bibcode:2006GeoRL..3318607P.
doi:10.1029/2006GL027205..
98 ^ Peristera
Paschou et al, Maritime route of colonization of Europe
99 ^ Fernández
E, Pérez-Pérez A, Gamba C, Prats E, Cuesta P, et al.
(2014) Ancient DNA Analysis of 8000 B.C. Near Eastern
Farmers Supports an Early Neolithic Pioneer Maritime
Colonization of Mainland Europe through Cyprus and the
Aegean Islands. PLoS Genet 10(6): e1004401.
doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1004401, Ancient DNA Analysis of
8000 B.C. Near Eastern Farmers Supports an Early Neolithic
Pioneer Maritime Colonization of Mainland Europe through
Cyprus and the Aegean Islands
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Le Contexte Guerrier en Egee a L'Age du Bronze. Actes de
la 7e Rencontre egeenne internationale Universite de
Liège, 1998. Universite de Liège, Histoire de l'art
d'archeologie de la Grece antique.
·Sakellarakis,
Y. and E. Sapouna-Sakellarakis (1981). "Drama of Death in
a Minoan Temple". National Geographic159 (2):
205–222.
·Schoep,
Ilse, 2004. "Assessing the role of architecture in
conspicuous consumption in the Middle Minoan I-II
Periods." Oxford Journal of Archaeology vol 23/3,
pp. 243–269.
·Soles,
Jeffrey S., 1992, The Prepalatial Cemeteries at
Mochlos and Gournia and the House Tombs of Bronze Age
Crete: And the House Tombs of Bronze Age Crete,
Published by ASCSA, 1992.
·Warren
P., Hankey V., 1989. Aegean Bronze Age Chronology
(Bristol).
·Watrous,
L. Vance (1991), "The origin and iconography of the Late
Minoan painted larnax", Hesperia,
60(3): 285–307; JSTOR148065.
·Donald
A. MacKenzie, Myths of Crete & Pre-Hellenic Europe,
1917, etext at sacred-texts.com. This is a very thorough
text, but given its age and so on, much of its analysis
and many of its statements need to be taken with a grain
of salt.
·minoancrete.com, Extensive
photos, videos and information on Minoan Crete
archaeological sites.
Sir Arthur Evans
developed a relative dating scheme of Minoan chronology
based on the excavations initiated and managed by him at
the site of the ancient city of Knossos.
He called the civilization that he discovered there Minoan.
The same scheme was later applied to the Greek
mainland and the Cyclades
Islands to form a general plan for dating events of the
prehistoric and early historic Aegean.
The relative chronology is based on the shapes and
decorative styles of pottery found at
many sites on Crete and
elsewhere.
Contents
1
Evans and Knossos
2
Evans' chronology
3
Table of Minoan chronology
4
Other tables on the Internet
5
Notes
6
References
7
External links
Evans and Knossos
Arthur Evans began
excavating on a hill called tou tseleve he kephala,
"the headland of the chieftain", some three miles (5 km)
from the north coast of Crete, on
March 23, 1900. Two of the palace storerooms had been
uncovered by Minos Kalokairinos in 1878, whose work
ceased at the demand of the land owners. Simultaneously,
coins and seals inscribed
with a mysterious script were also discovered. These
came to Evans' attention as the curator of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford,
a position he held from 1884 to 1908. The area was
rumored to have been the site of the ancient city of Knossos.
Evans examined the site on
March 19, 1894. Nothing further could be done at that
time, but in 1898 Crete became an independent republic.
In 1899 Evans purchased the land with his own funds (his
family had been factory owners in industrial Britain)
and decided to set up an excavation. In the first two
weeks he discovered the Linear A
tablets, a streak of luck exceeded only by Carl Blegen's
legendary first day's dig at Pylos,
when he uncovered the Pylos tablets, written in Linear B,
a script also found at Kephala and named by Evans.
Attacking the site with crews
of hundreds of diggers, Evans uncovered most of the
site's 6 acres (24,000 m2) within 6
seasons. By 1905 he had named the civilization whose
traces he found there Minoan, after the
legendary king Minos,
and had created a detailed chronology of the serial
phases of the pottery styles in Minoan Crete, based on
what he found at Knossos.
Subsequently he concerned himself mainly with
restoration, an activity frowned upon by archaeologists
of today. He continued to excavate there and elsewhere
and to restore[1]
until 1935.
Evans was knighted in 1911 for
his work. In 1921, the first edition of his monumental
work, Palace of Minos, was released, which
became indispensable for any department of classical
archaeology. On Evans' death in 1941, the British School
of Archaeology assumed responsibility for the
excavation, later turning the property over to the Greek
government, while retaining excavation rights.
Evans' chronology
Evans' chronological framework
had triple divisions each triply divided, a formula that
has been retained, thus Early Minoan (EM) I, II and III,
Middle Minoan (MM) I, II and III etc. Each subsection he
divided into A and B, early and late. In 1918 Alan J. B. Wace
and Carl Blegen
adapted Evans' chronology to the Greek mainland and the
islands, where the culture was termed Helladic
and Cycladic.
In 1941 Arne Furumark applied
the term Mycenaean to LH and LC. As it is clear that the
Mycenaean Greeks
dominated at Knossos at some point in Late Minoan (LM),
the latter is often included under "Mycenaean" or called
"Minoan-Mycenaean".
The major study of Cretan
pottery was Evans'. A very general stylistic trend was
from dark decoration on a light background in the Early
Minoan to white and red decorations on a dark wash or slip
in Middle Minoan. Finally, there was a return to the
earlier manner of dark on light
in Late Minoan.[2] New
body shapes for vessels also emerged and various styles
of decoration are evident within Evan's chronology.
Evans never intended to give
exact calendrical dates to the pottery periods. He did
correlate them roughly[3] to
better dated Egyptian periods using finds of Egyptian
artifacts in association with Cretan ones and obvious
similarities of some types of Cretan artifacts with
Egyptian ones. Subsequent investigators checking Evans'
work varied the dates of some of the periods a little,
usually less than a few hundred years, but the
chronological structure remains basically as Evans left
it, a solid framework for placing events of Aegean
prehistory.
Most criticism does not aim at
the overthrow of Evans' system, but only complains that
it does not capture all the data, such as local
variations. Even with these faults the system has no
competitors. In 1958 Nikolaos Platon
proposed a new chronology at the Prehistoric Conference
in Hamburg. In it, the terms "Pre-palace", "Old Palace"
and "New Palace" were to replace Evans' scheme. The
academic community accepted the scheme but not the
replacement, simply stating where in Evans' system the
new terms fit.
The one serious question[4]
concerns the date of the Knossos tablets. Allegations
were made that Evans falsified the stratum in which the
tablets were found to place the tablets at 1400 BCE when
they ought to have been the same date as the Pylos
tablets, 1200 BCE. This dispute became known as the Palmer-Boardman Dispute
when it first appeared. Despite the intense debate that
developed on the subject no conclusive evidence has yet
been found to settle the question. A key part of the
case was that a certain kind of vase, a stirrup jar
(named from the handles) found in tablet contexts, is
dated only to 1200. Other archaeologists hastened to the
journalistic scene with instances of similar jars going
back to 1400. The search for closure goes on. By
default, archaeologists tend to use Evans' dating.
Prepalatial,
Pre-Palace
(Προανακτορική), Protominoan
Age (Platon)[7]
Copper
Age
(Matz, Hutchinson)[8]
Early
Bronze Age
(Hood)
EM
3000–2200
(Evans, Hood)
2600–2000
(Matz)
Πρωτομινωική or ΠΜ in
Greek.
First
Early Minoan
(Hutchinson)
Phase
I
(Platon)
EM I
3400–2800
(Evans)
2600–2300
(Matz)
2500–2400
(Hutchinson)
3200–2600
(Gimbutas)
3000–2600
(Willetts, Hood)
2800–2200
(Mackenzie)
The main problem has
been setting the end of the Neolithic; its
layers were destroyed by building at Knossos.
The period is attested
by pottery from a well at Knossos, in Tholos
Tomb 2 at Lebena
and by an EM I layer at Debla.
Second
Early Minoan
(Hutchinson)
Phase
II
(Platon)
EM II
2800–2400
(Evans)
2300-2200
(Matz)
2300–2100
(Hutchinson)[9]
2600–2300
(Gimbutas, Willetts, Hood)
Seals like those of
Egyptian 1st Intermediate Period, Dynasties
6–11, 2345–1991.
Third
Early Minoan
(Hutchinson)
Phase
III
(Platon)
EM III
2400–2200
(Evans)
2200–2000
(Matz)
2100–2000
(Hutchinson)
2300–2160
(Gimbutas)
2300–2200
(Willetts, Hood)
Palace
Period
(Matz, Platon)
Minoan
Age
(Platon)[10]
Full
Bronze Age
(Matz)[11]
MM
2200–1500
(Evans)
2000–1570
(Matz)
2000–1580
(Ventris & Chadwick)
Μεσομινωική or MM in
Greek
Phase
III
of Pre-Palace
(Platon)
Early
Palace
(Matz)
First
or Early
Palaces (Hood)
MM IA
2000–?
(Matz)
2000–1900
(Hutchinson)
2160–1930
(Gimbutas)
2200–2000
(Willetts, Hood)
2000–1925
(Ventris & Chadwick
2200–? (MacKenzie)
Kephala mound cleared
of earlier structures, palace at Knossos begun
(Hutchinson).
Protopalatial
Old
Palace
(Evans)
Early
Palace
(Matz)
Old
Palace (Παλαιοανακτορική) Phase I (Platon)
First
or Early
Palaces (Hood)
MM IB
?–1800
(Matz)
1900–1850
(Hutchinson)
2000–1900
(Platon, Willetts, Hood)
1925–1850
(Ventris & Chadwick)
1930–1800
(Gimbutas)
?–2100
(MacKenzie)
"First Palaces" or
"First temple-palaces" (Gimbutas)[12]
Use of potter's wheel.
It may have been introduced in IA.
Protopalatial
Old
Palace
(Evans)
Early
Palace
(Matz)
Old
Palace Phase II
(Platon)
First
or Early
Palaces, Middle
Bronze Age (Hood)
MM IIA
1850–?
(Hutchinson, Ventris & Chadwick)
1900–1800
(Platon, Willetts, Hood)
2100–?
(MacKenzie)
Protopalatial
Old
Palace
(Evans)
Early
Palace
(Matz)
Old
Palace Phase III
(Platon)
First
or Early
Palaces, Middle
Bronze Age (Hood)
MM IIB
?–1700
(Matz, Ventris & Chadwick)
?–1750
(Hutchinson)
1800–1700
(Platon, Willetts, Hood)
?–1900
(MacKenzie)
Palaces were so
destroyed by an earthquake ca. 1700 that they
had to be rebuilt. This is the dividing line
between Old and New Palace and between II and
III.[13]
The period ends with a
destruction by fire of all the palaces on Crete
from unknown causes.[15]
They were, of course, reoccupied.
Post-Palace
Phase I
(Platon)
LM IIIA
1400–
(Matz)
1400–1320
(Platon)
1400–1300
(Hutchinson)
Linear B tablets ca.
1400 (Evans and his defender, Boardman)
Post-Palace
Phases II, III (Platon)
LM IIIB
1300–1200
(Hutchinson)
1320–1280
(II), 1260–1150
(III) (Platon)
Linear B tablets ca.
1200 (Palmer, doubter of Evans' chronology)
LM IIIC
?–1100
(Matz)
1260–1050
(Willetts)
A general Mycenaean
Greek palace destruction by fire on the mainland
and Crete happened in a window of time ca. 1200
at the end of IIIB. How wide a window is not
known, nor are the causes for sure. Some
possibilities are any or all of civil strife,
the Sea Peoples, the Dorians.
Subminoan
Age
(Platon, Matz, Willetts)
1100–
(Matz)
1150–1000
(Platon)
1075–1025
(Furumark)
1050–900
(Willetts)
This period is
considered a Mycenaean Greek holdout against the
Dorian
Greeks arriving at this time. Its end marks the
completion of assimilation to them.
Other tables on the Internet
The search for a consistent
chronology of Cretan civilization goes on. Other tabular
chronologies have been published on the Internet by
4. ^
There are many questions, of course, but this one
persists and would overthrow an important part of Evans'
chronology. A brief review can be found at the Stanford
Archaeopedia site.
5. ^
It is well-nigh impossible to peruse any several books
and articles on Crete and come up with anything like a
uniform chronology. The underlying reason is no doubt
that the time windows of the artifacts are not uniform.
Some sites did not experience the full complement of
periods; one period got extended over more than one
elsewhere. The dates of the periods are not the same
everywhere. The utility of a scheme such as Evans'
becomes evident in a context such as this. It might be
viewed as a median chronological framework.
6. ^
The dates given below are a sampling from the noted
works listed in the References section below.
Many samples of other noted works might be selected with
little likelihood of finding the same dates, but they
would tend to vary about Evans' relative chronology.
Note also that some of the authors, such as Hutchinson,
revised their dates as part of the ongoing process of
discovery. Even in different chapters of the same book
the reader will find the same period dated differently
by the same author.
7. ^
Platon's Pre-Palace Period includes EM and MM IA. His
Protominoan Age includes the Neolithic and the
Pre-Palace Period.
8. ^
Matz uses "Metal Age" also to comprise Copper and Bronze
Ages.
9. ^
The lacuna 0f 100 years is Hutchinson's. As the dates
are imprecise, the reader may pick either.
10. ^
Platon's Minoan Age includes MM (exclusive of IA) and
LM. His Palace Period includes MM (exclusive of IA) and
LM I and II.
11. ^
Matz's Full Bronze Age includes MM and LM I&II (but
not III)
12. ^
This hyphenated name is a concession to the view that
the palaces were really temples. Those who espouse this
minority view use "Temple Period" instead of "Palace
Period", etc. A brief discussion of the question is
given by Jan Driessen under The
Court Compounds of Minoan Crete, Athena Review,
Vol. 3 No. 3. All the authors from Evans on recognize
that some areas of the palaces found religious uses. On
the other hand the throne rooms and private quarters
tend to support the "great king" idea. The degree to
which the complexes were communal, religious or secular
remains open.
13. ^ The
events of course are not quite so simple. There was more
than one earthquake. Old Palace at Knosses seems to have
gone on modified until the middle of IIIA. There is some
equivocation also about what building activities
constitute "old" and "new", as earthquakes in Crete were
frequent and rebuilding ongoing. The transition from old
to new should not be regarded as any sharp event. The
quest for precision goes on.
14. ^ The
date (and effect) of the Thera eruption is as indecisive
as the rest of the chronology. Carbon dating indicates
the date of the eruption was near 1600 and if that were
correct then the time of LMIA would need to change.
15. ^
Furumark divides IIIA into a pre-disaster IIIA1 and a
post-disaster IIIA2. The latter is dated by its pottery
being found at Amarna,
1375–1350. Most chronologies ignore Furumark's
distinction. Until absolute dating showed the Thera
eruption to be earlier, Spyridon Marinatos'
theory that the eruption caused the disaster prevailed.
16.
References
·Platon,
Nicolas, Crete (translated from the Greek),
Archaeologia Mundi series, Frederick Muller Limited,
London, 1966
·Hutchinson,
Prehistoric Crete, many editions hardcover and
softcover
·Matz,
Friedrich, The Art of Crete and Early Greece,
Crown, 1962
·Mackenzie,
Donald A., Crete & Pre-Hellenic, Senate,
1995, ISBN 1-85958-090-4
·Palmer,
L. A., Mycenaeans and Minoans, multiple editions
·Willetts,
The Civilization of Ancient Crete, Barnes &
Noble, 1976, ISBN 1-56619-749-X
Along with Heinrich
Schliemann, Evans was
a pioneer in the study of Aegean
civilization in the Bronze Age. The two men knew of each other.
Evans visited Schliemann's sites. Schliemann had planned
to excavate at Knossos, but died before fulfilling that
dream. Evans bought the site and stepped in to take charge
of the project, which was then still in its infancy. He
continued Schliemann's concept of Mycenaean
civilization but soon
found that he needed to distinguish another civilization,
the Minoan.[3]
Although he
was not a professional statesman or soldier, and was
probably never a paid agent of the government, he
nevertheless negotiated or played a role in negotiating
unofficially with foreign powers in the Balkans and Middle
East, such as the Ottoman Empire. He was, on request of the
revolutionary organizations of the peoples of the Balkans, a significant player in the
formation of the nation of Yugoslavia. That nation sent
representatives to his funeral in 1941.
4.
Minoan Origins
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-22527821
DNA reveals origin of Greece's ancient Minoan culture
15 May 2013
From the section Science & Environment
Europe's first advanced civilisation was local in
origin and not imported from elsewhere, a study says.
Analysis of DNA from ancient remains on the Greek
island of Crete suggests the Minoans were indigenous
Europeans, shedding new light on a debate over the
provenance of this ancient culture. Scholars
have variously argued the Bronze Age civilisation
arrived from Africa, Anatolia or the Middle
East. Details appear in Nature Communications
journal.
The concept of the Minoan civilisation was first
developed by Sir Arthur Evans, the British
archaeologist who unearthed the Bronze Age palace of
Knossos on Crete.
Evans named the people who built these cities after
the legendary King Minos who, according to tradition,
ordered the construction of a labyrinth on Crete to
hold the mythical half-man, half-bull creature known
as the minotaur.
Evans was of the opinion that the real-life Bronze Age
culture on Crete must have its origins
elsewhere. And so, he suggested that the Minoans
were refugees from Egypt's Nile delta, fleeing the
region's conquest by a southern king some 5,000 years
ago.
Surprisingly advanced.
"He was surprised to find this advanced civilisation
on Crete," said co-author George Stamatoyannopoulos,
from the University of Washington in Seattle, US.
The evidence for this idea included apparent
similarities between Egyptian and Minoan art and
resemblances between circular tombs built by the early
inhabitants of southern Crete and those built by
ancient Libyans. But other archaeologists have
argued for origins in Palestine, Syria, or
Anatolia. In this study, Prof Stamatoyannopoulos
and colleagues analysed the DNA of 37 individuals
buried in a cave on the Lassithi plateau in the
island's east. The majority of the burials are thought
to date to the middle of the Minoan period - around
3,700 years ago.
The analysis focused on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)
extracted from the teeth of the skeletons, This type
of DNA is stored in the cell's "batteries" and is
passed down, more or less unchanged, from mother to
child. They then compared the frequencies of
distinct mtDNA lineages, known as "haplogroups", in
this ancient Minoan set with similar data for 135
other populations, including ancient samples from
Europe and Anatolia as well as modern peoples.
The comparison seemed to rule out an origin for the
Minoans in North Africa: the ancient Cretans showed
little genetic similarity to Libyans, Egyptians or the
Sudanese. They were also genetically distant from
populations in the Arabian Peninsula, including
Saudis, and Yemenis.
Locally sourced
The ancient Minoan DNA was most similar to populations
from western and northern Europe. The population
showed particular genetic affinities with Bronze Age
populations from Sardinia and Iberia and Neolithic
samples from Scandinavia and France. They also
resembled people who live on the Lassithi Plateau
today, a population that has previously attracted
attention from geneticists.
The authors therefore conclude that the Minoan
civilisation was a local development, originated by
inhabitants who probably reached the island around
9,000 years ago, in Neolithic times.
"There has been all this controversy over the years.
We have shown how the analysis of DNA can help
archaeologists and historians put things straight,"
Prof Stamatoyannopoulos told BBC News.
"The Minoans are Europeans and are also related to
present-day Cretans - on the maternal side."
He added: "It's obvious that there was very important
local development. But it is clear that, for example,
in the art, there were influences from other peoples.
So we need to see the Mediterranean as a pool, not as
a group of isolated nations."
"There is evidence of cultural influence from Egypt to
the Minoans and going the other way."
Minos,
along
with his brothers, Rhadamanthys and Sarpedon, was
raised by king Asterion (or
Asterius) of Crete. When Asterion died, his throne was
claimed by Minos[5]
who banished Sarpedon and, according to some sources,
Rhadamanthys too.
Contents
1
Etymology
2 The
literary Minos
2.1 Later
rationalization
2.2
Possible historical element
3 The
mythological Minos
3.1
Glaucus
3.2
Poseidon, Daedalus and Pasiphaë
3.3
Theseus
3.4 Nisus
3.5 The
death of Minos
4 Minos in
art
4.1 In
poetry
4.2 In
books
5 See also
6 Notes
7
References
8 External
links
Etymology
Minos
is
the Cretan word for "king",[6]
or, by a euhemeristinterpretation,
the name of a particular king that was subsequently used
as a title. There is a name in Minoan Linear Ami-nu-te
that may be related to Minos. According to La
Marle's reading of Linear A,[7] which
have been heavily criticised as arbitrary[8] we should
read mwi-nu ro-ja (Minos the king) on a Linear A
tablet. The royal title ro-ja is read on several
documents, including on stone libation tables from the
sanctuaries, where it follows the name of the main god,
Asirai (the equivalent of SanskritAsura, and of AvestanAhura). La
Marle suggests that the name mwi-nu (Minos) is
expected to mean 'ascetic' as
Sanskrit muni, and fits this explanation to the
legend about Minos sometimes living in caves on Crete.[9] If royal
succession in Minoan Crete descended matrilinearly— from
the queen to her firstborn daughter— the queen's husband
would have become the Minos, or war chief. Some
scholars see a connection between Minos and the
names of other ancient founder-kings, such as Menes
of Egypt, Mannus
of Germany, and Manu
of India,[10][11] and even
with Meon of
Phrygia and Lydia (after him named Maeonia),
Mizraim of Egypt
in the Book of Genesis and the
Canaanite deity Baal Meon.[12]
The literary Minos
Minos
appears
in Greek literature as the king of Knossos as early
as Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.[13]Thucydides tells us
Minos was the most ancient man known to build a navy.[14]
He reigned over Crete and the islands of the Aegean Sea three
generations before the Trojan War. He lived
at Knossos for
periods of nine years, where he received instruction
from Zeus in the
legislation which he gave to the island. He was the
author of the Cretan constitution and the founder of its
naval supremacy.[14][15]
On
the
Athenianstage
Minos is a cruel tyrant,[16] the
heartless exactor of the tribute of Athenian youths to
feed to the Minotaur; in
revenge for the death of his son Androgeusduring
a riot (see §
Theseus).[17]
Later
rationalization
To
reconcile
the contradictory aspects of his character, as well as
to explain how Minos governed Crete over a period
spanning so many generations, two kings of the name of
Minos were assumed by later poets and rationalizing
mythologists, such as Diodorus Siculus[18] and Plutarch— "putting
aside the mythological element", as he claims— in his
life of Theseus.[19] According
to this view, the first King Minos was the son of Zeus
and Europa and brother of Rhadamanthys and Sarpedon.
This was the 'good' king Minos, and he was held in such
esteem by the Olympian gods that, after he died, he was
made one of the three 'Judges of the Dead',[20] alongside
his brother Rhadamanthys and half-brother Aeacus. The wife
of this 'Minos I' was said to be Itone (daughter of
Lyctius) or Crete (a nymph or
daughter of his stepfather Asterion), and he had a
single son named Lycastus, his
successor as King of Crete.
Lycastus
had
a son named Minos, after his grandfather, born by
Lycastus' wife, Ida, daughter of Corybas. This 'Minos
II'— the 'bad' king Minos— is the son of this Lycastus,
and was a far more colorful character than his father
and grandfather. It would be to this Minos that we owe
the myths of Theseus, Pasiphaë, the Minotaur, Daedalus, Glaucus,
and Nisus.
Unlike Minos I, Minos II fathered numerous children,
including Androgeus, Catreus, Deucalion, Ariadne, Phaedra, and Glaucus
— all born to him by his wife Pasiphaë. Through
Deucalion, he was the grandfather of King Idomeneus,
who led the Cretans to the Trojan War.
Possible
historical element
Doubtless
there
is a considerable historical element in the legend,
perhaps in the Phoenician origin of
Europa; it is possible that not only Athens, but Mycenae itself,
were once culturally bound to the kings of Knossos, as
Minoan objects appear at Mycenaean sites.
Minos
himself
is said to have died at Camicus
in Sicily, whither
he had gone in pursuit of Daedalus,
who had given Ariadne the clue by which she guided Theseus through
the labyrinth. He was killed by the daughter of Cocalus, king of
Agrigentum, who
poured boiling water over him while he was taking a
bath.[21]
Subsequently his remains were sent back to the Cretans,
who placed them in a sarcophagus, on which
was inscribed: "The tomb of Minos, the son of Zeus."
The
earlier
legend knows Minos as a beneficent ruler, legislator,
and suppressor of piracy.[22] His
constitution was said to have formed the basis of that
of Lycurgus for
Sparta.[23] In
accordance with this, after his death he became judge of
the shades in the underworld.[24] In later
versions, Aeacus and Rhadamanthus were made
judges as well, with Minos leading as the "appeals
court" judge.[25]
Asterion,
king of Crete, adopted the three sons of Zeus and
Europa, Minos, Sarpedon and Rhadamanthus. According to
the Odyssey he spoke with Zeus every nine years
or for nine years. He got his laws straight from Zeus
himself. When Minos' son Androgeos had won the
Panathenaeic Games the king, Aegeus, sent him to
Marathon to fight a bull, resulting in the death of
Androgeos. Outraged, Minos went to Athens to avenge his
son, and on the way he camped at Megara where Nisos
lived. Learning that Nisos' strength came from his hair,
Minos gained the love of Scylla and her aid in cutting
off her father's hair so that he could conquer the city.
After his triumph, he punished Scylla for her treachery
against her father by tying her to a boat and dragging
her until she drowned. On arriving in Attica, he asked
Zeus to punish the city, and the god struck it with
plague and hunger. An oracle told the Athenians to meet
any of Minos' demands if they wanted to escape the
punishment. Minos then asked Athens to send seven boys
and seven girls to Crete every nine years to be
sacrificed to the Minotaur, the offspring from the
zoophilic encounter of Minos' wife Pasiphae with a
certain bull that the king refused to sacrifice to
Poseidon, which he had placed within a labyrinth he
commanded his architect Daedalus to build. The Minotaur
was defeated by the hero Theseus with the help of Minos'
daughter Ariadne.
One
day,
Glaucus was playing with a ball[26]
or mouse[27] and
suddenly disappeared. The Curetes told the
Cretans "A marvelous creature has been born amongst you:
whoever finds the true likeness for this creature will
also find the child."
Polyidus
of Argos observed the similarity of a newborn calf in
Minos' herd, colored white and red and black, to the
ripening of the fruit of the bramble plant,
and so Minos sent him to find Glaucus.
Searching
for
the boy, Polyidus saw an owl driving bees away from a
wine-cellar in Minos' palace. Inside the wine-cellar was
a cask of honey, with Glaucus dead inside. Minos
demanded Glaucus be brought back to life, though
Polyidus objected. Minos shut Polyidus up in the
wine-cellar with a sword. When a snake appeared nearby,
Polyidus killed it with the sword. Another snake came
for the first, and after seeing its mate dead, the
second serpent left and brought back an herb which
brought the first snake back to life. Following this
example, Polyidus used the same herb to resurrect
Glaucus.
Minos
refused
to let Polyidus leave Crete until he taught Glaucus the
art of divination. Polyidus
did so, but then, at the last moment before leaving, he
asked Glaucus to spit in his mouth. Glaucus did so, and
forgot everything he had been taught.
Poseidon,
Daedalus and Pasiphaë
Minos
justified
his accession as king and prayed to Poseidon for a
sign. Poseidon sent a giant white bull out of the sea.[28] Minos was
committed to sacrificing the bull to Poseidon,[29]
but then decided to substitute a different bull. In
rage, Poseidon cursed Pasiphaë, Minos'
wife, with zoophilia. Daedalus
built her a wooden cow, which she hid inside. The bull
mated with the wooden cow and Pasiphaë was impregnated
by the bull, giving birth to a horrible monster, again
named Asterius,[30] the Minotaur, half man
half bull. Daedalus then built a complicated "chamber
that with its tangled windings perplexed the outward
way"[31] called
the Labyrinth, and
Minos put the Minotaur in it. To make sure no one would
ever know the secret of who the Minotaur was and how to
get out of the Labyrinth (Daedalus knew both of these
things), Minos imprisoned Daedalus and his son, Icarus, along
with the monster. Daedalus and Icarus flew away on wings
Daedalus invented, but Icarus' wings melted because he
flew too close to the sun. Icarus fell in the sea and
drowned.
Theseus
Minos'
son
Androgeus
won every game in a contest hosted by Aegeas of Athens.
Alternatively, the other contestants were jealous of
Androgeus and killed him. Minos was angry and declared
war on Athens. He offered the Athenians peace if they
sent Minos seven young men and seven virgin maidens to feed
the Minotaur every
year (which corresponded directly to the Minoans'
meticulous records of lunar alignments - a full moon
falls on the equinoxes once every eight years). This
continued until Theseus killed
the Minotaur with the help of Ariadne,
Minos' lovestruck daughter.
Nisus
Minos
was
also part of the King Nisus story.
Nisus was King of Megara, and he was invincible as long
as a lock of crimson hair still existed, hidden in his
white hair. Minos attacked Megara but Nisus knew he
could not be beaten because he still had his lock of
crimson hair.[32]
His daughter, Scylla,
fell in love with Minos and proved it by cutting the
crimson hair off her father's head. Nisus died and
Megara fell to Crete. Minos spurned Scylla for
disobeying her father. She was changed into a shearer
bird, relentlessly pursued by her father, who was a
falcon.
The death
of Minos
Minos
searched
for Daedalus by traveling from city to city asking a
riddle; he presented a spiral seashell and asked for it
to be strung all the way through. When he reached
Camicus, Sicily, King Cocalus, knowing Daedalus would be
able to solve the riddle, fetched the old man. He tied
the string to an ant, which walked through the seashell,
stringing it all the way through. Minos then knew
Daedalus was in the court of King Cocalus and demanded
he be handed over. Cocalus managed to convince him to
take a bath first; then Cocalus' daughters and Daedalus,
with Minos trapped in the bath, scalded him to death
with boiling water.
After
his
death, Minos became a judge of the dead in Hades together
with Aeacus and Rhadamanthus.
Rhadamanthus judged the souls of Asians, Aeacus judged
Europeans, and Minos had the deciding vote.[33]
Minos in art
On
Cretan
coins, Minos is represented as bearded, wearing a diadem,
curly-haired, haughty and dignified, like the
traditional portraits of his reputed father, Zeus. On
painted vases and sarcophagus bas-reliefs he frequently
occurs with Aeacus and Rhadamanthus as judges of the
underworld and in connection with the Minotaur and
Theseus.
In
Michelangelo's famous
fresco, The Last Judgment(located
in the Sistine Chapel), Minos
appears as judge of the underworld, surrounded by a
crowd of devils. With his tail coiled around him, Minos
judges the damned as they are brought down to hell (see
Divine Comedy, First
Circle).
In poetry
In
the
Aeneid
of Virgil, Minos
was the judge of those who had been given the death
penalty on a false charge - Minos sits with a gigantic
urn, and decides whether a soul should go to Elysium or Tartarus with the
help of a silent jury. Radamanthus, his brother, is a
judge at Tartarus who decides upon suitable punishments
for sinners there.[34]
In
Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy story Inferno, Minos is
depicted with having a snake-like
tail. He sits at the entrance to the second circle in
the Inferno, which is the beginning of Hell
proper. Here, he judges the sins of each soul and
assigns it to its rightful punishment by indicating the
circle to which it must descend. He does this by
circling his tail around his own body the appropriate
number of times. He can also speak, to clarify the
soul's location within the circle indicated by the
wrapping of his tail.[36]
In books
•Minos
appeared
as an antagonist against Percy Jackson in The Battle of the Labyrinth, the fourth book in the Percy Jacksonseries
by Rick Riordan.
Minos appeared to be helping the character Nico di Angelo raise his
sister, who died in The Titan's
Curse. It was
later revealed that he was working with Luke Castellan to
destroy Olympus. He revealed that he only helped Nico to
trick him into killing Daedalus so he would come back
instead of Bianca.
•King
Minos
and the Minotaur appear in In the Grip of the
Minotaur by Farnham Bishop
and Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, a novel which was serialized in Adventure magazine
in 1916. Set around 1400 B.C., it tells the story of a
group of Northmen who visit the ancient Mediterranean on
a trading mission and become embroiled in intrigues
between the rising power of Troy and the mistress of the
Mediterranean, Crete. Brodeur was a professor at
Berkeley who translated Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson and was a
well-known Beowulf scholar.
The novel was printed in book form for the first time in
2010 (ISBN 978-1-928619-98-7)
by Black Dog Books.
•In
Mark Z.
Danielewski's House of Leaves, the
story of Minos and the Minotaur is referenced several
times, both accurately and inaccurately, when Zampanó
discusses the thematic similarities between it and the
house's labyrinth.
•Minos
appears
as a sympathetic character in Mary Renault's "The King Must
Die". Slowly
succumbing to the rages of leprosy, he hides his face by
wearing a bull mask. Having no heir but an illegitimate
stepson nicknamed "The Minotaur", he sees in captive
Theseus a future king and husband to his daughter,
Ariadne.
6. ^ "We call him Minos, but we do not know
his name, probably the word is a title, like Pharaoh or Caesar, and
covers a multitude of kings" (Will Durant, The Life
of Greece [The Story of Civilization Part
II), New York: Simon & Schuster), 1939:11).
7. ^ Hubert La Marle, Linéaire A :
la première écriture syllabique de Crete,
Geuthner, Paris, 4 volumes, 1997–99 (in vol. 3, ch. XIV
concerns kings and meetings)
8. ^ Younger, John. Critique of Decipherments by Hubert La Marle
and Kjell Aartun.
University of Kansas. 15 August 2009; last update: 5
July 2010 (Retrieved 25 August 2011): [La Marle]
"assigns phonetic values to Linear signs based on
superficial resemblances to signs in other scripts (the
choice of scripts being already prejudiced to include
only those from the eastern Mediterranean and northeast
Africa), as if "C looks like O so it must be O."
16.
^ Powell,
Barry B. Classical Myth. Second ed. With new
translations of ancient texts by Herbert M. Howe. Upper
Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1998, p.
346.
19.
^ Plutarch,
Theseus §16 notes the discrepancy: "on the Attic
stage Minos is always vilified... and yet Minos is said
to have been a king and a lawgiver..." LemprièreA
Classical Dictionary, s.v. "Minos" and
"Minos II".
28.
^Bibliotheke
3.1.3; compare Diodorus Siculus4.77.2
and John Tzetzes,
Chiliades i.479ff. Lactantius Placidus,
commentary on Statius, Thebaid v.431, according
to whom the bull was sent, in answer to Minos's prayer,
not by Poseidon but by Jupiter.
29.
^ The act
would have "returned" the bull to the god who sent it.
30.
^Bibliotheke
3.1.4.
31.
^
Apparently a quotation, according to Sir James George Frazer, (Apollodorus, The Library, with an
English Translation, 1921), commenting on Bibliotheke
3.1.4 (.
32.
^Bibliotheke
3.15.8
33.
^Plato, Gorgias 523a and
524b ff (trans. Lamb)
•Apollodorus,
Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation
by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2
Volumes, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press;
London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921.
•Herodotus,
Herodotus, with an English translation by A. D.
Godley, Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920.
•Homer,
The Iliad with an English Translation by A.T. Murray,
Ph.D. in two volumes, Cambridge, MA., Harvard
University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924.
•Homer,
The Odyssey with an English Translation by A.T.
Murray, PH.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, MA.,
Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann,
Ltd. 1919.
•Thucydides, Thucydides
translated into English; with introduction, marginal
analysis, notes, and indices, Volume 1., Benjamin
Jowett. translator. Oxford. Clarendon Press. 1881.
•Ziolkowski,
Theodore,
Minos and the Moderns: Cretan Myth in
Twentieth-century Literature and Art. (Oxford/New
York: Oxford University Press, 2008). Pp. xii, 173
(Classical Presences).
•Kelides,Yianni
Minos SA: A study of the mind. (Minos SA
University: I love Greece Club, 2000 BC). Pp. xii, 173
(Classical Presences).
The
civilization made famous by the myth of the Minotaur was
as warlike as their bull-headed mascot, new research
suggests.
The ancient people of Crete, also known as Minoan,
were once thought to be a bunch of peaceniks. That view
has become more complex in recent years, but now
University of Sheffield archaeologist Barry Molloy says
that war wasn't just a part of Minoan society — it was a
defining part.
"Ideologies of war are shown to have permeated
religion, art, industry, politics and trade, and the
social practices surrounding martial traditions were
demonstrably a structural part of how this society evolved
and how they saw themselves," Molloy said in a statement.
The
ancient
Minoans
Crete is the largest Greek isle and the site of
thousands of years of civilization, including the Minoans,
who dominated during the Bronze Age, between about 2700
B.C. and 1420 B.C. They may have met their downfall with a
powerful explosion of the Thera volcano, which based on geological evidence
seems to have occurred around this time.
The Minoans are perhaps most famous for the myth of
the Minotaur, a half-man, half-bull that lived in the
center of a labyrinth on the island.
Minoan artifacts were first excavated more than a
century ago, Molloy said, and archaeologists painted a
picture of a peaceful civilization where war played little
to no role. Molloy doubted these tales; Crete was home to
a complex society that traded with major powers such as
Egypt, he said. It seemed unlikely they could reach such
heights entirely cooperatively, he added.
"As I looked for evidence for violence, warriors or
war, it quickly became obvious that it could be found in a
surprisingly wide range of places," Molloy said.
War
or
peace?
For example, weapons such as daggers and swords
show up in Minoan sanctuaries, graves and residences,
Molloy reported in November in The Annual of the British School at
Athens.
Combat sports were popular for men, including boxing,
hunting, archery and bull-leaping, which is exactly what
it sounds like.
Hunting scenes often featured shields and helmets,
Molloy found, garb more suited to a warrior's identity
than to a hunter's. Preserved seals and stone vessels show
daggers, spears and swordsmen. Images of double-headed
axes and boar's tusk helmets
are also common in Cretian art, Molloy reported.
Even the yet-undeciphered language of Minoan may
hint at a violent undercurrent. The hieroglyphs include
bows, arrows, spears and daggers, Molloy wrote. As the
script is untranslated, these hieroglyphs may not
represent literal spears, daggers and weapons, he said,
but their existence reveals that weaponry was key to
Minoan civilization.
"There were few spheres of interaction in Crete
that did not have a martial component," Molloy said.
Some of the violent nature of Minoan society might
have been missed because archaeologists find few fortified
walls on the island, Molloy wrote. It may be that the
island's rugged topography provided its own defense, he
said, leaving little archaeological evidence of battles
behind.
War
was
central to Minoan civilization of Crete, contrary to
popular belief
Summary:
Researchers have discovered that the ancient
civilization of Crete, known as Minoan, had strong
martial traditions, contradicting the commonly held view
of Minoans as a peace-loving people.
Research
from
the University of Sheffield has discovered that the
ancient civilisation of Crete, known as Minoan, had strong
martial traditions, contradicting the commonly held view
of Minoans as a peace-loving people.
The research, carried out by Dr Barry Molloy of the
University of Sheffield's Department of Archaeology,
investigated the Bronze Age people of Crete, known by many
as the Minoans, who created the very first complex urban
civilisation in Europe.
"Their world was uncovered just over a century ago,
and was deemed to be a largely peaceful society,"
explained Molloy. "In time, many took this to be a
paradigm of a society that was devoid of war, where
warriors and violence were shunned and played no
significant role.
"That utopian view has not survived into modern
scholarship, but it remains in the background unchallenged
and still crops up in modern texts and popular culture
with surprising frequency.
"Having worked on excavation and other projects in
Crete for many years, it triggered my curiosity about how
such a complex society, controlling resources and trading
with mighty powers like Egypt, could evolve in an
egalitarian or cooperative context. Can we really be that
positive about human nature? As I looked for evidence for
violence, warriors or war, it quickly became obvious that
it could be found in a surprisingly wide range of places."
Building on recent developments in the study of
warfare in prehistoric societies, Molloy's research
reveals that war was in fact a defining characteristic of
the Minoan society, and that warrior identity was one of
the dominant expressions of male identity.
Molloy continued: "The study shows that the
activities of warriors included such diverse things as
public displays of bull-leaping, boxing contests,
wrestling, hunting, sparring and duelling. Ideologies of
war are shown to have permeated religion, art, industry,
politics and trade, and the social practices surrounding
martial traditions were demonstrably a structural part of
how this society evolved and how they saw themselves."
Even the famous Mycenaeans, heroes of the Greek
Trojan War, took up the Minoan way of war -- adopting its
weaponry, practices and ideologies. "In fact," said
Molloy, "it is to Crete we must look for the origin of
those weapons that were to dominate Europe until the
Middle Ages, namely swords, metal battle-axes, shields,
spears and probably armour also."
Molloy found a "staggering" amount of violence in
the symbolic grammar and material remains from prehistoric
Crete. Weapons and warrior culture were materialised
variously in sanctuaries, graves, domestic units and
hoards. It could also be found in portable media intended
for use during social interactions, for example,
administration, feasting, or personal adornment. "There
were few spheres of interaction in Crete that did not have
a martial component, right down to the symbols used in
their written scripts." said Dr Molloy.
Molloy's research looks at war as a social process
-- looking at the infrastructural and psychological
support mechanisms that facilitated the undertaking of war
and the means through which it was embedded in social
logic. This approach, argues Molloy, leads to a deeper
understanding of war in the Minoan civilisation: "When we
consider war as a normative process that had
cross-references and correlates in other social practices,
we can begin to see warriors and warriorhood permeating
the social fabric of Cretan societies at a systematic
level.
"The social and institutional components of war
impacted on settlement patterns, landscape exploitation,
technological and trade networks, religious practices,
art, administration and more, so that war was indirectly a
constant factor in shaping the daily lives of people in
prehistoric Crete…understanding the social aspects of war
'beyond the battle' is essential if we are to better
understand how elites manipulated economics, religion and
violence in controlling their worlds. By identifying the
material results of warrior lifeways in all of their
disparity and disorder, we gain insights into what war
meant in ancient Crete."
Story Source:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University
of Sheffield. Note:
Materials may be edited for content and length.
1Barry
P.C. Molloy. Martial
Minoans? War as social process, practice and event in
Bronze Age Crete. The Annual of the British
School at Athens, 2012; 107: 87 DOI: 10.1017/S0068245412000044
-------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
7.
Minoan Religion
[N.B.: The last
section of this item, “Evidence for Human Sacrifice” is
disputed. – TKW]
This consists of the following four broad classes,
the last of which will not be dealt with in any detail in
this course:
1.Locations
of cult activity.
2.Representations
of cult activity in Minoan art on such items as seals,
signet rings, mural paintings, sarcophagi (larnakes), and
pottery.
3.The
nature of cult “furniture” (i.e. figurines, “horns of
consecration”, “baetylic pillars”, “libation” jugs,
altars, tripod “tables of offerings”, etc.).
4.Garbled
memories of Minoan cult practice preserved in later Greek
myth and ritual.
Since Linear A is as yet undeciphered, there is
effectively no contemporary textual evidence regarding
Minoan religion. Even if Linear A were deciphered, it is
unlikely that much information regarding Minoan cult
practices, much less Minoan religious ideology, would be
forthcoming above and beyond the names of the divinities
which the Minoans worshipped.
Places
of
Worship
Caves
Caves were first used in Crete as dwellings or at
least as habitation sites in the Neolithic period. Toward
the end of the Neolithic, they also began to be used
extensively as cemeteries, and such usage continued
throughout the Early Minoan period and in some areas even
longer. Caves appear to have first been used as cult
places early in the Middle Minoan (Protopalatial) period,
at more or less the same time when the first Cretan
palaces were being constructed. There may very well be
some connection between the establishment of powerful
central authorities in the palaces and the institution of
worship in caves. The evidence for the use of caves as
cult places consists of pottery, animal figurines, and
occasionally bronze objects. Such objects are found not
only in caves which had previously served habitation or
funerary purposes but also in caves which had as their
earliest known function the housing of some religious
activity. In addition to artifacts, some cult caves
contain large quantities of animal bones, mostly from
deer, oxen, and goats and no doubt derived from some form
of animal sacrifice.
One of the better known cult caves is the “Cave Of
Eileithyia” near Amnisos, associated with the divinity
Eileithyia on the basis of a reference in Homer’s Odyssey.
This cave is some 60 m. long, between 9 and 12 m. wide,
and 2 to 3 m. high. Near the middle of the cave is a
cylindrical stalagmite ca. 1.40 m. high which is enclosed
by a roughly built wall 0.45 m. high. Within the enclosure
and in front of the stalagmite is a roughly square stone,
perhaps some form of altar.
The caves that have furnished by far the richest
assortments of votive objects are: the Kamares Cave, on
the south slope of Mt. Ida at about 6000 feet; the
Dictaean or Psychro Cave, on the west side of the Lasithi
Plain in the foot hills of Mt. Dikte; the Idaean Cave, on
the west side of the Neda Plain and on the northern slopes
of Mt. Ida; and the Arkalochori Cave, not far south of the
newly discovered palace at Galatas (with which the cult at
this cave must have been closely connected). The
Arkalochori Cave in particular has produced an
astonishingly rich array of bronze votives, principally in
the form of weapons such as swords, daggers, and double
axes.
Peak
Sanctuaries
These are cult centers located at, or just below,
the tops of prominent local hills, not necessarily “peaks”
on true “mountains”. Such sites are characterized by deep
layers of ash (without animal bones, hence
interpreted as the remains of bonfires and not of blood
sacrifices of some kind) and by large quantities of clay
human and animal figurines. Like the cult caves discussed
above, the earliest peak sanctuaries date from the MM I
period and most of the two dozen or more confirmed
examples of such cult locales have produced material of
this date. Moreover, the cult caves and peak sanctuaries
are virtually the only sites other than the palaces
themselves to have produced certain artifactual types such
as the finest Kamares pottery, “tables of offerings”, and
objects inscribed in Linear A other than unbaked clay
tablets. Thus a close connection between the palaces on
the one hand and these extramural cult centers on the
other is readily apparent, not simply in the dates of
their respective appearances but also probably in the
ideology behind them and in the human sponsors of that
ideology, the palatial élite.
Many of the human figurines from peak sanctuaries
are in fact individual human limbs or parts of the body,
separately modelled and pierced by a hole for suspension.
It has been suggested that these separate limbs are
comparable to terracotta parts of the body found in
Classical shrines dedicated to healing divinities, and
that by analogy the peak sanctuaries are also to be
understood as those of healing divinities. However, the
parts of the body represented in the Minoan sanctuaries
(arms, legs, and heads primarily) are not exactly parallel
to those found in Classical sanctuaries (which include
numerous eyes, breasts, and genitalia as well as major
limbs). Moreover, the large numbers of animal figurines
found at the peak sanctuaries obviously cannot be
explained in the same way, although these may have served
as substitutes for genuine sacrificial animals or as
votive pledges that such animals would be sacrificed
elsewhere at some other time, since blood sacrifice does
not seem to have been an acceptable practice at peak
sanctuaries. It is likely that the detached human limbs
from these sanctuaries originally formed parts of complete
“dolls” held together by string inserted through the
commonly found perforations. Metal artifacts are found
only exceptionally (e.g. a hoard of non-functional double
axes at Iuktas) and pottery, except for miniature vases,
is equally rare. In both these respects, as well as with
regard to animal bones, the finds from peak sanctuaries
are quite different from those in cult caves.
The two major peak sanctuaries so far excavated and
published are Petsofa in eastern Crete (elevation 215 m.;
serving the town of Palaikastro) and Iuktas (elevation 811
m.; not far south of and hence presumably serving Knossos,
this sanctuary is even closer to Archanes and almost
certainly served this latter center as well). At both
these peak sanctuaries, the earliest period of certifiable
cult use is dated to the beginning of the MM period. In
the earliest levels, there are no architectural remains,
merely the ashy deposits and the figurines already
discussed. In MM III, an imposing building was constructed
on Mt. Iuktas consisting of three parallel terraces,
oriented north-south, of which the upper two at the west
were approached by an east-west ramp at the south. On the
west side of the uppermost terrace, a long stepped altar
(4.70 m. north-south by 0.50 m. high) overlies several
cracks in the bedrock, one of which leads down to a
natural chasm located between the two upper terraces which
has so far been excavated to a depth of 10.50 m. without
the bottom having been reached. The lowermost terrace at
the east consists of a series of five or six roughly
square rooms in a single row, all opening uphill toward
the west. On the downhill, exterior side of this lowermost
terrace to the east, the junction of wall foundation and
wall proper leave a narrow bench 0.45 m. wide running
north-south which evidently served as a display space for
votive offerings. Both the finds and the architecture at
this particular peak sanctuary are of unparalleled
magnificence among cult locales of this class, as one
might perhaps have expected of the sanctuary which served
the site of Knossos. At Petsofa, a three-room building was
first erected in MM III, again a long time after the
sanctuary was first used. It is quite possible that these
peak sanctuaries were visited only on special religious
holidays, much as similar mountaintop chapels are today in
Greece, since in many cases the sanctuaries are too
remotely located to have served daily religious purposes.
A peak sanctuary is portrayed in considerable detail on
the famous Sanctuary Rhyton found in the LM IB destruction
level of the palace at Zakro. It is likely that a peak
sanctuary is also depicted in the northern section of the
Fleet Fresco of LM IA date from Akrotiri on Thera.
Rutkowski has argued, on the basis of various
possible connections between peak sanctuary cult and
pastoral farming (e.g. location of peak sanctuaries in
areas associated with summer transhumance of sheep and
goat herds, frequency of terracotta animal figurines at
peak sanctuaries) that “peak sanctuaries came into
existence mainly to relieve the fears and cares of the
shepherds and cattle breeders.” But the close links
between palatial centers, peak sanctuaries, and cult caves
suggest that Cherry’s view that peak and cave sanctuaries
are evidence for the ideological manipulation of the
ordinary Minoan by an emerging élite who also managed the
palaces is likely to be closer to the truth. The
appearance of permanent architecture at several peak
sanctuaries other than Petsopha and Iuktas no earlier than
MM III (Gonies, Kophinas, Modhi, Pyrgos, Traostalos,
Vrysinas) has been connected with the appearance of villas
throughout Neopalatial Crete and with what some feel to be
the enhanced authority of Knossos at about the same time.
Rutkowski has suggested that peak sanctuary cult became
more institutionalized in the Neopalatial period under
Knossian royal authority, perhaps with permanent priests
in residence at the sites now boasting architecture. In
this scenario, Iuktas is felt to have occupied the apex of
a hierarchy of peak sanctuaries. much as Knossos did in
one of villas and palaces. Peak sanctuaries appear to go
into steep decline after the end of LM I, in contrast with
cult caves which continue to be patronized frequently
during the LM III period. The decline in peak sanctuaries,
however, is probably limited to the east where in the
period following LM IB there was a dramatic decline in
population, whether due to the fallout from the Santorini
eruption or to a Mycenaean invasion. In the center and
west of the island where settlement was continuous from LM
IB through LM II and into LM IIIA, there is good evidence
for continuity of cult at peak sanctuaries such as Mt.
Iuktas.
Domestic
Shrines
In her recent study of such cult places, Gesell
distinguishes between three social contexts [town (fully
public), palace (semi-private? for ruling class only?),
and house (private)] and three architectural types [bench
sanctuary, lustral basin, pillar crypt]. Only the bench
sanctuary may be attested as early as the Prepalatial (EM)
period (e.g. the supposed shrine at Myrtos in which the
so-called “Goddess of Myrtos” was found), to survive
throughout Minoan prehistory and into the Iron Age. Pillar
crypts and lustral basins are forms which are restricted
to the Protopalatial and Neopalatial periods.
Four of the best known Minoan sanctuaries of the
domestic class are briefly described below:
(1) Shrine of
the Double Axes at Knossos
(Gesell 1985: no.37, Plan 25, Pls. 46, 118)
Post-Palatial (LM IIIB) bench sanctuary located in
the southeast quarter of the palace at Knossos. This tiny
(1.5 m. x 1.5 m.) shrine was abandoned with its religious
furniture insitu and is thus extremely
valuable as a source for our understanding of Minoan
religion at least toward the end of the Bronze Age. The
room’s floor area is divided into three sections at
different levels. In the front (lowest) part lie several
large vases. In the middle area, a tripod “table of
offerings” is embedded in the floor, and to either side of
it are groups of small jugs and cups. At the back of the
room is a raised bench ca. 0.60 m. high on which are fixed
two stuccoed clay “horns of consecration”. In each case,
between the “horns” is a round socket, presumably to hold
a double axe such as the small one of steatite found
resting against the left-hand pair of “horns”. (The
evidence for such a reconstruction comes from the
iconography of seals and vase-painting, in both of which a
central double axe between the “horns” is common.) Between
the two pairs of “horns” were found a bell-shaped female
figurine and a smaller female statuette of Neolithic type,
perhaps a treasured heirloom. To the left of the left-hand
pair of “horns” was a male figurine holding out a dove,
while to the right of the right-hand pair were two more
bell-shaped female figurines, one with a bird perched on
her head. The last is often considered to be a goddess
while the remaining figures are identified as votaries.
(2) Town Shrine
at Gournia
(Gesell 1985: no.10, Plan 4, Pl. 119)
Post-Palatial (LM IIIB) bench sanctuary located
near highest point of settlement, close to its center.
This small (3 m. x 3 m.) shrine belongs neither to a
palace nor to any other large building, but is rather a
self-contained architectural unit approached by a cobbled
road leading up the hill from the west. It was in a rather
poor state of preservation when excavated, but its floor
was littered with a large amount of cult paraphernalia,
some of it comparable to that from the roughly
contemporary Shrine of the Double Axes at Knossos. The
lack of associated pottery makes the dating of this shrine
somewhat uncertain, but it probably was last used in the
LM IIIB period. There was a low bench along its right-hand
(southern) wall. In the northeast corner was a plastered
tripod “table of offerings” around which were placed four
“snake-tubes”, the base of a fifth “snake-tube” resting on
the tripod “table of offerings” itself. Found in the
debris of the rooms was a bell-shaped female figurine,
around whose body is twined a snake. Two snakes also twist
around one of the “snake-tubes”. Fragments of other human
figurines were found, as well as four terracotta birds and
two terracotta snakes’ heads.
(3) Sanctuary
Complex to West of Central Court at Knossos
(Gesell 1985: no.33a-f, Plan 19, Pl. 22)
Approached by a short and shallow flight of steps
leading down from the central court, this complex has
several distinct elements, all of which are accessible
from a single stone-paved anteroom with a short stone
bench against its north wall, the Lobby of the Stone Seat.
To the west through a pier-and-door partition are two
pillar crypts of similar size (3.5 m. x 5.3 m.), both with
a central pillar liberally incised with double axes on all
exposed faces of each block (including the top surface of
the uppermost block in each pillar) except for the west
faces of the blocks in the eastern pillar. Both crypts are
of Neopalatial date, the eastern with two rectangular
basins ca. 0.25 m. deep sunk into the floor to east and
west of the rectangular central pillar (cf. the pillar
crypts in the Royal Villa and Temple Tomb), the western
with a depressed rectangular space in its paved floor all
around the square central pillar. Two narrow storage rooms
oriented north-south open off of the eastern pillar crypt
and under the threshold leading into the eastern one was
found a rich collection of fragmentary cult paraphernalia
of MM IA date (the Vat Room Deposit: faïence figurine
fragments, beads, and inlays; clay sealings; gold sheet;
copper beads; shell inlays; etc.).
To the north of the Lobby of the Stone Seat, two
storage chambers oriented east-west open off of each other
in a fashion comparable to the organization of the pillar
crypts just described. The southern (the Room of the Tall
Pithos) is unremarkable, but under the floor of the second
(Temple Repositories) were found two empty, shallow cists
below which were two larger and considerably deeper cists
filled with MM III pottery in the uppermost 1.10 m. of
fill and with fragmentary cult paraphernalia and greasy
earth containing carbonized botanical material and stag
horns in the lowest 0.40-0.50 m. The cult items include
three largely preserved “snake goddesses” of faïence as
well as fragments of others, miniature votive robes in
faïence, faïence plaques of a cow and a wild goat nursing
their young, shells, crystal, ivory, and faïence inlays,
stone “tables of offering”, a marble cross, scraps of gold
foil, etc., etc.
To the northeast of the Lobby of the Stone Seat and
facing onto the central court are the foundations of a
Neopalatial Tripartite Shrine, largely restorable on the
basis of the painted representation of such a shrine in
the miniature Grandstand Fresco. Finally, to the southwest
of the Lobby of the Stone Seat, fallen from a room above
christened the “Treasure Chamber”, was found a cache of
twenty-four Neopalatial stone vases, twelve of them rhyta
(including three in the form of lions’ heads) and several
of them Egyptian imports.
Not all portions of this complex are restorable at
any one moment in time, but together they reveal that this
area of the palace was a focus of cult activity from the
earliest days of the palace or even just before its
construction (Vat Room Deposit of MM IA) down through the
Neopalatial period and perhaps even into the Post-Palatial
era, at which time pithoi and Linear B tablets show that
the area in and around the Lobby of the Stone Seat was a
central storage facility and point of disbursement for
oil.
(4) Throne Room
Complex to West of Central Court at Knossos
(Gesell 1985: no.34a-f, Plan 22, Pl. 10)
Located near the northeast corner of the west wing
of the Knossian palace, the “Throne Room” proper is part
of a larger four- or five-room block which was apparently
devoted first and foremost to cult rather than to the
display or exercising of political authority. The anteroom
(6.0 m. x 5.7 m.) is entered through a pier-and-door
partition and down three shallow steps from the central
court (cf. a similar entrance to the “Men’s Hall” in the
Little Palace from the peristyle court to its south).
There may have been a wooden throne against the right-hand
(northern) wall of the anteroom between two short lengths
of a gypsum bench. A longer gypsum bench runs along the
entire south side of the room and the floor is
attractively paved with stone slabs. To the west and
entered through an off-centered doorway is the Throne Room
proper, named after the stone throne (Europe’s oldest) set
against the north wall and flanked by stone benches which
also extend along the west wall and in front of the
parapet which separates the area around the throne from
the Lustral Basin to the south. Flanking the throne, as
well as the door leading out of the room to the west, are
pairs of large, antithetical wingless griffins; the throne
is also immediately bounded on both sides by a palm tree
directly above an example of the so-called
“triglyph-and-half-rosette” pattern, here possibly to be
understood rather as an altar with incurved sides. The
southern part of the room is occupied by a large Lustral
Basin (the scene of the Minotaur’s murder by Theseus in
Mary Renault’s The King Must Die). The floor of
the room was attractively paved with a border of gypsum
slabs framing a central rectangle of red-painted plaster.
Near the east entrance, this floor was covered with an
overturned pithos and five stone alabastra (normally
stored in shallow sinkings on the west side of the
north-south corridor immediately west of the Lustral
Basin), a circumstance which suggested to Evans that a
ritual may actually have been in progress when the palace
burned down early in the LM IIIA2 period (ca. 1385 B.C.).
Behind the Throne Room to the west are two small chambers
or annexes which served to house cult paraphernalia and
two more storage chambers also accessible from the Throne
Room by means of a short north-south corridor lie to the
south. In its present state, the Throne Room block dates
from LM II-IIIA2 early, the period of the Mycenaean
occupation of Knossos.
Minoan
Cult
Furniture
Double Axe
Although some large bronze examples of the {double
axe}, the most common of all Minoan religious symbols,
were clearly used as tools, miniature specimens in
unsuitable and sometimes precious materials (e.g. gold,
silver, lead, steatite, terracotta), as well as very
fragile bronze examples (e.g. the gigantic specimens from
Nirou Khani), must have had a purely sumbolic function.
The earliest examples date from the middle of the EM
period. Double axes often appear in representational
scenes, usually set in the top of stone bases or between
“horns of consecration”. Their precise significance is
disputed. In the Near East, axes of this sort are often
wielded by male divinities and appear to be symbols of the
thunderbolt. Since in Crete the double axe is never held
by a male divinity, an alternative view which ascribes its
frequency in art to its popularity as a sacrificial
instrument has considerable appeal. Miniature examples may
have functioned as charms or amulets. Plutarch (Quaestiones
Graecae 302A), a Greek author of the second century
A.D., reports that the Carian (a southwest Anatolian
population) word for double axe was labrys, a word
likely to be connected with the mythological name for
Minos’ palace and the Minotaur’s lair at Knossos, labyrinthos
(= “place of the double axe”?).
“Horns of Consecration”
Examples of “{horns of consecration}” at various
scales and occur both as three-dimensional objects of
stone or terracotta (e.g. just south of the Theatral Area
at Knossos or in a niche along one side of the court at
Nirou Khani; twice on the bench in the Shrine of the
Double Axes at Knossos), often stuccoed, and as painted or
sculpted representations on murals, altars, vases, seals,
and larnakes. Typically they serve either as stands for a
narrow range of other cult implements (double axes,
libation jugs, branches) or as architectural crowning
members (on both altars and roofs). The original
significance of the “horns” is uncertain. It has been
suggested that they are stylized bulls’ horns, a symbol of
the moon’s crescent or of the rising sun, or simply an odd
form of pot support.
Altars and Sacrificial
Tables
There are a number of types, perhaps the commonest
of which are: (a) stepped (as on the Ayia Triadha
sarcophagus) (b) rectangular, with a cap projecting all
around at the top (c) round or rectangular in plan, with
incurving sides in profile, and apparently portable. In
scenes of animal sacrifice, a table rather than one of the
above forms of altar is used as the surface on top of
which the victim was bound and slaughtered (cf. Ayia
Triadha sarcophagus). Altars of type (c) are often found
in association with gates or major entranceways, as shown
by M. Shaw, sometimes in multiples of two (Lion Gate at
Mycenae) or four (main entrance to the Tourkogeitonia
complex at Archanes)
“Table of
Offerings”
In form, the “{table of offerings}” is basically a
thick disc resting on three short legs and having a
shallow depression in the top. Usually made of clay and
occasionally stuccoed, these items may have served
sometimes simply as portable hearths. Legless versions,
rectangular in plan and made of stone rather than clay,
are usually referred to as “{libation table}s”.
Kernos [kernoi, in the
plural]
A {kernos} is simply a ceramic vessel consisting of
multiple receptacles of the same shape. Vessels of this
sort are a fairly prominent feature of the Phylakopi I
culture in the Cyclades, but there need be no connection
either typologically or functionally between the Minoan
and Cycladic forms. The term “kernos” is that applied to
similar vessels used in Classical mystery cults at Eleusis
and elsewhere.
“Snake Tube”
A “{snake tube}” is a tall, cylindrical ceramic
vessel, sometimes lacking a bottom, with snakes
occasionally modelled in relief on the exterior. Gesell
has shown that such objects should probably be identified
as stands designed to support shallow bowls and dishes
which held either incense or offerings of some kind. That
is, they were probably not intended to be “houses” for a
domestic snake, as their name implies. Most examples date
from LM IIIB-C, and they may therefore all be examples of
an item associated with Post-Palatial Minoan cult.
{Libation Jug}
This is simply a specimen of a special form of ewer
having a globular body, a tall neck, a beaked mouth, and a
high-swung loop handle.
Pillar-shaped Stones (or
{baetyl}s)
An example of such a natural form at a cult
location is the stalagmite in the Cave of Eileithyia at
Amnisos. On seals, free-standing columns or pillars, both
with and without capitals, are shown within small
enclosures and in the presence of worshippers. Such
columns or baetyls also appear flanked by antithetic
animals (e.g. the relief on the Lion Gate at Mycenae). The
place of the column may be taken by a human figure,
arguably a god or goddess, in what is otherwise a closely
comparable composition. The column or baetyl may therefore
symbolize a deity or be a symbol for the palace of the
king (as is often argued for the column in the Lion Gate
relief) or for the shrine of a divinity. In this
connection, the flanking animals are considered to be
“protectors”, appropriately enough in that they are
usually lions or griffins. In the pillar crypts of Minoan
palaces and villas, square piers are often found incised
with a variety of signs, including double axes, stars, and
tridents. Although these piers serve a structural
function, they may also have been considered sacred in
some sense. Hence it has often been suggested that the
signs incised on them constitute some form of divine
invocation to secure the building in which they occur
against the dangers of earthquake and fire.
Trees
On the Ayia Triadha sarcophagus, libations are
being poured into a {krater}, or mixing bowl, set between
the bases of two tall columns. Each of these columns is
capped by a double axe on which sits a bird. The columns
are covered with green projections and so may be intended
to resemble trees (date palms?) or simply to be columns
covered with leaves. Leaves in the form of lengths of the
foliate band pattern sometimes substitute for the handles
of double axes in vase-painting, while branches are often
set up between “horns of consecration”. On seals, a tree
often appears inside a small enclosure in the presence of
worshippers and appears to have the same function in such
a context as the columns or baetyls discussed above.
Birds, Bulls, Agrimia,
and Snakes
Birds appear frequently in religious scenes (e.g.
the Ayia Triadha sarcophagus). An individual bird is
usually identified as a “{divine epiphany}” – that is, as
the manifestation of a divine being (in this instance, in
non-human form) – although sometimes a bird appears to be
an identifying attribute of a divinity rather than
an alternative form of one. Other frequently
occurring animals are bulls, {agrimi}a (Cretan ibexes or
mountain goats), and snakes. The first two often occur in
the form of votive figurines and probably figured
importantly as sacrificial animals. The last may have been
a prominent symbol in earth (orchthonic) cults, just as
birds may have been in sky (or atmospheric) cults.
Demons [sometimes
called Minoan genii]
At first glance, this animal-headed figure wearing
what appears to be a loose skin over its back and commonly
carrying a libation jug, looks like a man in costume, but
its legs and feet are those of an animal. Occasionally
portrayed in the pose of the “Master of Animals”, this
{demon} or {Minoan genius} is a corruption of the Egyptian
goddess Ta-wrt, who occurs in the form of a hippotamus. In
Egypt, Ta-wrt is a beneficent spirit but not a major
divinity. In Crete, demons often appear in multiples of
between two and four (when the pictorial field in question
provides sufficient space to accommodate them) and to
function as divine servants. On the so-called Genius
Rhyton from Mallia, the two sizes of genius depicted
suggest that the Minoans may have conceived of them as a
category of being that could somehow be ranked by age or
status.
The
Ayia
Triadha Sarcophagus
The sarcophagus was found in a looted tomb of the
early 14th century B.C. (LM IIIA) at Ayia Triadha. The
form of the tomb was unusual, but its few remaining
contents, aside from the sarcophagus itself, were
unremarkable. The sarcophagus is unusual in that it is a
rare stone version of the otherwise common enough
terracotta burial chest or larnax. The scenes on the
sarcophagus, painted on lime plaster applied over the
limestone body of the chest, are unique in Aegean funerary
art. Quotations in the descriptions below are taken from
C. Long, The Ayia Triadha Sarcophagus (Göteborg
1974).
Front
Side
“The pouring scene represents the mixing of
liquids, probably wine and water, in a krater in honor of
a goddess or goddesses symbolized by the double axes
mounted on either side of the krater. The birds perched on
the double axes probably indicate the arrival of the
deity(-ies) and have been summoned by the music of the
lyre….” The ceremony takes place outside the tomb. “The
Minoan funerary libation would not require the quantity of
liquid being prepared in the krater, and the scene might
better be regarded as the preparation for the Mycenaean
funerary toast.”
“The recipient in the presentation scene probably
represents the spirit of the deceased observing that his
obsequies are being performed with all proper dignity and
beginning to sink beneath the ground on his way to the
afterworld, as does the ghost of Patroklos in the Iliad.
His motionless stance with arms concealed indicates he is
neither deity nor living human, nor is he wrapped like an
Egyptian mummy or laid out like the corpses on the Tanagra
larnakes. The rite being performed may have been intended
to secure for the deceased a happy life after death in
addition to admission to the afterworld….The building
behind the recipient can be equated with the tomb in which
the sarcophagus was found…. The boat might provide
transportation for the journey to the afterworld, and the
cattle might represent either sustenance for the journey
or the bulls supplied for funeral games in honor of the
deceased. The absence of parallels for the gifts in cult
presentation scenes may be evidence that they are
funerary.”
West
End
In the upper register is a fragmentary male
processional scene (something being brought to the tomb?),
while a chariot drawn by two Agrimia and carrying
two women fills the lower register.Agrimia appear to have
had religious connotations in a good deal of Minoan art,
and it is possible that the two women in the lower
register are as a consequence both goddesses. If they are
indeed goddesses, they seem to have no connection with the
mortal scene above but may indicate by their participation
in the procession that they are favorably disposed toward
the dead.
Back
Side
At the right is a shrine with a tree at its center.
To the left of the shrine is an altar, above which is a
libation jug and a basket-shaped vase (kalathos)
full of fruit (?). A woman stands in front of the altar
with her hands held palms down above it. Behind her is a
sacrificial table on which a bull is strapped down for
sacrifice. Below the table and fixed in the ground is a
conical rhyton into which the bull’s blood will drain and
thus seep into the earth. Next to the rhyton and perhaps
held in reserve for a second stage of the sacrifice are
twoagrimia. Behind the table is a flute player. Further to
the left is a procession of female figures, only the first
of whom is well preserved. This figure advances to the
right with her arms outstretched and palms down. The
indication of the hands’ position and the arrangements for
the blood to drip into the ground indicate that the
sacrifice is to an earth (“chthonic”) or underworld
figure. It is probable that this sacrifice is part of the
funerary rites on behalf of the deceased on the opposite
side.
East
Side
A pair of females ride in a chariot drawn by two
winged griffins, above which flies a single bird. The two
females must be divinities because of the supernatural
form of the griffins. Like the females on the opposite
end, these figures are probably to be interpreted as
escorts for the deceased on his way to the Underworld.
Problems
Are all the scenes to be interpreted as having a
single focus or theme? Or are the scenes on the front
(pretty obviously indicative of a cult of the dead) to be
separated from those on the back (arguably some kind of
divine cult, perhaps connected with a deity of
vegetation)? Some authorities are so impressed by the
evidence for divine cult in these scenes that they deny
any connection at all with a cult of the dead and identify
the figure of the “dead man” as a god or as the image of a
god. Others maintain that all the scenes are connected
with a cult of the dead: the double axes should be
understood as cult objects which can serve in both divine
and mortuary cults, while the birds may as well represent
the soul of the dead as the epiphany of a deity.
Nilsson felt that both divine and mortuary cults
were involved and saw only one way in which to resolve
this dichotomy, namely to assume that the dead man was
deified and worshipped after his death. He associated this
“heroization” of the dead man with the notion that the
dead individual was in fact a Mycenaean overlord of Ayia
Triadha and not a Minoan. The mixture of the two forms of
cult (mortuary and divine) on the sarcophagus thus became
for him a Minoan response to the demands of their
Mycenaean overlords. But there is no evidence from the
tomb for any cult associated with the dead man. In fact,
the sarcophagus was re-used, which suggests that no
special veneration was accorded either the corpse or its
tomb. Moreover, there is very little evidence from Greek
Mainland sites for a Mycenaean cult of the dead persisting
for any appreciable length of time after an individual’s
burial.
Minoan
Divinities
A survey of the representational art which
illustrates Minoan religious activities clearly indicates
that those figures which are plausibly to be identified as
divinities rather than as mortals are overwhelmingly of
the female sex. In addition, it is clear that, if
individual divinities are to be identified on the basis of
different sets of attributes associated with particular
figures, several distinct Minoan goddesses existed.
The
Snake
Goddess
Represented by the MM III “Snake Goddesses” of the
Temple Repositories at Knossos as well as by some of the
later bell-shaped terracotta figurines of the LM III
period, this particular goddess is usually considered to
be a household divinity and interestingly does not appear
on seals.
Mistress
of
Animals (or of the Mountain)
A famous seal impression from Knossos (Nilsson
1950: Pl.18:1; Gesell 1985: Fig.114) shows a female figure
holding a staff and standing on top of a cairn or rocky
hill. She is flanked by antithetic lions, beyond which are
a shrine on one side and a saluting male on the other. A
second seal from Knossos (Nilsson 1950: Pl.18:4) shows a
capped female with a staff walking next to a lion, another
pose of the same Mistress of Animals figure.
Goddess
of
Vegetation
Dominating female figures on a number of seals
(e.g. Nilsson 1950: Pl.17:1) are often identified as
deities.
Male
Divinity
Male figures identifiable as divinities are rare
and are often represented on a smaller scale than female
figures, not necessarily deities themselves, in the same
scene.
(a)Seal
showing a male with a spear (?) descending through the air
in front of a large pillar with a pillar-shrine further
behind. The female in front of him is usually considered
to be saluting or “adoring” him (Nilsson 1950: Pl. 13:4).
(b)A
youthful (i.e. beardless) male is occasionally depicted on
seals standing between “horns of consecration” or posing
as a Master of Animals (Nilsson 1950: Pls. 19:4, 20:4).
(c)A tiny
figure standing behind a figure-of-eight shield in the air
above a series of much larger female figures is sometimes
identified as a male divinity (Nilsson 1950: Pl.17:1).
Evidence
for
Human Sacrifice
Two fairly recent discoveries strongly suggest that
the Minoans indulged in this “barbaric” form of blood
sacrifice.
Protopalatial
Sanctuary
at Anemospilia (Archanes)
Excavated in the summer of 1979, this four-room
building set within a low enclosure (temenos) wall
serves as a reminder that our views about a past culture
may be subject to sudden and drastic change as the result
of a single new discovery. The building, oriented roughly
to the cardinal points and entered from the north, lies on
the northern slopes of Mt. Iuktas some seven kilometers
south of Knossos. In plan, it consists of an east-west
corridor at the front off of which open three
non-connecting rectangular rooms oriented north-south. In
the east room were found large numbers of clay vessels
containing agricultural produce, many of them arranged on
a series of three steps, perhaps an altar, at the back
(south) end of the room. In the central room, more vases
containing agricultural produce were found. These too
tended to be located toward the south (rear) end of the
room, in the vicinity of a raised platform on which were
found two terracotta feet, all that remained, in the
excavators’ opinion, of a cult statue made mostly of wood,
only the carbonized remains of which were actually
discovered. Near the statue and its base, part of the
limestone bedrock was left exposed above floor level
rather than being cut down and the excavators identify
this outcrop as a “sacred stone” over which blood
offerings may have been poured. In the west room, three
skeletons were found in positions which indicated that all
three had met a violent end:
(1)An
18-year-old male, the skeleton so tightly contracted that
he is considered to have been trussed in a fashion
comparable to that of the sacrificial bull on the Ayia
Triadha sarcophagus, was found lying on his right side on
a platform in the center of the room. Among his bones was
a bronze dagger 0.40 m. long, on each side of which was
incised the frontal head of a boar. Close beside the
platform (or sacrificial altar) had stood a pillar with a
trough around its base, the trough probably designed to
catch the blood from animal (and human) sacrifices. The
dead youth’s bones were discolored in such a way (those on
his upper/left side being white, those on his lower/right
side being black) as to suggest to a visiting physical
anthropologist that the youth, estimated to have been 5′
5″ tall, had died from loss of blood.
(2)A
28-year-old female of medium build was found spreadeagled
in the southwest corner of the room.
(3)A male
in his late thirties, 6′ tall, was found on his back near
the sacrificial platform, his hands raised as though to
protect his face, his legs broken by fallen building
debris. On
the little finger of his left hand he wore a ring of
silver and iron. On a thong around his wrist he wore a
stone seal on which the intaglio device was a boat.
In the corridor constituting the front room of the
building, aside from rows of still more vessels containing
agricultural produce, was found a fourth skeleton, too
poorly preserved for sex and age to be determinable. Scattered widely
around this body were found 105 joining fragments of a
bucket-shaped clay vessel bearing a red-spotted bull in
relief as decoration on one side. This was the only vase
of the roughly four hundred vessels recovered from the
building to be found littered over such a wide area, and
the excavators theorize that it was dropped in the
corridor by the fourth person when (s)he was felled by the
collapsing debris of the building.
The sanctuary was destroyed by fire, probably as
the result of an earthquake, at the end of MM II, possibly
in the same earthquake which destroyed the Old Palaces at
Knossos and Phaistos at this time. The collapsing roof and
masonry of the upper walls killed three of the four
individuals found within the structure, but the
eighteen-year-old was probably already dead. A somewhat
similar isolated shrine of the same period, although
lacking the dramatic artifactual and human finds of the
Anemospilia sanctuary, was excavated in the 1960′s at
Mallia (Gesell 1985: no.76).
Site
of
Western Extension to Stratigraphical Museum at Knossos
In a LM IB context in excavations just to one side
of the Royal Road some distance northwest of the Little
Palace at Knossos, 327 children’s bones were found in a
burnt deposit in the basement of a building christened the
North House. Originally attributed to between eight and
eleven children provisionally aged between ten and fifteen
years old, between 21% and 35% of these bones, which
included skull fragments as well as other bones, all found
in an unarticulated heap, exhibited “fine knife marks,
exactly comparable to butchery marks on animal bones,
resulting from the removal of meat. Cannibalism seems
clearly indicated. Among possible interpretations are
ritual usage (otherwise unexampled in the open town of
Knossos) and lack of all other food because of poisoning
or other deleterious effect of gases or fall out from
intense activity of the volcano of Thera.” Subsequent
analysis has revealed that the bones in fact need belong
to no more than four individuals, two of whom can be quite
precisely aged by means of their teeth to eight and twelve
years. Some phalanges (finger or toe bones) from young
humans, a human vertebra with a knife cut, some marine
shells, some shells of edible snails, and burnt earth were
found filling a pithos in the “Cult Room Basement”, a room
across a corridor from the “Room of the Children’s Bones”
in which the cache of 327 children’s bones were found. The
context within the pithos suggests that some portions of
young children were cooked together with a variety of
other edible substances. Together with the major
concentration of children’s bones were also found some
sheep bones including articulated vertebrae. One of the
latter had a cut mark in a position indicating that the
beast’s throat had been slit, so that sheep sacrifice may
have been connected with the death and dismemberment of
the children, whom forensic experts have established to
have been in perfect health at the time of their deaths.
There is unfortunately no method by which these skeletons
can be accurately sexed, so we remain ignorant as to
whether they belonged to boys, girls, or both. Could there
be some connection between these butchered children, the
youths and maidens who jump bulls in Minoan
representational art, and the tribute of Athenian boys and
girls paid to the legendary king Minos to which Theseus,
the heroic Athenian prince, put a stop with the loving
help of Minos’ daughter Ariadne by killing the monstrous
Minotaur?
Credits Project
sponsored by Dartmouth College. Site and content developed
by: Jeremy B. Rutter, Professor of Classics, Dartmouth
College; JoAnn Gonzalez-Major, Instructional Designer.
There
were many types of Minoan burial on Crete, with Cave
burials, Chamber tomb or tholos tombs all being popular in
different parts of the island.
Burial
was a reflection of life. Bodies were interred with their
everyday possessions as well as special funerary items.
Some burials were individual but it was more common to for
ancient Cretan tombs to be communal. These communal tombs
could be for the dead of whole communities or for
particular clans.
Minoan Pithoi and Larnax
Burials
The dead
of ancient Crete were commonly interred in groups rather
than individual graves. In the very early Minoan period,
it was common for generation after generation to be added
to the same tomb in discriminatively with only a layer of
white sand placed over the bodies. This led to bones and
grave goods becoming mixed together. Often, they would be
swept to one side to make room for others.
Towards
the beginning of the middle Minoan period, methods of
interment in communal tombs began to change. Sometimes
wooden coffins or biers were used. But more commonly,
individual burials occurred in stone or terracotta vessels
known as larnax or pithoi.
Larnax
burials.A larnax was a large stone, terracotta or marble
pot which was oval in shape. Each vessel would be placed
into pits cut into the earth or else individually in
tombs. It as a burial type peculiar to Crete.
Pithoi.Similar to the larnax, the pithoi was a pottery
vessel commonly used for storing foodstuffs. They were
large enough to accommodate children or infants for
burial.
Minoan Burial Goods
Minoan
grave goods varied. They could be items used by the
individual in life. Pottery and stone vessels, tools,
seals, weapons, jewellery have all been found interred
with the dead that show signs of regular use, indicating
that they were personal possessions. Food and drink would
also accompany the decease into the afterlife.
Grave
goods also included items specifically funerary objects.
These included stone vases, so small that they were
impractical for everyday use. Vessels shaped like animals
or people were also common. Archaeologists can establish
them as specifically for the grave as they are not found
amongst household objects during excavations of Minoan
towns and homes.
The
types of tombs that burials occurred in varied across
Minoan Crete.
Minoan Cave Burials
Cave
burials were the earliest types of Minoan burial. Dating
from the Neolithic, they can be regarded as a precursor of
later chamber or house tombs. Generally, they continued to
be favoured more in the far east and far west of the
island. Bodies were interred communally in small
depressions. Famous Minoan cave burials can be found at
the Trapeza cave and Yerondomouri cave.
Chamber Tombs
Chamber
or house tombs were common in the north of Minoan Crete.
They first began to appear in the early Minoan period.
They were circular or horse shoe shaped, built of stone
slabs and finished with flat roofs. Inside were square or
polygonal interior chambers and a threshold entrance that
could be sealed with a stone slab.
Famous
chamber tombs include the South Royal tomb at Gypsades,
near Knossos which was a two story structure with a
courtyard, portico, antechamber and pillared main square
chamber.
Minoan Tholos Tombs
Most
commonly found in central to southern Crete, tholoi were
generally popular during the early to middle Minoan
period. seventy examples are known across Crete, situated
over forty different sites.
Tholos
tombs, which were also common on the Greek mainland, are
circular with a domed roof which gives the structure its
name. The walls were made thick and made of rough stone
bound with clay. The diameters of tholoi across Crete
varied between four and thirteen meters. Entrances were
usually small and east facing.
Tholoi
may have belonged to individual family groups rather to
one settlement as a whole as examples have been found of
several tombs in use in the same area at the same time.
Source(s):
Minoan
Crete: From Myth to History (1999) by Andonis Vasilakis.
Adam Editions: Athens
The Late Minoan III cemetery of Armeni
is located 8 kilometres south of Rethymno on the road to
Spili and Ayia Galini. The site has been excavated since
1969 by Yiannis Tzedakis. Over 200 chamber tombs and one tholos
tomb have so far been discovered, all oriented towards
the northeast and the Vryssinas mountain, which was at one
time the site of a peak sanctuary. The chamber tombs are
cut into what is quite a soft rock, known locally as
kouskouras, but the rock was hard enough for the tombs to
remain well preserved.
A network of paths ran through the
cemetery. Low banks were created on either side of the
paths using the material dug from the tombs and the
dromoi. The paths were wide enough for carts carrying
larnakes [note 1 below] to
pass. Smaller and larger tombs, which have been identified
as the resting places of respectively the higher status
and lower status deceased, were, at least initially, kept
separate from each other.
The tombs
The chamber
tombs are built in two distinct styles, dug out of the
rock. In the first type, there is a large tomb with a long
dromos. Steps lead down from ground level to the beginning
of the dromos. The second type is a small tomb with a
short dromos in the form of a ramp, with no steps or in
some cases, no ramp but just a few steps leading directly
to the entrance of the tomb. In many tombs, cavities have
been carved out of the walls of the dromos either near the
entrance to the dromos or near the chamber itself. Objects
such as beads, a vase or a small statue would be placed in
the cavity. In three of them, infant burials were found.
The entrance to each tomb was sealed by a large slab of
stone.
The tombs were
constructed by partially carving out the dromos for its
whole length. Next the chamber was carved out. Sometimes
the rock proved too difficult to cut
and the tomb was left unfinished. If the carving out of
the tomb was a success the dromos was then completed. In
cases where it was not possible to complete the tomb
offerings of beads were left in the hole that had been dug
while a broken vase was often placed in the dromos.
There were three
types of chamber, circular, semi-circular and in the case
of the most prestigious tombs, rectangular with a low
bench along one or more of the walls. The most imposing
tomb (number 159) had a dromos of 15.50 metres and a
staircase with 25 steps. The entrance to the chamber was
two metres high, the size of a normal doorway. A pillar
supported the east wall. To the left and right of the tomb
entrance two rectangular column bases were found, cut in
the rock. Tzedakis believes these were used to support
wooden columns. Four more bases were found in the four
corners of the benches which ran along the four walls of
the tomb. A small crypt was covered with a stele. Remains
of a wooden stretcher which had been used to carry the
body to the tomb were also found. The body would have been
placed in one of the larnakes found inside the tomb.
The single tholos
tomb dates from LM II to LM IIIA1. The dromos was a little
over four and a half metres long and began with two steps
and a small cavity cut into the north wall. The entrance
to the tomb had been sealed by a large stone slab. The
diameter of the circular tomb was 2.45 metres and it had
been cut into the rock. The tomb had collapsed but some
objects were recovered. These included two bronze swords,
three vases and some small beads.
Perhaps the most
interesting find, however, was a steatite pendant with a
Linear A inscription. Although the tomb is the oldest in
the cemetery Tzedakis argues that the pendant dates from
an even earlier period and must have been passed down to
the person whose grave goods it formed part of.
The finds
Among the finds in
the tombs were pottery, bronze vessels, tools, jewellery,
stone vases and four cylindrical seals
from the Middle East.
The pottery finds
were particularly numerous and included stirrup jars,
cups, small jars, beaked jugs and craters. The ceramics
came from various sources including the well-known pottery
workshop of LM III Kydonia, the workshops at Knossos and
eastern Crete and local workshops. A stirrup jar bearing a
Linear B inscription was recovered from one tomb. The
inscription was the name of a man well known from the
Minoan archives of Linear B inscriptions. Some of the few
examples in Crete of vases with enamelled tin were also
found in the cemetery and according to Tzedakis attest to
trade between Armeni and the eastern Mediterranean.
Clay larnakes decorated with double axes, sacred horns of
consecration and scenes of ritual hunting and of bulls
were also found. They had been used during the 14th and
13th centuries and provide us with the finest group of
larnakes found in Crete. They formed two distinct groups.
The first group had four feet and only one panel of the
four-sided larnax had been decorated, usually in colours
ranging from a reddish-brown to black. The second group of
larnakes had six feet and the long side of the larnax was
divided into two panels which were decorated using a
variety of colours including blue, red and black.
Perhaps the most
unusual find was a helmet made of 59 boars' tusks. Each
tusk had two holes pierced in it so that it could be
attached to the helmet for which the tusks provided the
external defensive covering. Most other examples of boars'
tusk helmets come from Central Greece. Ceramics found
together with the helmet were dated to LM IIIA2 and LM
IIIB1. In another tomb a wicker basket with a conical
cover was found. Tzedakis aruges that as it was empty it
probably originally contained perishable goods, most
likely food. Evidence of kilns, presumably used for making
the larnakes, was found near the cemetery.
One of the most
important finds, however, was the 500 skeletons which gave
a wealth of information about the physical appearance of
these people, together with their state of health. It
would seem that they ate a high-carbohydrate diet but
consumed little meat. The average height of the men was
1.67 metres and of women 1.54 metres. Life expectancy was
short. For men it was 31 years and for women 28 years.
Many of the women lived only to about twenty to twenty
five years of age. It is possible that death in childbirth
may have been responsible for many of these early female
deaths. Among the other causes of death, diseases
including bone cancer, tuberculosis, and brucellosis (a
bacterial infection passed on to humans from infected
animals) were identified as well as accidents. A quarter
of the population had lost teeth before their death.
Where did they live?
Archaeologists have
long been puzzled as to the whereabouts of the settlement
that needed such a large cemetery. Surface surveys did not
produce evidence for a settlement and for some time
attention focused on the nearby villages of Somatas and
Kastellos. Excavations have recently been carried out in
and around the village of Kastellos. At a presentation by
archaeologists on the current state of research and
findings in relation to Armeni, held in Rethymno in the
Spring of 2012, Yiannis Tzedakis told the audience that as
a result of the recent excavations at Armia, south of
Kastellos and Melissokipos, north of the village, they
were now reasonably confident that the settlement is to be
found beneath the village of Kastellos itself.
Access
The site is a
15-minute drive from Rethymno on the road to Spili and
Ayia Galini. It is very clearly signposted. The cemetery
is open daily, except Monday, from 8.30 to 3.00 throughout
the year and entrance is free. If possible, take a torch
since very few of the tombs are lit although the two
largest ones now has automatic lighting which comes on
when you enter the tomb.
SOURCES:
One of the main
sources for this article was L. Godart and Y. Tzedakis:
“Temoignages archéologiques et épigraphiques en Crète
occidentale du Néolithique au Minoen Récent III B”Incunabula
Graeca 93 (1992).
Tholos Tomb B lies a few hundred metres south west of the
village of the same name. Like many of the EM II tombs in
this area, the tomb complex is situated just above the
Messara plain in the foothills of the Asterousia
mountains. Two tholos tombs and a settlement have been
excavated at Apesokari. Tholos Tomb A was excavated by the
Germans during the Second World War. At the same time some
investigation was made of the settlement, southwest of
Tholos Tomb B. The tomb photographed here is Tholos Tomb B
together with its annexe. Altogether it occupies an area
of 25m by 14m.
The tomb was
originally excavated by Costis Davaras. A new project to
examine the tomb, The Apesokari Tholos Tomb B Study
Project, led by Giorgos Vavouranakis, is currently
underway. You can find a link to their website in the
resources menu.
Tholos tomb B dates
from the Early Minoan period and it remained in use until
the Middle Minoan period. Although sherds found at the
site date back to the end of the neolithic, the excavators
believe that the tomb itself was probably built in EM II.
Sherds found from the neopalatial period do not indicate
that it was still in use as a burial site at that time.
The tholos tomb is
now in a rather sorry state, but originally it was built
with at least two walls, one inside the other, as can be
seen from the three photos of the tholos tomb itself,
although it is thought the second wall did not go all the
way round the tomb. The walls are up to 1.5 metres thick.
The tholos tomb and its funerary buildings used the
bedrock as the floor of the buildings. When discovered,
the tholos tomb had already been thoroughly looted but
fortunately part of the fill remained unlooted and the
pottery sherds found here enabled archaeologists to date
the period during which the tomb was in use with some
accuracy.
The annexe
Tholos Tomb B is
notable for the fact that burials did not only take place
inside the tholos tomb, but also took place in some of the
outer rooms which join the tholos tomb as well. Room 1,
for example, which is actually attached to the outside of
the tholos tomb and which was built possibly eight hundred
or more years later, contained three burials and hundreds
of small drinking vessels and remains from the jugs that
served the drink. The drinking vessels spanned a period of
450 years.
Room 2 is the long,
narrow room in the second photo below. The end wall, to
the east at the top of the picture, was added after the
room was built so originally the room was open at that
end. When the final wall was added the room could only be
accessed from above. This room was used for burials in larnakes and one larnax with an infant burial was found in
situ. Since fragments of larnakes were found in the room
it seems that old larnakes were removed or possibly broken
up to be replaced by newer ones. Again cups and jugs were
found, indicating communal drinking at funerals.
West of room 2 is an
area named the "crypt" by the original excavator. It seems
likely that this space was formed by the creation of a
supporting wall for the tholos tomb. It is likely that the
space was filled with earth once the supporting wall was
completed. The inner wall of the tholos had boulders
projecting from the wall. These may have been used as
steps to reach the top of the tholos tomb until the second
wall was constructed, which then blocked off these stone
steps.
Room 3 was a
corridor in which sherds from cups, bowls and cooking pot
legs were found. The room was in use from EM III to MM II.
Room 4 dates from the Middle Minoan period, being created
when the east wall of Room 2 was built. Again, sherds of
drinking vessels were found here but there does not seem
to be any evidence to suggest that burials took place in
Room 4.
Rooms 5 and 6 are
preserved in such a poor state that it is difficult to say
anything about their use. Room five was in use from MM I
to MM IIIA. It may have been entered from the northeast
corner or from above. Room six seems not to have an
entrance and access may have been through the roof. Room
six was also in use during the Protopalatial period. Open
space 7 also failed to reveal very much about itself.
Excavators think it was probably an open air paved court
in use during the Protopalatial (Middle Minoan) period.
Room 9 also has no
obvious entrance apart from above. In common with many
other rooms here the finds were mainly drinking vessels.
The pottery dates the room solely to the Middle Minoan
period. It was probably the last building to be added to
the complex and for some reason the orientation of the
room is slightly different from the rest of the complex as
can be seen in the second photo below, where room 9 is at
the far end.
Running along side
Room 2 was an ossuary,
a pit full of human bones. The ossuary was most likely
used for the reburial of bones from earlier burials.
Originally they were contained within a single course of
boulders laid out in the shape of a horseshoe. The human
remains had, according to the pottery evidence, been
placed here at two different times during the
Protopalatial period. South of the tholos tomb the
original excavator also discovered another pit which seems
to have held pottery from the tomb. Its exact location is
no longer known.
The tomb is
signposted a short distance from the turn onto the road
from Apesokari to Lendas. A ten minute walk along a dirt
track will bring you to the site on the right of the
track.
Tholos Tomb C and Burial Building 19,
Phourni Cemetery
Contemporary and
archaeological evidence suggests that light is of great
significance in religious contexts, with its symbolism
pervading the geography of sacred landscapes. It is for
this reason that a lighting study has been undertaken at
the Minoan cemetery at Phourni. Existing theories relating
the orientation of the buildings and natural illumination
to the perception of life and death by the living were
critically examined as part of a broader examination of
the role that natural and flame light might have played
during specific funerary rites.
The position of the
sun and hence the natural illumination of the buildings at
Phourni is a function of the orientation of the structures
towards north, their geographic location, and the date and
time. It is widely accepted that the orientation of the
structures had some connection with specific beliefs about
the dead. For example, the east-facing tombs may be
closely related to the rising sun as this could only have
entered the interior only at particular days of the year.
However, a definitive answer remains elusive (Blomberg
& Henriksson 2002). The purpose of the computer based
simulation of Phourni was therefore to examine the impact
of natural and flame light in the interior of the burial
structures and to discuss its impact when, for example,
corpses were admitted into the tombs, or when
post-funerary or other rituals were taking place.
Tholos Tomb C
Each and every
virtual reconstruction should be based on comprehensively
reviewed archaeological records and well studied
comparators in order to provide a fertile basis for a
faithful construction of prehistory. For this reasons the
decision making process for some of the models produced is
now discussed, in the context of the results.
Although there is a
significant number of Early Minoan tholoi tombs in Crete
(3000-2100 BC), which together provide considerable
architectural information, none of them is preserved to a
sufficient height in order to clearly present either how
the vaulted roof was constructed or if there was a vaulted
roof at all. Part of the case for accepting a vaulted
roofing system has long been the existence in modern
Crete, on the upland of Nidha, of circular houses with
vaulted stone roofs, called mitata. These are circular
stone houses in which the shepherds make their cheeses and
which are used as temporary dwellings for the summer
months when the flocks move to high altitudes [Valianos
1988]. Closer points of comparison, apart from the stone
work, are the general form, circular plan and size, as
well as details like the inward curvature of the walls
inside and the low doorway with lintel slab. However, it
cannot be assumed that all of the tombs were vaulted.
Indeed, although collapsed stonework is found inside the
tombs, not nearly enough of it has been found in such a
position as to complete a stone vault. As a result, there
remains controversy regarding the technique by which
Minoan tombs were roofed. This has led to alternative ways
of exploring the problem, including a light, flat roof
built of wood which could easily be removed when tombs had
to be fumigated [Hood 1960, Branigan 1970, Warren 1973,
Branigan 1994, Warren 2007].
The virtual
reconstruction of the two burial buildings offered
valuable information regarding the architecture, use,
capacity, ergonomics and illumination of the ancient
structures. In order to overcome the absence of essential
data which are needed for such a detailed study,
information deriving from comparator archaeological sites
and similar buildings was used. The result was a
comprehensive study of the buildings’ architecture forming
the basis for additional experimentation regarding the
mobility of people visiting them, the changes in
ergonomics during their various phases, as well as the
illumination of the interior contributing to a further
understanding of any components of this research.
The creation of
several structural models with different sizes, forms and
materials gave the only chance – apart from a future
thorough archaeological study and physical reconstruction
– to observe the pros and cons regarding the depiction and
interaction of light in the various scenes. Although there
is not any reliable way for testing the illumination
results, with the exception of psychophysical experiments,
it seems from comparator datasets from architecture that
the lux values obtained are quite reasonable for spaces
with such features (e.g. small openings). Lighting results
derived from the different architectural models
represented a discrete series of spatial conditions, which
may in turn have reflected on the livings’ attitude
towards death.
As a consequence,
not only did the methodological tools work correctly, but
through them we managed to expand the research questions.
Structurally we have offered valuable information
regarding the impact of alteration of the various
elements, such as the roofing techniques. In terms of
illumination solstices and equinoxes from the past did not
provide any different interpretation in comparison to the
broader range of dates simulated (a sample of more than
100 dates derived from the present and the past).
The slight
differences resulted from the study of artificial
illumination are unlikely to have defined diversity in the
perception of the structure. Also, we have no evidence
that people chose a specific fuel based only on the colour
emitted since the slight variations identified may not
have been distinguishable by human vision.
Note 1: larnake (plural):
Terracotta Minoan
larnake (chests) with gabled lids were the standard burial
vessels used in Crete from the early fourteenth to twelfth
century B.C. Typically, they have raised borders and
recessed panels on all four sides. Their structure
suggests a wooden prototype, and recent scholarship has
identified Egyptian linen chests as the probable models.
The deceased was placed in a flexed position, and the
larnax (singular) was secured with a cord strung through
the holes in its rim and lid.
Spirals, wavy lines,
checkerboards, and multiple arcs typically decorate the
bodies and lids of larnake. These nonfigural motifs, which
are also well attested in contemporary pottery, may be
simply decorative, or they may be conventional renderings
of naturalistic images, such as rocky terrain or the sea.
Cretan hieroglyphs
are undeciphered hieroglyphs found on artefacts of
early Bronze AgeCrete,
during the Minoan era. They predats Linear A by about a century, but
continued to be used in parallel for most of Minoan
history.[1]
Contents
1 Corpus
2 Signs
3 Chronology
4 Notes
5 Footnotes
6 References
7 Further reading
8 External links
Corpus
In
1989, Jean-Pierre Olivier described the state of the
Cretan hieroglyphs corpus as follows,
In
short, our Corpus is composed of two distinct parts:
1.
Seals and sealings (ca. 150 documents)
2.
Other documents (mainly archival inscriptions) inscribed
on clay (ca. 120 documents).
The
seals and sealings represent about 307 distinct
sign-groups, consisting all together of ± 832 signs. The
other inscriptions represent about 274 distinct
sign-groups, consisting all together of ± 723 signs.[2]
More
documents have been published since then, such as, for
example, from the Petras deposit.
The
known corpus has been edited in 1996 as CHIC
(Olivier/Godard 1996), mainly excavated at four locations:
·seal
fragment HM 992, showing a single symbol, identical to
Phaistos Disk glyph 21
The
relation of the last three items with the script of the
main corpus is uncertain.
Some
Cretan Hieroglyphic (as well as Linear A) inscriptions
were also found on the island of Samothrace in the northeastern
Aegean.[4]
It has
been suggested that there was an evolution of the
hieroglyphs into the linear scripts. Also, some relations
to Anatolian
hieroglyphs have been suggested.
“The
overlaps between the Cretan script and other scripts, such
as the hieroglyphic scripts of Cyprus and the Hittite
lands of Anatolia, may suggest ... that they all evolved
from a common ancestor, a now-lost script perhaps
originating in Syria.”[5]
Signs
Symbol
inventories have been compiled by Evans (1909), Meijer
(1982), Olivier/Godart (1996). The known corpus has been
edited in 1996 as CHIC (Olivier/Godard 1996),
listing a total of 314 items (documents).
The
glyph inventory as presented by CHIC includes 96 syllabograms (representing sounds),
ten of which double as logograms (representing words or
morphemes).
There
are also 23 logograms representing four levels of numerals
(units, tens, hundreds, thousands), numerical fractions,
and two types of punctuation.
Many
symbols have apparent Linear
A counterparts, so
that it is tempting to insert Linear
B sound values.
The
sequence and the geographical spread of Cretan
hieroglyphs, Linear A, and Linear B, the three
overlapping, but distinct writing systems on Bronze Age
Crete and the Greek mainland can be summarized as
follows:[6]
3. ^
Metaxia Tsipopoulou & Erik Hallager, The
Hieroglyphic Archive at Petras, Siteia (with
contributions by Cesare D’Annibale & Dimitra Mylona).
Download
PDF
file 60 MB
Monographs of the Danish Institute at Athens, volume 9. The Danish Institute
at Athens. Athens, 2010 ISBN
978-87-7934-293-4
4. ^
Margalit Finkelberg, Bronze
Age
Writing: Contacts between East and West.
In E. H. Cline and D. Harris-Cline (eds.). The Aegean
and the Orient in the Second Millennium. Proceedings
of the 50th Anniversary Symposium, Cincinnati, 18–20 April
1997. Liège 1998. Aegeum 18 (1998) 265-272.
6. ^
Olivier, J.-P. (1986). "Cretan Writing in the Second
Millennium B.C.". World Archaeology17 (3): 377–389
(377f.). doi:10.1080/00438243.1986.9979977.
·W.
C. Brice, Notes on the Cretan Hieroglyphic Script: I.
The Corpus. II. The Clay Bar from Malia, H20, Kadmos
29 (1990) 1-10.
·W.
C. Brice, Cretan Hieroglyphs & Linear A,
Kadmos 29 (1990) 171-2.
·W.
C. Brice, Notes on the Cretan Hieroglyphic Script:
III. The Inscriptions from Mallia Quarteir Mu. IV. The
Clay Bar from Knossos, P116, Kadmos 30 (1991)
93-104.
·W.
C. Brice, Notes on the Cretan Hieroglyphic Script,
Kadmos 31 (1992), 21-24.
·J.-P.
Olivier,
L. Godard, in collaboration with J.-C. Poursat, Corpus
Hieroglyphicarum Inscriptionum Cretae (CHIC),
Études Crétoises 31, De Boccard, Paris 1996, ISBN
2-86958-082-7.
·G. A. Owens, The Common Origin
of Cretan Hieroglyphs and Linear A, Kadmos 35:2
(1996), 105-110.
·G.
A. Owens, An Introduction to «Cretan Hieroglyphs»: A
Study of «Cretan Hieroglyphic» Inscriptions in English
Museums (excluding the Ashmolean Museum Oxford),
Cretan Studies VIII (2002), 179-184.
oSchoep, A New Cretan
Hieroglyphic Inscription from Malia (MA/V Yb 03),
Kadmos 34 (1995), 78-80.
·J.
G. Younger, The Cretan Hieroglyphic Script: A Review
Article, Minos 31-32 (1996–1997) 379-400.
[Only
the first three sections (1 – 3) and the last four
sections (8 – 11) listed in the table of contents, below,
are presented here.For
the other sections, see the Internet link directly above.But be warned,
some sections are only fully readable is specialized fonts
are installed in your computer.]
The Phaistos Disc
(also spelled Phaistos
Disk, Phaestos
Disc) is a disk of fired clay
from the Minoan palace of Phaistos on the Greek island of Crete,
possibly dating to the middle or late Minoan Bronze Age (2nd millennium
BC). It is about 15 cm
(5.9 in) in diameter and covered on both sides with a
spiral of stamped symbols. Its purpose and meaning, and
even its original geographical place of manufacture,
remain disputed, making it one of the most famous
mysteries of archaeology. This unique object is
now on display at the archaeological
museum
of Heraklion.
The
disc was discovered in 1908 by the Italian archaeologist Luigi Pernier in the Minoan
palace-site of Phaistos, and features 241 tokens,
comprising 45 unique signs, which were apparently made by
pressing hieroglyphic "seals" into a disc of soft clay, in
a clockwise sequence spiraling toward the disc's center.
The
Phaistos Disc captured the imagination of amateur and
professional archeologists, and many attempts
have
been made to decipher the code
behind the disc's signs. While it is not clear that it is
a script, most attempted decipherments assume that it is; most
additionally assume a syllabary, others an alphabet or logography. Attempts at
decipherment are generally thought to be unlikely to
succeed unless more examples of the signs are found, as it
is generally agreed that there is not enough context
available for a meaningful analysis.
Although
the Phaistos Disc is generally accepted as authentic by
archaeologists, a few scholars believe that the disc is a
forgery or a hoax.
Discovery
The
Phaistos Disc was discovered in the Minoan palace-site of Phaistos, near Hagia Triada, on the south coast of Crete;[1]
specifically the disc was found in the basement of room 8
in building 101 of a group of buildings to the northeast
of the main palace. This grouping of 4 rooms also served
as a formal entry into the palace complex. Italian
archaeologist Luigi
Pernier
recovered this remarkably intact "dish", about 15 cm
in diameter and uniformly slightly more than one
centimetre in thickness, on 3 July 1908 during his excavation of the first Minoan
palace.
It was
found in the main cell of an underground "temple
depository". These basement cells, only accessible from
above, were neatly covered with a layer of fine plaster. Their content was poor
in precious artifacts but rich in black earth and ashes,
mixed with burnt bovine bones. In the northern
part of the main cell, in the same black layer, a
few inches south-east of the disc and about
twenty inches above the floor, Linear Atablet
PH
1 was
also found. The site apparently collapsed as a result of
an earthquake, possibly linked with
the eruption of the Santorini volcano that affected
large parts of the Mediterranean
region during the mid second
millennium BC.
Authenticity
The
Phaistos Disc is generally accepted as authentic by
archaeologists.[2]
The assumption of authenticity is based on the excavation
records by Luigi Pernier. This assumption is supported by
the later discovery of the Arkalochori
Axe with similar but not
identical glyphs.[3]
The
possibility that the disc is a 1908 forgery or hoax has been raised
by two or three scholars.[4][5][6] According to a report in
The Times the date of manufacture has never been
established by thermoluminescence.[7]
In his 2008 review, Robinson does not endorse the forgery
arguments but argues that "a thermoluminescence test for
the Phaistos Disc is imperative. It will either confirm
that new finds are worth hunting for, or it will stop
scholars from wasting their effort."[4]
A gold
signet ring from Knossos (the Mavro
Spilio
ring),
found in 1926, contains a Linear A inscription developed
in a field defined by a spiral—similar to the Phaistos
Disc.[8]
This is considered as evidence that the Phaistos Disc is a
genuine Minoan artifact.[9]
Dating
Yves
Duhoux (1977) dates the disc to between 1850 BC and 1600
BC (MMIII) on the basis of Luigi
Pernier's report, which says that the Disc was in a Middle
Minoan undisturbed context. Jeppesen (1963) dates it to
after 1400 (LMII-III). Doubting the viability
of Pernier's report, Louis
Godart
(1990) resigns himself to admitting that archaeologically,
the disc may be dated to anywhere in Middle or Late Minoan
times (MMI-LMIII, a period spanning most of the 2nd
millennium
BC). J.
Best (in Achterberg et al. 2004) suggests a date in the
first half of the 14th century BC (LMIIIA) based on his
dating of tablet PH 1.
Typography
The
inscription was apparently made by pressing pre-formed
hieroglyphic "seals" into the soft clay, in a clockwise
sequence spiraling towards the disc's center. It was then
fired at high temperature. The unique character of the
Phaistos Disc stems from the fact that the entire text was
inscribed in this way, reproducing a body of text with
reusable characters.
The
German typesetter and linguist Herbert Brekle, in his article "The
typographic principle" in the Gutenberg-Jahrbuch, argues that the
Phaistos Disc is an early document of movable
type
printing, since it meets the essential criteria of typographic printing, that of type
identity:
An
early clear incidence for the realization of the
typographic principle is the notorious Phaistos Disc (ca.
1800–1600 BC). If the disc is, as assumed, a textual
representation, we are really dealing with a "printed"
text, which fulfills all definitional criteria of the
typographic principle. The spiral sequencing of the
graphematical units, the fact that they are impressed in a
clay disc (blind printing!) and not imprinted are merely
possible technological variants of textual representation.
The decisive factor is that the material "types" are
proven to be repeatedly instantiated on the clay disc.[10]
In his
work on decipherment, Benjamin Schwartz also refers to the
Phaistos Disc as "the first movable type".[13]
In
his popular science book Guns, Germs
and Steel, Jared Diamond describes the disc as an
example of a technological advancement that did not become
widespread because it was made at the wrong time in
history, and contrasts this with Gutenberg's printing press.[14]
12. ^Brekle,
Herbert
E.
(2005): Die Prüfeninger Weiheinschrift von 1119. Eine
paläographisch-typographische Untersuchung (brief
summary),
Scriptorium
Verlag für Kultur und Wissenschaft, Regensburg, ISBN
3-937527-06-0
13. ^
Schwartz, Benjamin (1959). "The Phaistos disk". Journal
of Near Eastern Studies18 (2): 105–112
(107). doi:10.1086/371517.
Note
that section 6 (Unicode) in the Contents list below is not
presented here.It
is available at the Internet site listed above, but is
only viewable if special fonts are installed in your
computer.
In the
1950s, Linear B was largely deciphered and found to encode an
early form of Greek. Although the two systems share many
symbols, this did not lead to a subsequent decipherment of
Linear A. Using the values associated with Linear B
in Linear A mainly produces unintelligible words. If it uses the
same or similar syllabic values as Linear B, then its
underlying language appears unrelated to any known language. This has been dubbed
the Minoan
language.
Script
Linear
A has hundreds of signs. They are believed to represent
syllabic, ideographic, and semantic values in a manner
similar to Linear B. While many of those
assumed to be syllabic signs are similar to ones in Linear
B, approximately 80% of Linear A's logograms are unique;[3][4]
the difference in sound values between Linear A and Linear
B signs ranges from 9% to 13%.[5] It primarily appears in
the left-to-right direction, but occasionally appears as a
right-to-left or boustrophedon script.
Corpus
Linear
A has been unearthed chiefly on Crete, but also at other
sites in Greece, as well as Turkey and Israel. The extant
corpus, comprising some 1427 specimens totalling 7362–7396
signs, if scaled to standard type, would fit on a single
sheet of paper.[6]
Crete
According
to Ilse Schoep, the main discoveries of Linear A tablets
have been at three sites on Crete:[7]
"Haghia
Triadha
in the Mesara with 147 tablets; Zakro/Zakros, a port town
in the far east of the island with 31 tablets; and
Khania/Chania, a port town in the northwest of the island
with 94 tablets."
Discoveries
have
been made at the following locations on Crete,
According
to Finkelberg, most—if not all—inscriptions found outside
of Crete were made locally. This is indicated by such
factors as the composition of the material on which the
inscriptions were made.[8]
Also, close analysis of the inscriptions found outside of
Crete indicates the use of a script that is somewhere in
between Linear A and Linear B, combining the elements of
both.
Linear
A was a contemporary and possible child of Cretan
hieroglyphs and the ancestor of Linear B. The sequence and the
geographical spread of Cretan hieroglyphs, Linear A and
Linear B, the three overlapping, but distinct writing
systems on Bronze Age Crete and the Greek mainland can be summarized as
follows:[11]
Archaeologist
Arthur
Evans
named the script "Linear" because its characters consisted
simply of lines inscribed in clay, in contrast to the more
pictographic and three-dimensional characters in Cretan
hieroglyphs that were used during
the same period.[12]
Several
tablets
inscribed in signs similar to Linear A were found in the Troad.
While their status is disputed, they may be imports, as
there is no evidence of Minoan presence in the Troad.
Classification of these signs as a unique Trojan script (proposed by
contemporary Russian linguist Nikolai Kazansky) is not
accepted by other linguists.
Theories
of decipherment
It is
difficult to evaluate a given analysis of Linear A as
there is little point of reference for reading its
inscriptions. The simplest approach to decipherment may be
to presume that the values of Linear A match more or less
the values given to the deciphered Linear B script, used for
Mycenaean Greek.[13]
Greek
In
1957, Bulgarian scholar Vladimir I.
Georgiev published his Le
déchiffrement des inscriptions crétoises en linéaire A
("The decipherment of Cretan inscriptions in Linear A")
stating that Linear A contains Greek linguistic elements.[14] Georgiev then published
another work in 1963 titled, "Les deux langues des
inscriptions crétoises en linéaire A" ("The two languages
of Cretan inscriptions in Linear A"), suggesting that the
language of the Hagia Triada tablets was Greek but that
the rest of the Linear A corpus was in Hittite-Luwian.[14][15]
In December 1963, Gregory Nagy of Harvard
University developed a list of
Linear A and Linear B terms based on the assumption "that
signs of identical or similar shape in the two scripts
will represent similar or identical phonetic values"; Nagy
concluded that the language of Linear A bears "Greek-like"
and Indo-European elements.[16]
Distinct
Indo-European branch
According
to Dr. Gareth
Alun
Owens,
Linear A represents the Minoan language, which Owens
classifies as a distinct branch of Indo-European
potentially related to Greek, Sanskrit, Hittite, Latin,
etc.[17][18]
At "The Cretan Literature Centre", Dr. Owens stated:[19]
″Beginning
our
research with inscriptions in Linear A carved on offering
tables found in the many peak sanctuaries on the mountains
of Crete, we recognise a clear relationship between Linear
A and Sanskrit, the ancient language of India. There is
also a connection to Hittite and Armenian. This
relationship allows us to place the Minoan language among
the so-called Indo-European languages, a vast family that
includes modern Greek and the Latin of Ancient Rome. The
Minoan and Greek languages are considered to be different
branches of Indo-European. The Minoans probably moved from
Anatolia to the island of Crete about 10,000 years ago.
There were similar population movements to Greece. The
relative isolation of the population which settled in
Crete resulted in the development of its own language,
Minoan, which is considered different to Mycenaean. In the
Minoan language (Linear A), there are no purely Greek
words, as is the case in Mycenaean Linear B; it contains
only words also found in Greek, Sanskrit and Latin, i.e.
sharing the same Indo-European origin."
Luwian
Since
the late 1950s, a theory based on Linear B phonetic values
suggests that Linear A language could be an Anatolian
language, close to Luwian.[20]
The theory for the Luwian origin of Minoan, however,
failed to gain universal support for the following
reasons:
•There
is no remarkable resemblance between Minoan and
Hitto-Luwian morphology.
•None
of the existing theories of the origin of Hitto-Luwian
peoples and their migration to Anatolia (either from the Balkans or from the Caucasus) are related to Crete.
•There
was a lack of direct contact between Hitto-Luwians and
Minoan Crete; the latter was never mentioned in
Hitto-Luwian inscriptions. Small states located along the
western coast of ancient Asia Minor were natural barriers
between Hitto-Luwians and Minoan Crete.
•Obvious
anthropological
differences between Hitto-Luwians and the Minoans may be
considered as another indirect testimony against this
hypothesis.
Phoenician
In
2001, the journal Ugarit-Forschungen, Band 32
published the article "The First Inscription in Punic —
Vowel Differences in Linear A and B" by Jan Best, claiming
to demonstrate how and why Linear A notates an archaic
form of Phoenician.[21]
This was a continuation of attempts by Cyrus Gordon in finding connections
between Minoan and West
Semitic
languages.
Indo-Iranian
Another
recent
interpretation, based on the frequencies of the syllabic
signs and on complete palaeographic comparative studies,
suggests that the Minoan Linear A language belongs to the
Indo-Iranian
family
of Indo-European languages.[22]
Studies by Hubert La Marle include a presentation of the
morphology of the language, avoid the complete
identification of phonetic values between Linear A and B,
and also avoid comparing Linear A with Cretan Hieroglyphs.[22]
La Marle uses the frequency counts to identify the type of
syllables written in Linear A, and takes into account the
problem of loanwords in the vocabulary.[22]
However, the La Marle interpretation of Linear A has been
rejected by John Younger of Kansas University showing that
La Marle has invented erroneous and arbitrary new
transcriptions based on resemblances with many different
script systems at will (as Phoenician, Hieroglyphic
Egyptian, Hieroglyphic Hittite, Ethiopian, Cypro-Minoan,
etc.), ignoring established evidence and internal
analysis, while for some words he proposes religious
meanings inventing names of gods and rites.[23] La Marle rebutted in "An
answer to John G. Younger's remarks on Linear A" in 2010.[24]
Tyrrhenian
Italian
scholar
Giulio M. Facchetti attempted to link Linear A to the Tyrrhenian
language family comprising Etruscan, Rhaetic, and Lemnian. This family is reasoned
to be a pre-Indo-EuropeanMediterraneansubstratum of the 2nd millennium
BC, sometimes referred to as Pre-Greek. Facchetti proposed some
possible similarities between the Etruscan language and
ancient Lemnian, and other Aegean languages like Minoan.[25]Michael
Ventris who, along with John Chadwick, successfully deciphered
Linear B, also believed in a link
between Minoan and Etruscan.[26] The same perspective is
supported by S. Yatsemirsky in Russia.[27]
Single
word decipherment attempts
Some researchers suggest that a few words or
word elements may be recognized, without (yet) enabling any
conclusion about relationship with other languages. In
general, they use analogy with Linear B in order to propose
phonetic values of the syllabic sounds. John Younger, in
particular, thinks that place names usually appear in
certain positions in the texts, and notes that the proposed
phonetic values often correspond to known place names as
given in Linear B texts (and sometimes to modern Greek
names). For example, he proposes that three syllables, read
as KE-NI-SO, might be the indigenous form of Knossos.[28]
Likewise, in Linear A, MA+RU is suggested to mean wool,
and to correspond both to a Linear B pictogram with this
meaning, and to the classical Greek word μαλλός with the
same meaning (in that case a loan word from Minoan).[3]
5. ^Owens
1999, pp. 23–24
(David Packard, in 1974, calculated a sound-value
difference of 10.80% ± 1.80%; Yves Duhoux, in 1989,
calculated a sound-value difference of 14.34% ± 1.80% and
Gareth Owens, in 1996, calculated a sound-value difference
of 9–13%).
6. ^ Younger, John (2000). "Linear A
Texts in Phonetic Transcription: 5. Basic Statistics".
University of Kansas. Younger: "if there are 4002
characters (font Times, pitch 12, no spaces) on an 8 1/2 x
11 inch sheet of paper with 1 inch margins, all extant
Linear A would take up 1.84 pages." (14.34 pages for
Linear B).
7. ^Schoep
1999,
pp. 201–221.
8.^
to: abFinkelberg
1998,
pp. 265–272.
9. ^Book review by
Daniel J. Pullen (Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2009)
of W. D. Taylour, R. Janko, Ayios Stephanos:
Excavations at a Bronze Age and Medieval Settlement in
Southern Laconia. British School at Athens, 2008.
"Its location on the Laconian coast, easily accessible
from Kythera, undoubtedly encouraged early contacts with
Crete whether directly or indirectly (see the Linear A
sign catalogued in chapter 11)."
13. ^ Younger, John (2000). "Linear A
Texts in Phonetic Transcription".
University of Kansas. See "1. List of Linked Files" for a
comprehensive list of known texts written in Linear A.
14.^
to: abNagy
1963, p. 210
(Footnote #24).
15. ^Georgiev
1963, pp. 1–104.
16. ^Nagy
1963,
pp. 181–211.
17. ^Owens
2007, pp. 3–4: "Η
έρευνα απέδειξε ότι η μινωική γλώσσα σχετίζεται με την
ελληνική περισσότερο από κάθε άλλη ινδοευρωπαϊκή γλώσσα,
χωρίς να αποτελεί μια άλλη ελληνική διάλεκτο αλλά ένα
χωριστό παρακλάδι της ινδοευρωπαϊκής
οικογένειας...υπάρχουν λέξεις που εντοπίζονται και στην
ελληνική γλώσσα αλλά και σε άλλες, όπως τη σανσκριτική και
τη χεττιτική, τη λατινική, της ίδιας οικογένειας.".
22.^
to: abc La Marle, Hubert. Linéaire
A, la première écriture syllabique de Crète. Paris:
Geuthner, 4 Volumes, 1997–1999, 2006; Introduction au
linéaire A. Geuthner, Paris, 2002; L'aventure de
l'alphabet: les écritures cursives et linéaires du
Proche-Orient et de l'Europe du sud-est à l'Âge du
Bronze. Paris: Geuthner, 2002; Les racines du
crétois ancien et leur morphologie: communication à
l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, 2007.
23. ^ Younger, John (2009). "Linear
A:
Critique of Decipherments by Hubert La Marle and Kjell
Aartun". University of Kansas.
According to Younger, La Marle "assigns phonetic values to
Linear signs based on superficial resemblances to signs in
other scripts (the choice of scripts being already
prejudiced to include only those from the eastern
Mediterranean and northeast Africa), as if 'C looks like O
so it must be O.'"
26. ^Chadwick
1967, p. 34: "The
basic idea was to find a language which might not be
related to Minoan. Ventris' candidate was Etruscan; not a
bad guess, because the Etruscans, according to ancient
tradition, came from the Aegean to Italy.".
·Best,
Jan G. P. (1972). Some Preliminary Remarks on the
Decipherment of Linear A. Amsterdam: Hakkert.
·Montecchi,
Barbara
(January 2010). "A Classification Proposal of Linear A
Tablets from Haghia Triada in Classes and Series". Kadmos49 (1):
11–38. doi:10.1515/KADMOS.2010.002.
·Nagy,
Gregory (October 1965). "Observations on the Sign-Grouping
and Vocabulary of Linear A". American Journal of
Archaeology69 (4): 295–330.
The Palace of Knossos is
located in North Central Crete just south of the outskirts
of Heraklion on the Kephala hill. The site was first
occupied some time around 7000 BCE in what is called the
Aceramic Neolithic period (aceramic because no pottery was
produced). The Bronze Age was not to begin for a further
four thousand years. It is thought that Knossos was the
first and oldest Neolithic site in Crete and the first
indication of human activity on the island is located in
the exact area where the Palace and its Central Court were
to be located. So humans had been continually active on
the site for five thousand years before the First Palace
was constructed.
Although the Neolithic
gave way to the Bronze Age, when no doubt new peoples
arrived from the East, there is no evidence that the
original population on the Kephala Hill was replaced by
the newcomers. More likely was a gradual transition from
neolithic to bronze age practices.
The Early Minoan II
period seems to have been of some importance at various
sites on Crete. Jan Driessen thinks it was important at
Knossos as well. A large amount of EM IIB pottery has been
uncovered at Knossos. It was found in locations which
suggest that the ground had been cleared for construction
during EM III.
As at other Palatial
sites on Crete, large scale building preceded the actual
construction of the First Palace. At Knossos this building
activity appears to have begun during Early Minoan III. On
the palace site itself there is very little evidence from
this late Prepalatial period (Early Minoan III-Middle
Minoan IA). What evidence there is tends to be found on
the perimeter of the later palace or on the slopes of the
Kephala hill on which the palace was built.
For example, there are
prepalatial walls at Knossos (EM III-MM IA) to the north
and south of the later palace. These walls already had the
north-south, east-west orientation which would be used in
the building of the later palace.
Just outside the area
where the palace was built a number of structures probably
date to the prepalatial period. The Southwest Houses
contained pottery from EM IIB-MM IA. A large wall running
south from the north west corner of the area where the
first palace would later be built may well have been a
terrace wall supporting a flat level on which some
structure was built. Very little can be said at present of
this structure except that it was not a palace. In the
West Court some houses were discovered under the kouloures which were built during the protopalatial period.
The First
Palace
Although some
archaeologists argue on the basis of the limited finds
from EM III-MM IA for a continuity in building on the site
from the prepalatial period, Colin Macdonald, who has
spent much of his career excavating different parts of the
Palace, finds the evidence unconvincing and it is still
generally accepted that the First Palace was built during
Middle Minoan IB-IIA, with the southern half possibly
being completed a little later than the West, North and
East wings.
By the end of MM IIA the
palace covered an area of almost 10,000 square metres on
the ground floor alone. Access to the Palace was easier
during the Protopalatial period than it was to become
later. It therefore continued in one form or another for
about five hundred years. It signified the transition of
Minoan Crete from a clan-based society into a hierarchical
one, with an urban elite, though some archaeologists claim
that there may have been several competing elite groups,
what they call a heterarchy.
At other Palace sites,
like Phaistos, the old palace suffered a major
destruction. The ground was subsequently levelled and a
new palace was constructed. This does not appear to have
happened at Knossos. According to Colin Macdonald the
construction of a monumental building around a central
court at Knossos may have been "a long project that lasted
for several generations, punctuated by destructive
episodes, notably in MM IB and reaching a conclusion in MM
IIA only to be damaged at the end of that period and again
in MM IIB, after which it was largely rebuilt over MM III
along the same lines but with markedly different
architectural elements."
So, although parts of
the Palace certainly suffered from earthquake destruction
a number of times over the ensuing five hundred years, the
Old Palace was never levelled or covered over in order for
a new palace to be built on top. New areas were added to
the Palace and sections damaged by earthquake were
rebuilt, often in a different way from the sections that
preceded them. But the palace was never replaced by a
completely new building.
From the First Palace
period would date the West Facade which is thought to have
had an upper floor with windows looking out over the West
Court. Also dating from this period would have been the
raised walkways in the West Court, and the kouloures,
three large circular pits sunk into the West Court and
whose use is still a subject of debate. The royal Road,
which approaches the north west corner of the palace from
the Minoan town, was one of a number of roads that would
have been constructed by some central authority and were
yet another indication of the transformation that was
taking place in Minoan society. By Middle Minoan III there
were also drainage systems in parts of the Minoan town and
in the Domestic Quarter and the North Entrance of the
Palace.
Another innovation of
the First Palace period were the magazines which take up much of the ground floor of the West
Wing of the Palace and make such an impressive sight for
visitors today. Their current appearance, however, dates
from a later period. There has been much discussion about
the role of the storage facilities in the Minoan Palaces
and some have argued that the Palaces acted as
redistribution centres for produce coming in from the
countryside. Howevever it has been calculated that the
storage capacity of the Palaces would not have been
adequate for such a task and it is more likely that the
storage was for goods consumed by people working at the
Palace or those attending the feasting ceremonies which
seem to have been such an important part of Palace life.
There is already
evidence by the Middle Minoan IB period of a strongly
hierarchical aspect to this feasting with one deposit
yielding up a collection of vessels of varying quality
with very few of the highest quality and rather more of
lower quality.
There were certainly
workshops in and around the Palace. Loomweights provide
evidence of weaving activity but it is not known whether
workshops were directly under the control of the Palace.
No sign has yet been found of a large area outside the
palace devoted to skilled craft production like Quartier
Mu at Malia.
The New
Palace
At the end of Middle
Minoan IIB other palaces in Crete were so thoroughly
damaged that they had to be rebuilt. It seems that this
was not the case at Knossos, which may have been far
enough away from the epicentre of the earthquake to escape
the complete devastation that hit the palace at Phaistos.
During the Middle Minoan IIIA period which followed the
palace destructions elsewhere, the Palace at Knossos did
not undergo any dramatic architectural transformation.
Other changes, however, became noticeable. For example,
the writing script at Knossos had been Cretan Hieroglyphic
while in the south at Phaistos, Linear A was preferred. Now Linear A came to Knossos and
over a period of time it replaced the use of the Cretan
Hieroglyphic.
Another major
development at Knossos at the beginning of the Neopalatial
period was the development of foreign trade, in particular
in the South Aegean and Asia Minor. What all this meant
for the position of Knossos on the island of Crete itself
is not well understood.
That is not to say that
changes in the Palace did not take place. Colin Macdonald
claims that there were in effect three New Palaces which
he calls the New Palace (MM IIIB), the Frescoed Palace
(Late Minoan IA) and the Ruined Palace (LM IB). He also
points out that there then followed the Mycenaean Palace.
This categorisation is not universally accepted.
Knossos was hit by a
massive earthquake at the end of MM IIIA and this resulted
in major rebuilding work. Much of the West part of the
palace was levelled and built over while basement rooms on
the east side were filled with rubble to create new
terraces for building on. So the New Palace effectively
dates from MM IIIB. Then, towards the end of MM IIIB
another earthquake struck, resulting in more demolition
and rebuilding during LM IA. The palace we see today dates
largely from this period.
The main changes to the
Palace during the Neopalatial period included the filling
in of the kouloures which resulted in an enlargement of
the West Court. A major entry route into the palace passed
along the Corridor of the Procession to the south of the
West Facade and from there through the South Propylaeum,
where stairs led to the first floor of the West Wing (but
see page 1 of the Tour of the Palace where these
structures are questioned). Also in the West Wing, the
Throne Room with its adjacent lustral
basin
and associated rooms also dates from Middle Minoan III,
though like so much else, the form of the room that we see
now dates to a later period.
On the East side of the
Central Court the Grand Staircase and the Domestic
Quarters two floors below, are a creation of the
Neopalatial period. Also on the East side was the Great
East Hall, where more storage facilities were located on
the ground floor. To the North East a new entrance was
constructed using ashlar
masonry and the North Entrance Passage was built and
decorated with a famous wall painting (see logo at the of
the page). The Neopalatial period also sees the widespread
creation of wall paintings on a variety of subjects
including the famous bulls and scenes of ceremonies.
The Final
Palace period
Around 1450 BCE there
was widespread destruction throughout the island of Crete.
All the other palaces were destroyed as were many towns
and villages, although it tended to be the prestige
buildings that were primarily targeted. While there was
some damage to the Palace at Knossos it was not destroyed
in the same way as the other Palaces. Ashlar masonry went
out of use, replaced by the increased use of gypsum.
Architectural changes to the palace showed inferior
quality of materials. A lot of the changes made during
this period were removed by Evans during his excavation of
the Palace and in Colin Macdonald's words "Evans had
stripped most of the palace down to its Middle Minoan III
to Late Minoan I skeleton, so that it's later plan is now
difficult to reconstruct."
One of the most
important developments during this period of the history
of Knossos is the arrival of Linear B. Although there are
differences between Linear A and Linear B scripts the most
significant difference is that Linear B has been
deciphered and is now known to be an early form of the
Greek language spoken by the Mycenaeans while Linear A,
which remains undeciphered, represents a different
language. It seems likely that the Mycenaeans had a
presence at Knossos from Late Minoan II onwards but the
exact nature of that presence is not known.
When the Palace was
finally destroyed a large number of clay tablets and sealings were baked, and therefore preserved, in the fire.
The town survived the destruction of the palace which
seems to have been left deserted but much of the evidence
from this period, which would have formed the top layers
over the site at Knossos were removed by Evans and so
vital evidence about this period has been lost.
The date of the final
destruction of the Palace at Knossos is still the subject
of debate with suggestions varying from Late Minoan II, to
Late Minoan IIA or IIIB. Macdonald favours a Late Minoan
III A2 (1325-1300 BCE) date for the final destruction of
what he calls the Linear B palace.
Knossos
-- Arthur Evans excavates
The
contribution of Arthur Evans
On Friday 23 March 1900
at 11 a.m. Arthur Evans began his excavation of Knossos.
Although he was not the first to excavate at the site,
that honour belongs to a Greek appropriately called Minos
Kalokairinos in 1878, it was to be Evans who uncovered the
Knossos Palace and brought to light a hitherto unknown
civilisation -- possibly the oldest in Europe. The basic
excavation of the site took four years and for the rest of
his life Evans continued working on the site,
reconstructing and building, often in an attempt to
preserve the remains from the weather to which they had
been exposed for the first time in 3,500 years.
Evans designated the
building at Knossos a palace and named the civilisation
that had built it the Minoans, after King Minos of Greek
mythology. Since then the actual function of the building
and of the other palaces has been questioned and new
interpretations advanced. Alternative views consider the
four large palaces of Minoan Crete to be temples or
administrative centres or both, and in one interpretation,
Knossos is seen as a necropolis -- a huge burial site to
which only a small band of priests and embalmers had
access. The latest theory is that the palace was not
inhabited by the rulers of Knossos but was used as a place
of ceremony. Here, following convention, the name Palace
is used throughout.
Evans, like all of us,
was a product of his time, and his time was Victorian
England. He was an amateur archaeologist as were many
archaeologists at the time. Only wealthy men of leisure
could afford to carry out the kind of archaeological dig
that Evans carried out at Knossos and professional
archaeologists received even less government support then
than they do now.
We are fortunate that
Evans was a rather better archaeologist than many of his
generation, thanks in part to his father, himself an
amateur archaeologist. No less important, he had the
support of an excellent team of British archaeologists
including Theodore Fyfe and Duncan Mackenzie as well as
talented Greeks including the Cypriot Gregorios Antoniou
and the Cretan Emmanouel Akoumianakis, known as Manolaki,
who much later was killed fighting the Germans in the
Battle of Crete.
It could
have been worse
Mackenzie, in
particular, was to play a crucial role in the excavations
as he kept daybooks in which he recorded all the
developments at the excavation site. He probably had the
most scientific approach of any archaeologist working in
the Aegean at that time. Sadly he later suffered from
severe mental illness which rendered him incapable of
working.
Although much criticism
has been levelled at Evans in the intervening 100 years
for the way in which he rebuilt parts of Knossos, matters
might have been worse still if Heinrich Schliemann had
succeeded in buying the site of Knossos.
The story goes that if
the Turk who was selling the land had not exaggerated the
number of olive trees included in the sale and thereby
incensed the businessman in Schliemann then he and not
Evans would have been the owner of the site and Knossos
might have been excavated in the same insensitive way that
Schliemann excavated Troy.
Given Evans' background
in the wealthy middle class of Victorian England it is not
surprising that he superimposed an image of British
monarchical society onto Minoan society. Evans identified
Knossos as a palace and then set about identifying the
various rooms used by the Kings and Queens of the Minoans.
He also rebuilt large parts of the site. In some cases
this was clearly unavoidable. The great staircase, for
example, would have collapsed onto the workmen on the site
if action had not been taken to restore it.
Thankful
It is perhaps a
fruitless task to criticise from the position of today's
scientific approach to archaeology what Evans did then. We
should be grateful that he was willing to sink so much of
his personal fortune into the excavations at Knossos and
devote the rest of his long life to the study of the
Minoans. We don't have to accept everything he said about
that civilisation -- a further 70 years of excavations
have taken place since Evans' death. But Evans provided
the basis on which all further study of Minoan society has
been based.
Knossos --
a tour of the Palace
Introduction
Knossos is a very
confusing site for a number of reasons -- the length of
time it was occupied, the complexity of the structure, the
unevenness of the destruction of different parts of the
site, the difficulty sometimes in interpreting the
evidence, and the reconstruction -- some of essential,
some of it less so -- by Arthur Evans. Consequently it is
only possible to present an introduction to this enormous
and complex site.
The Old
Palace
The old palace was built
during the Middle Minoan IB period. Not much of it is
visible as successive destructions led to the rebuilding
of whole sections of the Palace in the Neopalatial period.
There were two main phases in its construction. During the
second phase, the West
Court was laid out on a terrace outside the
palace and the kouloures,
round pits, were dug into it. There is still no common
agreement on what the kouloures were used for. Suggestions
include grain storage, rubbish dumps and an area for
planting trees.
The West Court would
have been used as a public meeting place and would have
formed a link between the palace and the town as roads
from the town lead towards the palace. Very little of the
original West Facade remains. It is thought that the upper
floor of the West Facade would have had windows opening
onto the West Court and that ceremonies may have been
conducted here, possibly simultaneously with ceremonies
taking place before a more elite audience in the Central
Court. The west side of the Old Palace was probably used
for administrative purposes, given the hieroglyphic
tablets found there, for storage and for cult rituals.
This combination is also present in New Palace times.
There were other storerooms located in the East Wing of
the palace. The east side also yielded over 400 loom
weights which suggests that weaving took place there.
The Old Palace was
severely damaged at the end of Middle Minoan II, possibly
by an earthquake, but almost certainly by natural means.
The damaged sections of the Palace were immediately
rebuilt in MM III. What we see today are the most
prominent features of the Neopalatial palace.
The New
Palace
The South West Entrance
The main entrance to the
Palace is found in the South West corner. Walking south
along the West facade visitors then, as today, would
arrive at the West Porch. The West Porch includes a square
portico with a central column and it opened onto an
adjoining room, the "Porter's Lodge" or "Guardroom" as
well as to the Corridor of the Processions, a narrow
corridor that continues south (the only remaining section)
and then would have turned east at the end of the
building, and then north at the South Propylaeum.
Fragments of wall paintings found in the Corridor of the
Processions appear to show a processions taking place,
while in the area of the South Propylaeum, fragments from
the cupbearer fresco (see photo above for a reconstruction
of this fresco) were found. There is no agreement on the
date for these wall paintings, with opinions divided
between a neopalatial date and a "Mycenaean" date (i.e. LM
II-LM IIIA).
The reconstruction of
the South Propylaeum by Evans has a Mycenaean look to it,
and this is attributed by Hiller to the fact that Evans at
first thought he was excavating a Mycenaean Palace. By
constructing the Propylaeum, Evans was also required to
construct the Grand Staircase which Evans himself accepted
was simply imagined. Hitchcock suggests a couple of
possible alternatives to the reconstruction including some
sort of hall giving access to the storage area in the West
Wing to the north or even an archive.
The West Wing
The west side of the
palace at ground level was given over to shrines and store
rooms. The wealth of the society is attested to by the
large number of storerooms and the boxes that were stored
beneath the floors. On the West Side of the Palace is one
of the most famous of rooms unearthed by Evans, the Throne
Room.
It has been pointed out
that the Throne
Room would have had an oppressive quality about
it. With its low ceiling and lack of windows it was
separated from the Central Court by an anteroom. The
throne is placed along a side wall facing across the room.
On either side of the throne there are stone benches and
in front of the throne a stone adyton. It may have been
the intention of the ruling group to make the throne room
a mysterious place as far as the local population was
concerned by making it inaccessible and practically
invisible to all but a select few. Some have argued that
it was not in fact a throne room used by a king but an
area used for religious cult practices including possibly
the "epiphany" or appearance of a goddess (in the form of
a priestess) who sat on the throne.
The Throne Room
There were two exits
from the Throne Room. One led to a set of nine rooms and
the other to storage rooms. Two of these had vaults in the
floor like the room where the Snake Goddess was found. The
Throne Room and the rooms leading off it seem to be a
complete, distinct unit within the Palace, adding to the
impression that the main shrine of the palace may have
been what is now called the Throne Room, with the throne
being used by a priestess rather than a King as Evans
imagined.
On the upper floor it is
thought that large state rooms were built, looking onto
the West Court. These rooms may have been used for
ceremonial purposes. Also on the west side of the Palace,
facing the Central Court are the remains of a tripartite shrine.
The Snake Goddess
Sanctuary lies to the south of the Throne Room
and it is here that one of the most famous -- and most
photographed -- objects of Minoan Crete was found, the Snake Goddess.
In fact several snake goddesses were found buried in cists in the ground, named by Evans the Temple
Repositories. One of the statuettes had been deliberately
broken before being placed in the repository and it has
been suggested that this might have been a way of
"killing" the cult figurines. Two of the Snake Goddesses
have been restored and are among the must-see treasures in
the Museum at Heraklion. Further south in the West Wing we
come to the Cup
Bearer Sanctuary, so named after a life-sized
fresco, the remains of which had fallen to the floor.
This fresco shows a
religious scene of temple attendants holding conical rhyta.
The West Store Rooms
are situated to the west of the Lower West Wing Corridor
and they consist of a number of long narrow rooms, many
with enormous storage jars still in situ. On the
storey above the store rooms, there were big square
chambers. One chamber, the Great Sanctuary,
was 16 metres across and had a very large window which may
have been used for ritual appearances before the people at
ceremonies in the West Court. The room was decorated with
a bull leaping fresco.
NorthEntrance
The north entrance to
the palace would have been via the North Pillar Hall,
which Evans considered to be the main public entrance into
the Palace. Given the narrow doorway that leads into the
hall, this seems unlikely. More likely it was used by
those needing to access the north part of the Palace.
From there one could go,
via the North Entrance Passage, to the north end of the
Central Court. This passage way was originally open to the
elements but some time after 1700 BCE it was covered over.
It is thought that there
may have been a dining area above the North Pillar Hall.
Inside the Pillar Hall itself a large number of incised
clay tablets were found, which suggests that this was an
administrative area. Being close to an entrance to the
Palace, the area may have been used to record produce as
it was brought into the Palace.The North Pillar Hall may
also have been a place where people newly arrived at the
palace would gather. Parts of the hall have been heavily
restored, including some of the pillars and steps.
The Bull
Chamber
Immediately south of the
North Pillar Hall is the Bull Chamber,
which was on the same level as the Central Court. It was
here that the Bull
Relief Fresco was found. Opposite this chamber
there would originally have been another, also decorated
with a fresco.
The north east corner of
the Palace was found to be badly damaged when it was
excavated and this makes it difficult to understand what
the area was originally used for. The north east corner
contained a large number of store rooms. Among the finds
was a large number of clay cups. Perhaps this is where
meals were prepared before being taken to the refectory.
After the destruction of 1700 BCE many of the storerooms
in this area (and in the East Wing) were filled in.
The East
Wing
The east side of the
palace would have consisted of four levels of which three
remain. There would have been one level above the central
court, one level adjacent to the central court and the two
levels below the central court, cut into the side of the
hill. The last three still exist. The lower floors,
designated the residential quarters by Evans, are reached
by the Grand Staircase, which would also have continued up
to the upper floor.
The north end of the
East Wing originally comprised store rooms and rooms where
craftsmen worked and is known as the Temple Workshops.
Some of the rooms had benches in them. The walls in this
section are so strong that they probably had to support a
storey or storeys above.
The
drainage system
The Sanctuary of the Great
Goddess no longer exists, only the remains of the
cellars below can be seen today. But as was so often the
case, when the building collapsed a large number of
objects from upper floors fell through to the ground floor
and many of these were recovered during the excavations.
Among the finds was sanctuary equipment including a small
three-pillar shrine and altars, one of which had horns of
consecration on top. A statue of a goddess, possibly three
metres high, almost certainly existed as bronze locks of
hair were found in the cellars. The Sanctuary was reached
up a flight of twelve stairs from the Central Court.
Beyond this area the drainage system is still preserved to
the east of the Room of the Stone Drain Head.
The Grand
Staircase
The highlight of the
East Wing is the Grand
Staircase and the rooms below it. The excavation
of the Grand Staircase proved to be a major headache to
Evans and his team, not least because it was actually
quite a dangerous undertaking. Amazingly much of the
staircase had been preserved in place even though a lot of
the support had been built using wood which had carbonised
in the ensuing period.
There are 54 stairs in
the staircase which descends four flights to the Hall of the Double
Axes. On their way down, the stairs open onto two
colonnaded landings. Halfway down the stairs there is an
area which Evans called the Upper Hall of the Double Axes.
At the bottom of the stairs lies the Hall of the Double
Axes itself.
The Hall of
the Double Axes
Controversy surrounds
Evans' designation of this area as the royal apartments.
Many argue that it is unlikely that the royal apartments
would have been located in this part of the palace. Not
only are they at the bottom of four flights of stairs, but
the original building would also have had several storeys
above ground level. The light
wells
would not have allowed much light to penetrate into the
rooms down here and they do indeed look very gloomy today,
even without the missing additional storeys. Moreover, not
far from here there were workrooms used by craftsmen and
it is argued that royal apartments would not have been
located so close to such an area. It has been suggested
that the area would have been more suited to the carrying
out of religious ritual.
The Hall of the Double
Axes was a double chamber with an inner and an outer
space. The inner space could be closed off by eleven sets
of double doors. A similar arrangement can be seen in the
"royal rooms" at the Palace of Phaistos. Presumably some
aspects of religious ritual were public and others were
not, and so it was necessary to be able to close off the
inner area from the view of others.
The Dolphin
Sanctuary
Near the Hall of the
Double Axes is the Dolphin Sanctuary, which Evans assigned
as the Queen's Apartment. The area takes its name from a
Dolphin Fresco which was found here in pieces, although it
probably fell from the floor above during the destruction
of the palace. A replica of the fresco now adorns the
north wall. A lustral
basin
adjoined the Dolphin Sanctuary and this area now contains
a "bathtub" which was found some distance away and not in
the lustral basin at all. Evans had some problems with
bathrooms at Knossos. In the Throne Room, Evans could not
accept that the sunken area was a bathroom as it was
located only four metres from the throne so he decided it
was a place of ritual purification. But here, in his royal
apartments he was quite happy to interpret the lustral
basin as an ordinary bathroom. Since there are a number of
lustral basins dotted about Knossos, it seems rather
likely that they were all used for the same purpose, which
would exclude the use of this particular lustral basin as
the queen's bathroom.
The Royal
Road and Theatral Area
The royal road
The royal road is one of
the oldest and best preserved ancient roads in Europe. As
it approaches the Palace, the roads divides into two. One
road goes to the theatral area, while the other road leads
to the West Court. Originally it would have passed through
the Minoan town on the way to the palace. A little
imagination is now needed to picture it as it would have
originally been because today it passes along a deep,
tree-lined trench.
The theatral area
The theatral area is a
paved area thirteen metres by ten. Around it is an
L-shaped area of steps which would offer standing room for
about 500 people. Given the size of the town and the
palace itself, this area does not accommodate a
particularly large number of people.
There are a number of
areas of the Palace that have not been dealt with in this
brief description. In particular, the lower southern part
of the East Wing and the independent structures to the
south of the palace have not been described. For a fuller
description of the Palace one of the many guide books to
the Palace of Knossos should be consulted.
tkw note: Various
modern human physiologists have weighed in saying
that the feat is impossible, but they have
probably never seen the Spanish "recortadores",
available on the Internet at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWwJJ1NraEg.
The Bull-Leaping Fresco,
as it has come to be called, is the most completely
restored of several stucco panels originally sited
on the upper-story portion of the east wall of the palace
at Knossos in Crete. Although they
were frescos, they were painted on
stucco relief scenes and therefore are
classified as plastic art. They were difficult to
produce. The artist had to manage not only the altitude of
the panel but also the simultaneous molding and painting
of fresh stucco. The panels, therefore, do not represent
the formative stages of the technique. In Minoan
chronology, their polychrome hues –
white, pale red, dark red, blue, black – exclude them from
the Early Minoan (EM) and early Middle Minoan (MM)
Periods.
They
are, in other words, instances of the "mature art" created
no earlier than MM III. The flakes of the destroyed panels
fell to the ground from the upper story during the
destruction of the palace, probably by earthquake, in Late
Minoan (LM) II. By that time the east stairwell, near
which they fell, was disused, being partly ruinous.
The
theme is a stock scene, one of a few depicting the
handling of bulls. Arthur Evans, Keeper of the Ashmolean
Museum, owner of the palace and
director of excavation, presents the topic in Chapter III
of his monumental work on Knossos and Minoan Civilization,
Palace of Minos. There he calls the several frescos
"The Taureador Frescos."[1]
Arthur
Evans recognized that depictions of bulls and
bull-handling had a long tradition represented by copious
instances in multi-media art, not only at Knossos, and
other sites on Crete, but also in the Aegean and on
mainland Greece, with a tradition even more ancient in
Egypt and the Middle East. At Knossos he distinguished
between "bull-grappling scenes" or "'cow-boy' feats in the
open" and "Circus Sports." The cowboy scenes depict the
catching and handling of wild cattle, represented by
animal icons very like the aurochs from which kine were
domesticated. This type of cattle motif is shown on the
stucco fresco in the North Entrance of the palace.
The
Circus Sports are to be contrasted to Bull-Catching. They
are "a more structurally organized and ceremonial form of
the sport confined, of its very nature, to a specially
devised structure."[3]
He goes on to conjecture, "the Palace Bull-Ring itself lay
on the river flat immediately below." The Taureador
Frescoes, then, are not depictions of real events in real
time, but are decorative motifs on the wall above a
ceremonial bull-ring. They depict a stock scene, of a
conventional nature, which has come to be termed "bull-leaping." It still has no viable
definition. Although it vaguely brings to mind the act of
jumping over bulls, the technique and the reasons for
doing that remain obscure, a century after the discovery
of the frescos. The frescos are no help.
Modern
attempts to recreate the leaping on modern cattle have
resulted only in a number of deaths. In short, the bull is
too fast, too powerful and too aggressive to allow seizure
of the horns, much less the use of the energy of the neck
toss for acrobatics. Moreover, that toss is a hook to the
side, not a neat backward boost. The bull attempts to
skewer the human with one horn, without a view toward the
style of the frescos. It is possible to leap over small
bulls without touching them, even as they charge, and such
spectacles still practiced in France may be the ultimate
source of the icon. A stationary bull might be touched or
pushed on the way over, but pressing on a bull in motion
would have the same effect as being sideswiped by a
speeding vehicle; that is, tumbling out of control.[2]
The
Taureador Frescoes are not frauds or incorrect
reconstructions. The same bull-leaping scene appears in
miniature in sealings and sealstones of the MM and LM
periods.[4]
Explanations and classifications of the figures depicted
are strictly theoretical, never illustrated by real-life
examples. The only certain perception is that the leaper
goes over the bull in an upside-down position, whether
diving from above, leaping up from below, or with or
without the assistance of another human or a device such
as a pole. Why he should choose to do so also is strictly
theoretical, although motives may probably presumed to be
similar to those of modern adolescents in France:
adventure and peer status. It would have to be, certainly,
a volunteer activity of some social reward.
Taurokathapsia
and other classical words
Evans
noted the survival of bull sports into classical times;
for example, the taurokathapsia of Thessaly. The word means "laying
hold of the bull," which in modern times is sometimes used
of the Taureador Fresco. Evans did not use it in that way.
The Thessalian taurokathapsia was performed from
horseback. The Tiryns Fresco depicts a youth on the back
of a bull holding its horns, an activity similar to bull-dogging. First the bull in the
ring is baited by riders to exhaust him. Then a rider
comes up beside him, leaps on his back, seizes the horns,
and falling to one side twists the head, bringing down the
tired bull. Macedonian coins depict Artemis Tauropolos,
"Artemis Bullrider," mounted on a charging bull. Miletus held the Boegia,
"Bull Driving," involving a bull-grappling contest.[5]
The
problem with the Taureador Fresco as a taurokathapsia
is its logical sequence. Depicted are three individuals,
two females, one at the front, one at the back, and a male
shown balancing on the bull. The sexes of the participants
are identified by their colors. The bull evidences the
Mycenaean Flying Leap, which means he is intended to be at
full gallop. His horns, however, are being firmly held by
the lady in front, a small maiden. To make matters worse,
the male is in a balancing, not a tumbling, position. He
holds the flanks of the bull with both hands. If he were
tumbling, and if he had used the horns to get a purchase,
the maiden would not be now holding them. It cannot be a
compressed chronological sequence, as the individuals are
all different. If the maiden is holding the bull, it
cannot be galloping. The fresco simply has no explanation
whatever as a real event, which, however, is true of most
Minoan/Mycenaean decorative panel scenes. No realist
tradition is in play in any way for this period in these
localities. Apparently icons that are disconnected in real
time and space have been superimposed to give an overall
impression of a scene familiar to the artists and their
viewers, but not to today's public.
Size
of ancient Minoan bull leaping bulls[
Archaeological
evidence
has now uncovered that the type of bull used by ancient
Minoan bull leapers was a cross breed giant aurochs bull, now extinct in
Europe. It had a shoulder height of over 6ft (180cm) and a
hoof size similar to the size of a human head.[6]
·Evans,
Arthur John (1930). PM. Volume III: The great
transitional age in the northern and eastern sections of
the Palace: the most brilliant record of Minoan art and
the evidences of an advanced religion.
·——
(1935A). PM. Volume IV Part I:
Emergence of outer western enceinte, with new
illustrations, artistic and religious, of the Middle
Minoan Phase; Chryselephantine "Lady of Sports", "Snake
Room" and full story of the cult Late Minoan ceramic
evolution and "Palace Style".
·——
(1935B). PM. Volume IV Part II:
Camp-stool Fresco, long-robed priests and beneficent
genii ; Chryselephantine Boy-God and ritual
hair-offering ; Intaglio Types, M.M. III - L. M. II,
late hoards of sealings, deposits of inscribed tablets and
the palace stores ; Linear Script B and its mainland
extension, Closing Palatial Phase ; Room of Throne
and final catastrophe.
·MacGillivray,
2000,
MINOTAUR. Sir Arthur Evans and the Archaeology of the
Minoan Myth, Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York.
·(Greek)
C. Christopoulos (ed.), Ελληνική Τέχνη, Η Αυγή της
Ελληνικής Τέχνης, Εκδοτική Αθηνών (Greek Art, The
Dawn of Greek Art), (Athens 1994).
·(Greek) Sinclair Hood, 1993, Η
Τέχνη στην Προϊστορική Ελλάδα (Art in
Pre-historic Greece), Καρδαμίτσας: Athens
Bull-leaping
(also taurokathapsia, from Greek ταυροκαθάψια[1])
is a motif of Middle Bronze
Age figurative art, notably
of Minoan Crete, but also found in Hittite
Anatolia, the Levant, Bactria
and the Indus
Valley.[2]
It is often interpreted as a depiction of a ritual performed in connection
with bull worship. This ritual consists of
an acrobatic leap over a bull; when the leaper grasps the
bull's horns, the bull will violently jerk his neck
upwards giving the leaper the momentum necessary to
perform somersaults and other acrobatic tricks or stunts.
Iconography
Younger
(1995)
classifies bull-leaping depictions as follows:
·Type
I: the acrobat approaches the bull from
the front, grabs the horns, and somersaults backwards
·Type
II: the acrobat approaches the bull from the front, dives
over the horns without touching them and pushes himself
with his hands from the bull's back into a backward
somersault
·Type
III: the acrobat is depicted in mid-air over the bull's
back, facing the same way as the animal
·
The
Type III depictions are often found in Late Minoan IIIB
artwork (14th to 13th centuries BC). Frescoes in Tell el-Dab'a (Avaris, Egypt) dating to the 18th dynasty (16th to 14th centuries
BC) show similar designs besides genuinely Egyptian
motifs, for which reason they have usually been ascribed
to Minoan-taught Egyptian craftsmen (rather than to Minoan
ones directly). They could also have been included as
palace decorations because the palace was built for an
Aegean princess diplomatically married to a Hyksos
pharaoh.[3]
Other
examples of bull-leaping scenes have been found in Syria,
such as a cylinder
seal
impression found in level VII at Alalakh (Old
Babylonian
period, 19th or 18th century BC) showing two acrobats
performing handstands on the back of a bull, with an ankh sign placed between
them, another seal belonging to a servant of Shamshi-Adad I (c. 1800 BC), besides
other Syrian examples. Furthermore a vase was discovered
in Hüseyindede in 1997, dating to the Hittite Old
Kingdom (18th to 15th centuries
BC).
The
assumption, widely debated by scholars, is that the
iconography represents a ritual sport and/or performance
in which human athletes literally vaulted over bulls as
part of a ceremonial rite.
Contemporary
bull-leaping
Bull-leaping
is
still practiced in the south
west
of France,
where it is traditionally known as the course
landaise (although usually cows
are used instead of bulls. These cows are the female stock
of the fighting bulls bred for the corrida in Spain.
However once a year bulls are used, instead of cows, in
the Festival of Art and Courage). The town of Mont-de-Marsan in Gascony is renowned for its fine
sauteurs or "leapers" and écarteurs
("dodgers") dressed in brocaded waistcoats. They compete
in teams, attempting to use their wide repertoire of
skillful evasions and acrobatic leaps to avoid the cow's
charges.
The
cow is typically guided by the use of a long rope attached
to its horns, so that it runs directly at the performers
and is restrained from trampling or goring them should
they miss a trick. Although there is little to no risk to
the cow in this form of contest, it is a highly dangerous
sport for the human participants; a prominent Montois,
Jean-Pierre Rachou, was killed in 2001 when he fell on his
head after being hit by a cow.
In
France the courses landaises are held from March
to October on the occasion of festivals in many cities and
villages, including Nogaro, Mont-de-Marsan, Dax, Castelnau-d'Auzan and many other places.
There are also national championships.
A
similar but even more dangerous tradition of non-violent
bull-leaping, recortes, is practiced in some
parts of Spain. Athletes, known as recortadores,
compete at dodging and leaping over bulls without the use
of the cape or sword. Some recortadores use a long
pole to literally pole-vault over the charging animal,
which is both larger than the type used in the French
sport, and unrestrained by any guiding rope or similar
safety device.
Another
example
of related sport is Jallikattu, a Pongal celebration
related sporting event in Tamil
Nadu,
India. In this sport, the participants are trying to leap
onto a bull, specifically reaching for the money packets
tied to the bull's horns as a prize. This ancient event
has been depicted in rock art dated at least to the 3rd
century BC.
References
1. ^ The name of a ritual
bull-fight held on occasion of a festival in Thessaly (scholion to Pindar, Pythian Odes
2.78), at Smyrna (CIG 3212) and at Sinope (CIG 4157).
2. ^ One argument for the
association of Minoan Crete with the Bronze Age culture of
the Indus Valley by H. Mode (Indische Frühkulturen und
ihre Beziehungen zum Westen, Basel, 1944); since the
1940s, further bull-leaping motives have been discovered
in 2nd millennium BC contexts in Bactria and northern
Anatolia.
3. ^ Rohl, David, The Lords
of Avaris, Random House, 2007.
1.Collon,
D., Bull-Leaping in Syria, Egypt and the Levant:
International Journal for Egyptian Archaeology and Related
Disciplines 4 (1994): 81–88.
2.Marinatos,
Nannó,
The Export Significance of Minoan Bull-Leaping Scenes,
Egypt and the Levant: International Journal for Egyptian
Archaeology and Related Disciplines 4 (1994): 89–93.
3.Marinatos,
Nannó,
Minoan Religion: Ritual, Image, and Symbol, Studies
in Comparative Religion. Columbia, South Carolina:
University of South Carolina Press, 1993.
4.Shaw,
Maria C., The bull-leaping fresco from below the Ramp
House at Mycenae: a study in iconography and artistic
transmission, ABSA 91 (1996).
5.Sipahi,
Tunç, New Evidence From Anatolia Regarding Bull
Leaping Scenes in the Art of the Aegean and the Near
East, Anatolica 27 (2001): 107–125.
6.Younger,
J., Bronze Age Representations of Aegean Bull-Games,
III, Aegaeum 12 (1995): 507–46.
Phaestus,
currently refers to a Bronze Agearchaeological site
at modern Phaistos,
a municipality in south central Crete.
Ancient Phaistos was located about 5.6 km
(3.5 mi) east of the Mediterranean Sea.
The name, Phaistos, survives from ancient Greek references
to a city in Crete of that name, shown to be, in fact, at
or near the current ruins.
The name is substantiated by the
coins of the classical city. They display motifs such as Europa
sitting on a bull, Talos
with wings, Heracles without
beard and being crowned, or Zeus
in a form of a naked youth sitting on a tree. On either
the obverse or the reverse the name of the city, or its
abbreviation, is inscribed, such as ΦΑΙΣ or ΦΑΙΣΤΙ, for Phaistos
or Phaistios ("Phaistian" adjective) written
either right-to-left or left-to-right.[3] These few
dozen coins were acquired by collectors from uncontrolled
contexts. They give no information on the location of
Phaistos.
Phaistos was located by Thomas Abel Brimage Spratt,
commander of the Spitfire, a paddle steamer, in the
Mediterranean Survey of 1853, which surveyed the
topography, settlements and monuments of Crete.[4]
Spratt followed the directions of Strabo,
who said:[5]
Of the three cities that were
united under one metropolis by Minos, the third, which was
Phaestus, was razed to the ground by the Gortynians; it is
sixty stadia distant
from Gortyn,
twenty from the sea, and forty from the seaport Matalum;
and the country is held by those who razed it.
The simple geometric problem
posed by these distances from known points was solved with
no difficulty by the survey. The location pinpointed was
the eastern end of a hill, or ridge, rising from the
middle of the Yeropotamos river valley extending from the
sea to the Messara Plain
in an east-west direction. The hill was called Kastri
("fort", "small castle"). A military man, Spratt
understood the significance of the location immediately:[6]
I thus found that Phaestus had
occupied the extremity of a ridge that divides the
maritime plain of Debaki from the plain of the Messara, so
as to command the narrow valley of communication....
A village of 16 houses remained
on the ridge, but the vestiges of fortification walls
indicated a city had once existed there. A half-century
later, on removing the houses, Federico Halbherr
and his crew began to discover the remains of an extensive
palace complex. As he had begun excavation before Evans at
Knossos
in 1900, he did not have the advantage of Arthur Evans'
concepts of Minoan civilization
nor the knowledge acquired after the decipherment
of the Linear Bsyllabary
by Michael Ventris.
Excavation ended in 1904, to begin again after another
half-century, in 1950. By this time it was understood that
the palace had been constructed at the beginning of the
Proto-Palace Period, along with all the others. After 1955
the place name, 𐀞𐀂𐀵, pa-i-to, interpreted as Phaistos
(written in Mycenaean Greek),[7] began to
turn up in the Linear B tablets at Knossos, then under
the Mycenaean Greeks.
There was every reason to think that pa-i-to was
located at Kastri.
No Linear B has been found at
Phaistos, and yet tradition and the Knossos tablets
suggest that Phaistos was a dependency of Knossos.
Moreover, only a few pieces of Linear A have been found.
As Phaistos appears to have been an administrative center,
the lack of records is paradoxical. However, the lack of
an expected event is not an argument for any conclusion.
There are many possible reasons for the deficit. Records
may yet be found.
Contents
1
Excavation
2
Bronze Age
3
Iron Age
4
See also
5
References
6
Bibliography
7
External links
Excavation
In 1908, Pernier found the Phaistos disc
at the basements of the northern group of the palace. This
artifact is a clay disk, dated to between 1950 BC and 1400
BC and impressed with a unique sophisticated hieroglyphic
script. The tombs of the rulers of Phaistos were found in
the cemetery that was
discovered 20 minutes away from the palace remains.
Bronze Age
Phaistos was inhabited from about
4000 BC.[8] A
palace, dating from the Middle Bronze Age,
was destroyed by an earthquake
during the Late Bronze Age.
Knossos
along with other Minoan
sites was destroyed at that time. The palace
was rebuilt toward the end of the Late Bronze Age.
The first palace was built about
2000 BC. This section is on a lower level than the west
courtyard and has a nice facade with a plastic outer
shape, a cobbled courtyard, and a tower ledge with a ramp,
which leads up to a higher level. The old palace was
destroyed three times in a time period of about three
centuries. After the first and second disaster,
reconstruction and repairs were made, so there are
distinguished three construction phases. Around 1400 BC,
the invading Achaeans
destroyed Phaistos, as well as Knossos. The palace appears
to have been unused thereafter, as evidence of the Mycenaean era
have not been found.
The Old Palace was built in the Protopalatial Period,[9] then
rebuilt twice due to extensive earthquake damage. When the
palace was destroyed by earthquakes, the re-builders
constructed a New Palace atop the old.
Several artifacts with Linear A
inscriptions were excavated at this site. The name of the
site also appears in partially deciphered Linear A texts,
and is probably similar to Mycenaean 'PA-I-TO' as written
in Linear B.
Several kouloura
structures (subsurface pits) have been found at Phaistos.
Pottery has been recovered at Phaistos from in the Middle
and Late Minoan periods, including polychrome
items and embossing in imitation of metal work. Bronze Age
works from Phaistos include bridge spouted bowls,
eggshell cups, tall jars and large pithoi.[10]
In one of the three hills of the
area, remains of the middle neolithic age have been
found, and a part of the palace which built during the Early Minoan period.
Another two palaces seems to have been built at the Middle
and Late Minoan Age.
The older looks like the minoan palace of Knossos,
although this is smaller. On its ruins (probably destroyed
by an earthquake around 1600 BC) a palace of the later
minoan period was built, bigger and magnificent. This
mansion consists from several rooms separated by columns.
The levels of the theater area,
in conjunction with two splendid staircases, gave a grand
access to the main hall of the Propylaea
with the high doors. A twin gate led directly to the
central courtyard through a street with a large width. The
splendour of the rooms interior owed to the investment of
the floors and walls with plates of sand and white gypsum
stone. To the upper floors of the west sector existed
spacious ceremonies rooms, although their exact
restoration was not possible.
A brilliant entrance from the
central courtyard was leading to the royal apartments in
the north part of the palace, which they had view to the
tops of Psiloritis, while for their construction had been
used alabaster
among other materials. For the princes particular rooms
were used, smaller and less luxurious than the rooms of
the royal departments.
Iron Age
References to Phaistos in ancient
Greek literature are quite frequent. Phaistos is first
referenced by Homer as
"well populated",[11] and the
Homeric epics indicate its participation in the Trojan
war.[12] The
historian Diodorus Siculus indicates[13]
that Phaistos, together with Knossos
and Kydonia,
are the three towns that were founded by the king Minos on
Crete.
Instead, Pausanias and Stephanus of Byzantium
supported in their texts that the founder of the city was
Phaestos, son of Hercules
or Ropalus.[14] The
city of Phaistos is associated with the mythical king of
Crete Rhadamanthys.
The new inhabitance began during
the Geometric Age
and continued to historical times (8th century BC
onwards), up to the 3rd century, when the city was finally
destroyed by neighboring Gortyn.
Phaistos had its own currency and
had created an alliance with other autonomous Cretan
cities, and with the king of PergamonEumenes II.
Around the end of the 3rd century BC, Phaestos was
destroyed by the Gortynians and since then ceased to exist
in the history of Crete. Scotia Aphrodite and goddess
Leto
(was called and Phytia also) worshiped there. People of
Phaistos were distinguished for their funny adages.
Phaistian in his descent was Epimenides
who was the wise man who had been invited by the Athenians
to clean the city from the Cylonian affair
(Cyloneio agos) in the 6th century BC.
The Bronze Age town, whose original name is not
known, is situated at Rousolakkos two kilometres from the
village of Palaikastro and some kilometres north of the
Minoan town and palace of Zakros. The location of the town
was important as it was on the east coast, with a large
plain behind it and a harbour that was sheltered by an
outcrop of rock called Kastri hill. A number of small
settlements, individual houses, cemeteries, ossuaries and
quarries were also found in the surrounding area.
The site was originally excavated between 1902 and
1906 by R. Bosanquet and R.M. Dawkins from the British
School of Archaeology in Athens, and subsequently by Hugh
Sackett and Mervyn Popham from 1962 to 1963. Sackett and
MacGillivray have been excavating at the site on and off
since 1986 until the present and have uncovered new
buildings that formed part of the town at Palaikastro.
The Early Minoan period
The site was occupied from at least EM II. Two
small buildings dating from EM IIA were uncovered and it
is felt that these were permanent homes because an ossuary
with pottery from the same period was located near to each
building. In EM IIB a new monumental structure was built.
This building was comparable to other similar buildings
that also went up around this time at Vasiliki, Myrtos,
Knossos, Tylisos and Phaistos.
In the immediate prepalatial period (EM III-MM IA)
no new structures were found in the area of Palaikastro
although there may have been a house on the site of
Building 5, where pottery from this period was found. A
large building on Kastri produced pottery from this period
and an ossuary at Patema also appears to date from the EM
III-MM IA period.
The protopalatial period
The town itself developed during the Protopalatial
period (MM IB-MM IIA). Evidence for this development was
found below blocks X, G, E and 0. A cemetery at Tou Galeti
He Kephala was opened up in this period. Large public
buildings were being constructed as early as the Old
Palace period as shown by the discovery of a mason's mark
similar to one used in the Old Palace period at Knossos.
Also around this time the peak sanctuary on Petsophas was
inaugurated.
It seems that during this period the Minoans also
established a system of roads guarded by watchtowers.
There were possibly four or five towers along each of the
two routes which left Palaikastro.
The neopalatial period
A large number of houses were built during the MM
IIIB-LM IA period and they remained in use until they were
destroyed in LM IB. The reason for so much building taking
place at this time was the destruction of large parts of
the town at the end of MM IIIA, almost certainly by an
earthquake. The new town expanded northward from the old
Blocks to Buildings 2 and 3, as well as possibly 4 and 5
from the latest excavations. The town also grew to the
west with the building of Block K.
In LM IA Building 1 was constructed. This building
was uncovered during the 1986-8 excavations. Evidence
suggested that this building was more than simply a large
house. Firstly all four exterior walls were built of ashlar
masonry, the
first such building to be found at Palaikastro.
A carved statuette with a head of serpentine and eyes of rock crystal was found
in an area just outside Building 1 and the excavators
believe that this building may have been part of a shrine
or a temple. In their view it is possible that this shrine
or temple took on the important role previously filled by
the peak santuary which was now going out of use. If so,
then Building 1 may be the first identifiable public
building to have been uncovered in a hundred years of
excavations at Palaikastro.
The postpalatial period
In LM IB the town continued to grow. However at the
end of LM IB a series of destructions by fire took place.
While many of the palaces, towns, settlements and villas
of Minoan Crete were destroyed and abandoned during this
period, serviceable buildings at Palaikastro were
reoccupied almost immediately but not all of the town was
reoccupied and few buildings were renovated or rebuilt.
But in LM IIIA2 and LM IIIB, large scale building took
place in Palaikastro and the population increased as the
town was reoccupied. Houses were also built close to the
sea and on Kastri. During the LM IIIB period it seems that
an earthquake once again destroyed much of the town, after
which it was partially re-occupied and then abandoned. The
farms and cemeteries also went out of use. There seems to
have been a small temporary settlement in LM IIIC on the
Kastri Hill after which Palaikastro ceased to be inhabited
until the Geometric period.
Central planning
What is interesting about Palaikastro, which grew
to be the second largest town in Crete after Knossos, is
the fact that it seems to have been largely planned by a
central authority. The town is arranged in blocks which
the original excavators named with letters from the Greek
alphabet, beta, gamma and delta etc. A main street ran for
a length of 145 metres through the town and three very
narrow streets ran off the main street at right angles,
one of them for a length of 70 metres. More than half the
width of the main street was taken up by a raised
pavement.
Each block consists of four or five houses, one of
which tends to be larger than the others and contains more
significant architectural features, for example, a facade
of ashlar masonry. In particular, the largest house in
several of the blocks contained what has been named a
Palaikastro Hall, a room with a sunken area in the centre
surrounded by four pillars. Of the four Palaikastro Halls
identified, three had a lustral basin at close proximity. It has been
suggested that each block may have been occupied by people
related to each other, either an extended family or
members of a clan.
It is assumed, given the location of the town, that
the main economic activities of the inhabitants would have
been agriculture and trade. But these two basic strands of
the local economy also supported a wide variety of craft
activities. Weaving was a major activity throughout the
town as shown by the number of loomweights found all over
the site. The manufacture of products in metal, stone and
ivory, for which the raw materials would have been
imported, provided the elite families with high status
goods made from rare materials. The houses of these
families were in some cases decorated with wall paintings,
although only fragments have been found. Finally the
production of pottery, both for consumption in the town
and for export to other areas of Eastern Crete would have
been a major activity. When House 1 at Petras was
excavated, for example, it was found that two-thirds of
the pottery had been made at Palaikastro. A potter's kiln
has been excavated but it can't have been the only one,
and potter's wheels have also been uncovered.
Evidence of cult activity was found throughout the
site and on a scale not found elsewhere. Among the finds
of a religious or cult nature were incense burners, rhyta,
triton shells, large stone baetyls,
horns of consecration and double axes. However the most
important cult find was a carving in ivory of a young male
believed by excavators to be a Minoan forerunner of the
Diktaian Zeus. The ivory figure had been deliberately
broken either by disillusioned worshippers or by the
Mycenaeans when they arrived in the town.
A number of cemeteries were discovered by the
original excavators and these circle the Minoan town. In
Early Minoan Crete communal burials were practised with
the bones of the deceased buried with their grave goods in
a secondary burial after the body had fully decomposed. In
central south Crete burials were in tholos tombs, but in
north and east Crete house tombs were constructed. It is
thought that the house tombs at Palaikastro contained two
areas, one open area in which the body decomposed before
the bones were collected and placed in the second, smaller
area, an ossuary,
together with the grave goods. In Late Minoan Crete after
the arrival of the Mycenaeans, there was a move towards
individual burials in larnakes, a number of which were found in
the cemeteries of Palaikastro.
A large area of the earliest excavations at
Palaikastro has since been covered over again with earth.
The area of the excavation that was left exposed suffered
damage during the Second World War and later from the
activities of a bulldozer. Locals also took much of the
finer stonework for building purposes so by the time the
site was revisited in the 1960s it was overgrown and the
ground plans drawn by the early excavators were, in
places, hard to follow.
Below I describe in detail one of these blocks,
which contains many of the features that were repeated in
the other blocks excavated in the town. Other blocks will
be described more briefly.
The first block to be excavated in the town itself
was block B (see plan). This block consisted of five
houses, one very large one and four much smaller ones. The
large house (rooms 1-22), known as House B, had 22 rooms
and what the excavators called megalithic outer walls.
There was a courtyard in the south east corner which was
entered from the direction of the harbour. A verandah was
uncovered at the west end of the south east court near
room 12. Two square and four round limestone column bases
on which wooden pillars had rested were found here and
they alternated between square and round bases.
Entry to the house was through a porch (room 8)
which once held a wooden bench. The threshold was made of
ironstone and it separated the porch from the vestibule
(room 7), which led into the main room of the house (room
6). Rooms 6 and 7 formed an L shaped whole but room 6 was
clearly different. It had a paved floor in the centre of
which was a sunken area covered with white plaster and
surrounded by a border of regular slabs. At the four
corners of the sunken area, round column bases were found.
The area in the middle would have been exposed to the open
sky. It was possibly created to allow light and air into
the building as there was nothing to indicate that the
area had originally been a hearth. This slightly sunken
space with four pillar columns at each corner was found
repeated in a number of the largest houses in other blocks
in the town and will be referred to here as a Palaikastro Hall.
This type of hall was long believed to have been
unique to Palaikastro, but there may have been an example
in House B2 at Mochlos where a building of ashlar masonry
contained both a pier and door partition and what the
excavator called an impluvium, but which is in
fact a hall of the Palaikastro type.
The main finds were made in the adjoining rooms.
Room 2 was the anteroom for what the excavators called a
bathroom (room 3). However, this room blocked an already
existing drain which rather undermines the theory that it
was a bathroom. It is far more likely to have been a
lustral basin, since these did not have drainage. Although
many of lustral basins stand alone, a number were located
very close to Minoan Halls or in this case the Palaikastro
Hall, the particular style of hall represented in the
larger houses here with their four pillars around a
slightly sunken area in the middle of the room.
Among the ceramics found in rooms 2 and 3 were
examples of Kamares Ware. Room 5 was originally bigger but
a staircase was built to the left of the door when the
second floor was added. Four steps from this staircase
remain in situ. Opposite the entrance to room 5
there were two steps down into a compartment where an
enormous number of plain cups were found. Room 5 may have
been a kitchen. Finds
included three female figurines of clay, the clay head of
an ox and marine style sherds. Space 20 may have become a
cellar after reconstruction as 40 plain cups and many more
broken ones were found there as well as stucco fragments
which, when put together formed part of a horns of
consecration.
Rooms 10 and 13 were magazines entered from above.
Several hundred vases were found here and the largest of
them lined the walls. The original entrance to rooms 10
and 13 may have been from entrance room 12. This entrance
was blocked by a staircase when the upper floor was built,
at which point 10 and 13 may have been turned into
storerooms.
Room 9 had a floor of stamped clay. The room
suffered fire damage and may have been a storage room for
lamps, in which case oil may have been stored here as
well. This would have made the destruction fire even more
intense. Several large fire-damaged steatite lamps found
here.
Room 14 had a good flagstone pavement but the wall
facing the street was so badly damaged that is not known
if there had been a door here. In the middle of the room
was a column base. A larger column base, fallen from the
room above, lay on top of it, suggesting that there had
been a pillar on both the ground floor and the first
floor. All the rooms contained cooked red soil from the
upper floor which would have been built using mud bricks.
The excavators believed that the mud bricks had only been
sun dried before use but were baked in the fire that
destroyed the building. Plaster fragments painted in
various colours had also fallen from above as had the
flagstone floor of the room above room 10. Room 14 had
been floored with kiln-baked earthenware tiles. Room 15
was identified as a bathroom.
It is not desirable to describe all the blocks in
the same detail as Block Beta as many of the same features
are repeated. Reports on these blocks will therefore
concentrate on the most important aspects.
Block Gamma contained four buildings of which one
was the most important. The remaining buildings tended to
have more rooms than some of the smaller buildings in
Block Beta. The building that stands out as the most
important house in this block consisted of rooms 1-12.
Again, entry is through a vestibule with a small recess on
the left containing a bench. In this house the threshold
is on the right. The vestibule was like a porch with the
main door beyond.
The main doors opened into room 1. The Palaikastro
Hall, room 3, was to the left, past a staircase. Near the
remains of the slab pavement are 2 pillars, all that is
left of the four pillars once here. At a later point the
main hall was much altered. The western half was filled
with a staircase and a small room whose walls supported a
second flight of stairs. A steatite lamp was found in this
room. Below these structures there had originally been a
lustral basin, which had been filled in when the stairs
were being built.
Rooms 9 and 10 were both well paved, the first with
cement the second with stone slabs. A pithos, amphorae and
a pestle were discovered in room 9. Area 11 was a
courtyard formed by the space between two different
houses. Room 12 opened onto the street and formed a side
entrance to the house.
The other houses in the block were made up of rooms
13-22; rooms 23-32; and rooms 33-38. In this last building
rooms 37 and 38 may have been a shop. The whole
width of room 37 opens onto the side street, while a
double entrance leads into room 38, immediately behind
room 37. This room contained a stone sink connected to a
drain which ran through room 37 and out into the street.
The channel was covered with stone slabs. The sink and
drain, together with jars and what may have been weights
suggests an industrial purpose. Perhaps the two rooms were
a shop with a rear storeroom and workroom.
At over 1800 square metres even before it was fully
uncovered, Block Delta was the largest block found at
Palaikastro. Unfortunately the best house in this block
had been damaged by locals taking away the fine cut pieces
of stone. The west end of the building had been completely
ruined. A great deal of rebuilding in Minoan times had
raised the level in this area so that the pavement in the
road outside is not the original, which would have been at
the level of the road itself.
A number of buildings were originally identified.
Within rooms 1-16 where an absence of doorways made it
difficult to understand the plan, room s 8-16 were
identified as making up one house. A second, very large,
building comprised rooms 18-40 while rooms 43-48 contained
two very small buildings, with three rooms each (43-45 and
46-48).
The house in rooms 18-40 had seen a lot of
rebuilding. The main feature of the earlier house was the
Palaikastro Hall
in room 19 with its four pillars at the corners of a
square of unpaved space, all lying below the floor level
of the later house. The entrance, now concealed by later
structures, must have been on the mains street from 20 or
21.
When the second house was built the Palaikastro
Hall was covered up and a fresh entrance made at a higher
level. The level of the street was also raised and a new
facade was built for rooms 20-36. Room 23, which the
excavators called an impluvium, belongs to the
later period. It consisted of a paved area 3.5m square,
which was open to the sky as it has a drain running down
into the street This square was surrounded by a higher
pavement above the level of the earlier house. The paved
square in area 40, made of two huge slabs, may have been a
similar structure. Room 38 contained lamps and a lamp
stand.
Rooms 43-48 had been inhabited from the earliest
Minoan times and they were continuously occupied until the
period of desertion when Palaikastro was finally
abandoned. Room 47 was a back entrance, while rooms 43-46
and 48 were storerooms.
Finds: The most interesting finds from
Block Delta came from Room 44 where LM IIIA vases plus
clay objects connected with the cult of a snake goddess
were found. Excavators found four female figurines
dressed in long skirts. On three of the figures, the arms,
though broken, were originally outstretched while the
fourth holds a striped snake in her arms. The figures have
no headgear and their bodices cover their breasts. It
seems likely that the group were placed with the woman
with the snake in her arms in the centre and the other
women dancing hand in hand.
Clay doves were
also found. These probably represented doves in the
process of perching on a trinity of sacred pillars. Each
dove had a hole underneath so they had originally been
connected to something. Also found were the remains of 44
conical shaped cups which had all been originally attached
to some base, possibly a large bowl, with the painted side
of the cup facing out. All these objects had been
deliberately broken and then put away in room 44.
Why no palace?
The current excavators of the site believe there
may be a palace to the south of the town in an area which
has yet to be excavated. The palace at Zakros, further
south on the east coast, is located in just such a
position. Castleden, however, argues that the absence of a
palace may mean that the craft workers were able to carry
out their trade geographically separated from the palace,
although the possibility cannot be excluded that their
work was directed by a central authority at Zakros.
To the south of the site a Peak Sanctuary was
excavated by the British on the summit of Petsophas, 225
metres high. It proved to be one of the richest and most
important Middle Minoan Peak Sanctuaries and was certainly
still in use in Late Minoan I, when a small cult building
was erected.
A large number of small clay figurines of men and
women, representing the people making the dedicatory
offerings were found, which provided a lot of information
about the dress and hairstyles of the period. Votive
models of human limbs and stone offering tables with
Linear A inscriptions were also found.
Hagia Triada
(also Ayia Triada,
Agia Triada,
Agia Trias,
Greek: [ˈaʝa triˈaða] — Holy Trinity) is the archaeological site of an ancient Minoan settlement.[1]
Hagia Triada is situated on the western end of a prominent
coastal ridge, with Phaistos at the eastern end and
the Mesara Plain below.[2]
Hagia
Triada has yielded more Linear
A tablets than any
other Minoan site. Important finds
include the Hagia
Triada
sarcophagus,
the Chieftain's Cup, the Boxer Vase, and
the Harvester Vase.
Contents
1 Geography
2 Archaeology
3 See also
4 References
Geography
Hagia
Triada is in south central Crete, 30–40 meters above sea
level. It lies four kilometers west of Phaistos, which is situated at
the western end of the Mesara Plain. The site was not a
Minoan palace but an upscale town and possibly a royal
villa. After the catastrophe of 1450 BC, the town was rebuilt
and remained inhabited until the 2nd century BC. Later, a
Roman villa was built at the site. Nearby are two chapels:
Hagia Triada in the deserted village and Hagios
Georgios,
built during the Venetian period.
Archaeology
Hagia
Triada, as was nearby Phaistos, was excavated from 1900
to 1908 by a group from Italian Scuola Archeologica
Italiana di Atene, directed by Federico
Halbherr and Luigi Pernier. The site includes a
town and a miniature "palace", an ancient drainage system
servicing both, and Early Minoan tholos tombs. The settlement
was in use, in various forms, from Early Minoan I
until the fires of Late Minoan IB.
Archaeologists
unearthed
a sarcophagus painted with
illuminating scenes from Cretan life,.[3] It is the only limestone
sarcophagus of its era discovered to date and the only
sarcophagus with a series of narrative scenes of Minoan funerary ritual.
However, it is possible that the Minoan religious beliefs
were mixed with the beliefs of the Myceneans, who captured the island
in the 1300s BC. It was originally used for the burial of
a prince.
In the
center of one of the long sides of the sarcophagus is the
scene of a bull sacrifice. On the left of the second long
side, a woman who is wearing a crown is carrying two
vessels. By her side, a man dressed in a long robe is
playing a seven-stringed lyre. This is the earliest
known picture of the classical-Greek lyre.
In
front of them, another woman is emptying the contents of a
vessel--perhaps the blood of the sacrificed bull--into a
second vessel, possibly as an invocation to the soul of
the deceased.[4] It seems that the blood
of the bull was used for the regeneration of the
reappearing dead. This scene is reminiscent of a
description of Homer, where the dead needed blood.[5]
On the left, three men holding animals and a boat are
approaching a male figure without limbs; ahe presumably
represents the dead man receiving gifts. The boat is
offered for his journey to the next world .[6]
According to a Minoan belief, beyond the sea, there was
the island of the happy dead Elysion, where the departed
souls could have a different but happier existence. Rhadamanthys was the judge of the
Elysion, and this idea probably predates some later Orphic beliefs.[5]
It
seems that, in Crete, some festivals
corresponded to later Greek festivals.[7] An agrarian procession
is depicted on the "Harvesters' Vase", or "Vase of the
Winnowers", which was found in Hagia Triada. The vaswe is
dated from the last phase of the neopalatial period (LM
II). Men are walking in twos with rods on their shoulders.
The leader is dressed in a priestly robe with a fringe and
is carrying a stick. A group of musicians accompany with
song, and one of them holds the Egyptiansistrum.[8][9]
To see images with this text, use the link
immediately above.
Minoan pottery is
more than a useful tool for dating the mute Minoan civilization.
Its restless sequence of quickly maturing artistic styles
reveals something of Minoan patrons' pleasure in novelty
while they assist archaeologists in assigning relative
dates to the strata
of their sites. Pots that contained oils and ointments,
exported from 18th century BCCrete,
have been found at sites through the Aegean
islands and mainland Greece,
on Cyprus,
along coastal Syria and
in Egypt,
showing the wide trading contacts of the Minoans. The
extremely fine palace pottery called Kamares ware, and the
Late Minoan all-over patterned "Marine style" are the high
points of the Minoan pottery
tradition.
Traditional chronology
The traditional chronology for
dating Minoan civilization
was developed by Sir Arthur Evans
in the early years of the 20th century AD. His terminology
and the one proposed by Nikolaos Platon
are still generally in use and appear in this article. For
more details, see the Minoan chronology.
Evans classified fine pottery by
the changes in its forms and styles of decoration. Platon
concentrated on the episodic history of the Palace of Knossos. A new
method, fabric analysis, involves geologic analysis of
coarse and mainly undecorated sherds as though they were
rocks. The resulting classifications are based on
composition of the sherds.[1]
Origin
Butmir culture vessels
that represent further development of Impresso tradition
may be considered as prototypes of Kamares style of
Minoan pottery, although the link between Butmir (and
"Impressed Ware" in general), on the one hand, and Minoan,
on the other, is still a matter of debates.
Early Minoan
A brief introduction to the topic
of Early Minoan pottery is stated below. It concentrates
on some better-known styles but should not be regarded as
comprehensive. A variety of forms is known.
The period is generally characterized by a large number of
local wares with frequent Cycladic parallels or imports,
suggesting a population of checkerboard ethnicity deriving
from various locations in the eastern Aegean or even
wider. The evidence is certainly open to interpretation,
and none is decisive.
FN, EM I
Early Minoan pottery, to some
extent, continued, and possibly evolved from, the Final Neolithic[2]
(FN) without a severe break. Many suggest that Minoan
civilization evolved in situ and was not imported
from the East. Its other main feature is its variety from
site to site, which is suggestive of localism of Early
Minoan social traditions.
Studies of the relationship
between EM I and FN have been conducted mainly in East
Crete.[3]
There the Final Neolithic has affinities to the Cyclades,
while both FN and EM I settlements are contemporaneous,
with EM I gradually replacing FN. Of the three
possibilities, no immigration, total replacement of
natives by immigrants, immigrants settling among natives,
Hutchinson[4]
takes a compromise view:
"The Neolithic Period in Crete
did not end in a catastrophe; its culture developed into
that of the Bronze Age under pressure from infiltration of
relatively small bands of immigrants from the south and
east, where copper and bronze had long been in use."
Pyrgos Ware
EM I types include Pyrgos Ware,[5] also called
Pattern Burnished Ware.
The major form was the "chalice",
or Arkalochori
Chalice, in which a cup combined with a
funnel-shaped stand could be set on a hard surface without
spilling. (Example). As the
Pyrgos site was a rock shelter used as an ossuary, some
hypothesize ceremonial usage.
This type of pottery was black, grey or brown, and
burnished, with some sort of incised linear pattern. It
may have imitated wood.
Incised Ware
Another EM I type, Incised Ware,
also called Scored
Ware, were hand-shaped, round-bottomed,
dark-burnished jugs (Example) and
bulbous cups and jars ("pyxes"). Favored
decor was incised line patterns, vertical, horizontal or
herring-bone. (Example, pyxis). These
pots are from the north and northeast of Crete and appear
to be modelled after the Kampos Phase of the Grotta-Pelos
Early Cycladic I culture. Some have
suggested imports or immigrations. See also Hagia Photia.
Agyios
Onouphrios, Lebena
Painted parallel-line decors of Ayios Onouphrios I
Ware were drawn with an iron-red clay slip that
would fire red under oxidizing conditions in a clean kiln
but under the reducing conditions of a smoky fire would
turn darker, without much control over color, which could
range from red to brown. A dark-on-light painted pattern
was then applied. (Examples 1, Examples 2.) From this
beginning, Minoan potters already concentrated on the
linear forms of designs, perfecting coherent designs and
voids that would ideally suit the shape of the ware.
Shapes were jugs, two-handled cups and bowls. The ware
came from north and south central Crete, as did Lebena Ware of
the same general types but decorated by painting white
patterns over a solid red painted background (Example). The
latter came from EM I tombs.
Koumasa and
Fine Gray Ware
In EM IIA, the geometric
slip-painted designs of Koumasa Ware
seem to have developed from the wares of Aghios
Onouphrios. The designs are in red or black on a light
background. Forms are cups, bowls, jugs and teapots (Example: "Goddess of Myrtos").
Also from EM IIA are the cylindrical and spherical pyxides
called Fine Gray
Ware or just Gray Ware,
featuring a polished surface with incised diagonals, dots,
rings and semicircles. (Example)
Vasiliki
Ware
The EM IIA and IIB Vasiliki Ware,
named for the Minoan site
in eastern Crete, has mottled glaze effects, early
experiments with controlling color, but the elongated
spouts drawn from the body and ending in semicircular
spouts show the beginnings of the tradition of Minoan
elegance (Examples 1,
Examples 2). The
mottling was produced by uneven firing of the slip-covered
pot, with the hottest areas turning dark. Considering that
the mottling was controlled into a pattern, touching with
hot coals was probably used to produce it. The effect was
paralleled in cups made of mottled stone.
EM III
Pottery
Of the period Hutchinson says:[6]
"...
the most remarkable feature is the expansion of central
Cretan sites ... at the expense of east Cretan sites ..."
In the latest brief transition
(EM III), wares in eastern
Crete begin to be covered in dark slip with light
slip-painted decor of lines and spirals; the first
checkered motifs appear; the first petallike loops and
leafy bands appear, at Gournia (Walberg
1986). Rosettes appear and spiral links sometimes joined
into bands. These motifs are similar to those found on
seals. In
north central Crete, where Knossos was to emerge, there is
little similarity: dark on light linear banding prevails;
footed goblets make their appearance (Example).
Middle Minoan
Of the palace at Knossos and
smaller ones like it at Phaestos,
Mallia
and elsewhere, Willetts says:[7]
"These large palaces were central
features of sizable cities... Apparently they were also
administrative and religious centres of self-supporting
regions of the island."
The rise of the palace culture,
of the "old palaces" of Knossos and Phaistos
and their new type of urbanized, centralized society with
redistribution centers required more storage vessels and
ones more specifically suited to a range of functions. In
palace workshops, standardization suggests more supervised
operations and the rise of elite wares, emphasizing
refinements and novelty, so that palace and provincial
pottery become differentiated.
The forms of the best
wares were designed for table and service. In the
palace workshops, the introduction from the Levant of the
potter's wheel
in MMIB enabled perfectly symmetrical bodies to be thrown
from swiftly revolving clay.[8] The
well-controlled iron-red slip that was added to the color
repertory during MMI could be achieved only in insulated
closed kilns that were free of oxygen or smoke.
Pithoi
Any population center requires
facilities in support of human needs and that is true of
the palaces as well. Knossos had extensive sanitation,
water supply and drainage systems,[9]
which is evidence that it was not a ceremonial labyrinth
or large tomb. Liquid and granular necessities were stored
in pithoi
located in magazines, or storage rooms, and elsewhere.
Pithoi make their earliest appearance just before MMI
begins and continue into Late Minoan, becoming very rare
by LMIII (Examples 1, Examples 2). About 400
pithoi were found at the palace of Knossos. An average
pithos held about 1100 pounds of fluid. Perhaps because of
the weight, pithoi were not stored on the upper floors.
New styles
New styles emerge at this time:
an Incised Style, the tactile Barbotine ware,
studded with knobs and cones of applied clay in bands,
waves and ridges, sometimes reminiscent of sand-dollar
tests and barnacle growth (Example), and the
earliest stages of Kamares ware. Spirals and whorls are
the favorite motifs of Minoan pottery from EM III onwards
(Walberg). A new shape is the straight-sided cylindrical
cup.
MMIA wares and local pottery
imitating them are found at coastal sites in the eastern Peloponnese,
though not more widely in the Aegean
until MMIB; their influence on local pottery in the nearby
Cyclades has been
studied by Angelia G. Papagiannopoulou (1991). Shards of
MMIIA pottery have been recovered in Egypt and at Ugarit.
Kamares Ware
Kamares Ware was named
after finds in the cave sanctuary at Kamares on Mt. Ida in
1890. It is the first of the virtuoso polychrome
wares of Minoan civilization, though the first expressions
of recognizably proto-Kamares decor predate the
introduction of the potter's wheel.
Finer clay, thrown on the wheel,
permitted more precisely fashioned forms, which were
covered with a dark-firing slip and exuberantly painted
with slips in white, reds and browns in fluent floral designs, of
rosettes or conjoined coiling and uncoiling spirals.
Designs are repetitive or sometimes free-floating, but
always symmetrically composed. Themes from nature begin
here with octopuses, shellfish, lilies, crocuses and
palm-trees, all highly stylized. The entire surface of the
pot is densely covered, but sometimes the space is
partitioned by bands. One variety features extravagantly
thin bodies and is called Eggshell Ware (Example 1,
Example 2).
In MMIIB, the increasing use of
motifs drawn from nature heralded the decline and end of
the Kamares style. The Kamares featured whole-field floral
designs with all elements linked together (Matz). In MMIII
patterned vegetative designs, the Patterned Style,
began to appear (Example).
This phase was replaced by individual vegetative scenes,
which marks the start of the Floral Style.
Matz refers to the "Age of Efflorescence", which reached
an apogee in LM IA. (Some would include Kamares Ware under
the Floral Style.)
The floral style depicts palms
and papyrus, with various kinds of lilies and elaborate
leaves. It appears in both pottery and frescoes. One
tradition of art criticism calls this the "natural style"
or "naturalism" but another points out that the stylized
forms and colors are far from natural. Green, the natural
color of vegetation, appears rarely. Depth is represented
by position around the main scene.
Late Minoan
LMI marks the highwater of Minoan
influence throughout the southern Aegean (Peloponnese,
Cyclades, Dodecanese, southwestern Anatolia). Late Minoan
pottery was being widely exported; it has turned up in
Cyprus, the Cylades, Egypt and Mycenae.
Floral style
Fluent movemented designs drawn
from flower and leaf forms,
painted in reds and black on white grounds predominate, in
steady development from Middle Minoan. In LMIB there is a
typical all-over leafy decoration, for which first
workshop painters begin to be identifiable through their
characteristic motifs; as with all Minoan art, no name
ever appears.
Rhyta
Dated to LM IA and following also
are conical rhyta,
or drinking cups, in steatite
and also imitated in ceramic. (Example) Some of
the rhyta are ornate libation vessels, such as the noted "Bull's-head Rhyton"
found at Knossos. The Bull's Head Rhyton, however, was a specific
type of which many instances have been found. The bull's
head is found in ceramic as well. Other noted stone vases
of LM IA and II are the "Harvester Vase" View 1, View 3, View 4,
from Hagia Triada,
which depicts a harvest procession, "the Chieftain Cup", depicting
a coming-of-age rite, the Boxer Rhyton (Hagia
Triada), showing boxing scenes, the Sanctuary Rhyton,
depicting a peak sanctuary to the "mistress of animals"
and featuring birds and leaping goats, and others.
Marine style
In LMIB, the Marine Style
also emerges; in this style, perhaps inspired by frescoes,
the entire surface of a pot was covered with sea
creatures, octopus, fish and dolphins, against a
background of rocks, seaweed and sponges (Examples 1, Examples 2, Examples 3, Examples 4. The Marine
style was the last purely Minoan style; towards the end of
LMIB, all the palaces except Knossos were violently
destroyed, as were many of the villas and towns.
Minoan-Mycenaean
Around 1450, the beginning of LM
II, the Mycenaean Greeks
must have moved into the palace of Knossos. They were
well-established by 1400, if the Linear B tablets can be
dated to then. The resulting LM II culture is not a break
with the Minoan past. Minoan traditions continue under a
new administration. However, the vase forms and designs
became more and more Mycenaean in character with a large
variety of decoration. Style names have multiplied and
depend to some degree on the author. The names below are
only a few of the most common. Some authors just use the
name "Mycenaean Koine"; that is, the Late Minoan pottery
of Crete was to some degree just a variety of widespread
Mycenaean forms. The designs are found also on seals and
sealings, in frescoes and on other artifacts. Often Late
Minoan pottery is not easily placed in subperiods. In
addition are imports from the neighboring coasts of the
Mediterranean. Ceramic is not the only material used: breccia, calcite,
chlorite,
schist,
dolomite
and other colored and patterned stone were carved into
pottery forms. Bronze ware appears imitating the ceramic
ware.
Records of
pots and pans
The Linear B tablets contain
records of vessels made of various materials. The vessel
ideograms are not so clear as to make correlation with
discovered artifacts easy. Using a drawing of the
"Contents of the Tomb of the Tripod Hearth" at Zafer
Papoura from Evans' Palace of Minos,[10] which
depicts LM II bronze vessels, many in the forms of ceramic
ones, Ventris and Chadwick[11]
were able to make a few new correlations.
During LMII, Mycenean influence
became apparent. The vase forms at Knossos
are similar to those on the mainland. The Palace Style[17]
showcased by them adapts elements of the previous styles
but also adds features, such as the practice of confining
decor in reserves and bands, emphasizing the base and
shoulder of the pot and the movement towards abstraction (Examples 1, Examples 2, Examples 3). This
style started in LM II and went on into LM III. The palace
style was mostly confined to Knossos. In the late
manifestation of the palace style, fluent and spontaneous
earlier motifs stiffened and became more geometrical and
abstracted. Egyptian motifs such as papyrus and lotus
are looser
Plain and
Close Styles
The Plain Style and
Close Style
developed in LM IIIA, B from the Palace Style. In the
Close Style the Marine and Floral Styles themes continue,
but the artist manifests the horror vacui or
"dread of emptiness". The whole field of decoration is
filled densely. (Examples 1, Examples 2). The
Stirrup Jar is especially frequent.
The Middle
East Style
IIIC
Subminoan
Finally, in the Subminoan period,
the geometric designs of the Dorians become more apparent.
(Example)
2. ^This term dating from
the late 20th century means the very last, transitional
phase of the Neolithic,
in which stone tools were in use along with elements of
the succeeding metal age. The terms, "Chalcolithic",
"Copper Age" and "Sub-Neolithic", clearly fall into this
category. They are used in this general sense in the archaeology of Europe.
However, the Final Neolithic also tends to refer to
specific cultures. With reference to the Aegean, it means
Late Neolithic Ib - II,
during which painted ware was replaced by coarse ware in
the Cyclades; on Crete,
it means the Neolithic before EM I, which features coarse
wares. In a general sense, all EM might have been Final
Neolithic, as bronze materials do not start until the MM
period. It is not, however, used in that sense with
reference to Crete.
5. ^Pyrgos I-IV,
EM I through LM I, has been defined.
6. ^
Work cited, The Third Early Minoan Period.
7. ^
Work cited, Chapter 4
8. ^
Prior to the introduction of the wheel turn-table disks
were used, such as were discovered in Myrtos I from EM
times. The larger pots continued to be made this way.
Sacred
caves and
peak
sanctuaries are characteristic holy places
of ancient Minoan
Crete. Most scholars agree that sacred caves were used by
the Minoans for religious rites. While all peak
sanctuaries have clay human figurines, only Idaeon and
Psychro have them among the sacred caves. Clay body parts,
also called votive
body parts, common among peak
sanctuaries, appear in no caves with the
exception of a bronze leg in Psychro.
MinoanPeak sanctuaries are widespread throughout the
island of Crete
(Greece).
Most scholars agree that peak sanctuaries were used for
religious rites. In all peak sanctuaries, human and animal
clay figurines have been found. Clay body parts, also
called votive body parts, are also found in most peak
sanctuaries. These open-air sanctuaries are found high in
the mountains
of Crete.
Contents
1
Eastern and east-central peak sanctuaries
2
Central Crete peak sanctuaries
3
Western Crete peak sanctuaries
4
Other peak sanctuaries
5
References
Eastern and
east-central peak sanctuaries
Most peak
sanctuaries are found in east and east-central Crete.
•Petsofas is the only Minoan site with
clay weasel and tortoise figurines
•Atsipades in the Korakias mountains was
fully excavated in the 1980s. Its many hundred clay
figurines and other ceramics have been analysed in detail
and will be presented in a forthcoming publication.
Peak Sanctuaries were a
phenomenon dating from the Middle Minoan I period. The
peak santuary on Juktas served the Minoan palace of
Knossos. It was probably built in the MM IA period around
2100 BCE, and was first excavated by Arthur Evans in 1909.
The Juktas Peak
Sanctuary, also known as Psili Korfi, is located 13
kilometres south-west of Knossos, from where the mountain
peak can be seen. To the east of the sanctuary lies the
village of Archanes, which was the site of a major Minoan
settlement, possibly including a palace. Unfortunately the
modern village was built on top of the Minoan site so a
complete excavation has proved impossible. When Arthur
Evans excavated the Juktas site he uncovered what he
considered to be a priest's house of the early
Aegeo-Cretan "but and ben" type.
But and ben
is an architectural style for a simple
building, usually applied to a residence. The
etymology is from the Scots language for a two
roomed cottage.The term has been used by archaeologists to describe a basic
design of "outer room" conjoined with "inner
room" as a residential building plan; the outer
room, used as an antechamber or kitchen, is the
"but" while the inner room is the "ben".
Reinterpretation
Excavations at the site
were re-commenced in 1974 and conducted by Alexandra
Karetsou, whose article in "Sanctuaries-Cults in the
Aegean Bronze Age" provides the basis for this account. It
very soon emerged that what Evans had called a priest's
house had, in fact, been the main part of the open air
sanctuary which consists of two stepped terraces, oriented
north-south. These are reached from the ramp, which Evans
identified, lying directly to the south.
On the west side of the
terraces there is an altar of which the preserved remains
measure 4.7 metres long and 50 centimetres high. The altar
was built on the edge of one of a number of fissures on
the top of the mountain. This particular fissure has been
excavated to a depth of ten metres (but not to the bottom)
and produced a large number of interesting finds.
To the east of Terrace
II, a series of fives rooms was found, running south to
north. These rooms were probably not central to the
worship that was conducted at the shrine. The northern
part of the site remains to be fully excavated.
Unfortunately the national telephone company built a radar
station within the Peak Sanctuary site in 1952, probably
destroying the Minoan remains in this area. A possible
third terrace exists to the east of the series of rooms,
and this, too, awaits investigation.
The terraces were built
either at the end of the Old Palace period or at the
beginning of the New Palace period. The majority of sherds
in terrace I come from MM I-II. The existence of MM IA
sherds in the deepest fissures of the rocks all over the
peak suggest a sanctuary of the prepalatial period or the
existence of other, early religious practices on this
site.
The excavator of the
site concluded that the peak sanctuary was the public
open-air sanctuary of the Knossos area in the Old Palace
period. In MM III however, when the new palaces were
built, the connection with the Palace of Knossos becomes
clearer because the architectural remains are monumental
when compared with other peak sanctuaries that have been
excavated. Also, the quality of the finds has a palatial
character.
The sanctuary is
enclosed by a wall of genuine cyclopean construction. The wall is 735 metres long and over
three metres wide. It is about 3.5 metres high. One
strange fact about the wall is that on the south and east
sides, the wall is very close to the Minoan sanctuary, but
its north side, where the entrance is to be found, is 410
metres away from the sanctuary. This raises the question
of whether the wall is in fact the temenos wall of the
sanctuary or not. Various dates have been proposed for the
building of the wall from MM IA to LM III, but the only
evidence to come to light so far has been an offering
table dating to the MM III/LM I periods which had been
built into the wall.
Which
deities were worshipped?
It is not known what
gods or goddesses were worshipped at the peak sanctuaries.
The Mountain Mother and her young male god/companion who
is called either Velchanos or Hyakinthos have been written
about by Evans and Nilsson among others. It is possible
that the site may be linked to the new-born child Dias or
Zeus. Originally he may have been the spirit of the wealth
of the earth, although mythology was to assign to him a
different role under the Ancient Greeks.
N. Platon believed that
the peak sanctuary was a royal sanctuary because of the
quantity of previous material found there. He believed
that the Archanes buildings were connected to the
sanctuary in some way. There was even a road joining the
two. Platon believed that the building excavated by A.
Karetsou on Iuktas corresponded to the tripartite shrines
represented on vases. The rooms in front of the terrace
would correspond to the front rooms of these tripartite
shrines.
Peter Warren has
emphasised the long period during which the shrine was in
use, arguing that this points to the continuity of the
Minoan religion. He also pointed out that the presence of
the the fissure next to the altar links the peak sanctury
cult to the cave sanctuary cult as integral parts of
Minoan religion.
Access
The Juktas Peak
Sanctuary is reached by an appalling dirt track which
winds up the side of Mount Iuktas for five kilometres. The
turning to the right is to be found, signposted, several
kilometres south of the village of Archanes on the road
towards the archaeological site of Vathypetro. The
Sanctuary is fenced off but there is usually a gap in the
fence somewhere. If you are unlucky, the site can still be
seen from outside the fence and the views over Archanes
and towards eastern Crete from one side and towards
Psiloritis and the west from the other side of the peak
are absolutely spectacular.
The 'temple' of
Anemospilia is located at the northern end of Mount
Iuktas, overlooking arable land and modern day Heraklion,
with extensive views both to the east and the west. The
site was excavated by J. Sakellarakis in 1979, and given
its small size, turned out to be one of the most
controversial excavations to have taken place in Crete.
The building is unusual
for a Minoan site in that it is more symmetrical and less
labyrinthine than most Minoan remains. The simple design
consists of three rectangular rooms in a row, and a
corridor or antechamber running the length of the three
rooms to the north of the building. There is no other
example of such a building from the Minoan-Mycenean
periods. However, Dennis Hughes points out in his book "Human
Sacrifice in Ancient Greece" that to the north of
the building there are three doorways corresponding to the
three entrances to the rooms on the south and there is a
fourth, wider entrance at the east end of the hall.
Unfortunately the area north of the corridor is so heavily
eroded that only the barest remains of two walls leading
north from the corridor can still be seen.
The 'temple' was
destroyed early in the 17th century BCE, as witnessed by
finds of MM II and MM IIIA pottery styles on the site. It
was almost certainly destroyed by earthquake, following
which the lamps placed inside the shrine burnt whatever
was flammable. Further evidence for an earthquake comes
from the skeleton of a man found in the antechamber. He
had been holding a vase, possibly containing blood as it
resembled one to be seen on the Agia Triada sarcophagus
into which the blood of a sacrficed bull is dripping. The
position of the body suggests that the person was running
from the building when it collapsed and killed him.
The antechamber was the place where the preparation of ritual acts
would have taken place. Among the finds here were vases, pithoi, mortars and pestles and tripod cooking pots. The
pithoi would have stored various foodstuffs and woven
cloth.
The central room was
full of larger utensils, and almost the whole floor was
covered with vases. Along the south wall there was a bench
which may have been used both for sitting on and for
placing cult objects. The most interesting find in this
room was a pair of larger-than-life-size clay feet and ash
from a burnt wooden object. This evidence suggests that
there was originally a large statue here. The body would
have been made of wood and slotted onto two sticks at the
top of the clay feet. The body would have been dressed in
material and the feet would not have been visible. It is
possible that the statue originally stood on the bench
next to the only piece of bare rock which intruded into
the building, deliberately allowed to do so as it
represented "sacred earth".
The eastern room was where bloodless ritual ceremonies took place.
Along the south wall there was a stepped altar. The finds
here were smaller in size than in the central room and
included two small bronze boxes similar in design to
others found at Mycenae and in the Mycenaean royal burial
at Tholos Tomb A in Phourni cemetery near Archanes. Large
bowls were placed on the stepped altar and it is known
that these would have been used for offerings of
agricultural produce -- fruit, crops, vegetables, wine and
oil.
Human blood
sacrifice?
The west room
is, in many ways, the most interesting. First of all,
unlike the other two rooms, the entrance is not in the
centre of the wall but to the east so it is out of
alignment with the entrance into the antechamber. It is
claimed that this room was used for blood sacrifices using
bulls. However, Hughes points out that bulls would have
been too big to move through the corridor, packed as it
was with pottery and then make a sudden turn into what is
a remarkably small room.
Uniquely in Crete, three
skeletons were found in the room in what was after all not
a burial context. Two of these people, a man and a woman,
had been killed by the earthquake and resulting fire.
Another skeleton of a young male was also found in the
room. This body was found lying on what the excavator
claimed was a low altar-like construction. A blade was
resting on the skeleton. One of the feet was in a strange
position with the heel pulled right back until it was
touching the back of the thigh. It has been suggested by
the excavator that the feet had been tied and that the
young man had been sacrificed and the blood drained from
his body. The argument goes that the normal victims of
sacrifice would have been bulls, but in the face of
seismic activity which threatened the whole community, it
may have been considered necessary to make a human
sacrifice.
However Hughes
challenges this interpretation. He points out that a
number of facts have to be established in order to support
the idea that a human sacrifice took place here.
Firstly it has to be
established that the building was a temple or a shrine. Although it is
clear that some cult activity did take place here, that is
not the same as establishing the function of the building
as a temple.There
is no other example of such a building in Minoan Crete.
Secondly, it has to be
established that the low 'altar-like' structure of loose
stones was in fact an altar. In Hughes's view this is most
unlikely. Iconographic evidence suggests that altars for
sacrificing large animals like bulls, which the excavator
claims was the usual use for this part of the building,
were "large movable platforms supported by legs" and since
none has survived anywhere in Crete it is assumed they
were made of wood.
Thirdly, it has to be
established that the blade was a sacrificial knife.
However, this seems unlikely. The blade was very large and
it has generally been accepted that it was in fact a
spear. The fact that it was lying across the skeleton does
not of itself prove that it was used to kill the 'victim'.
In fact, this is something that archaeology is unable to
prove. The spear could just as easily have been leaning
against a wall and it fell across the body of the young
man during the earthquake.
Fourthly it is not at
all certain that the young man had been tied up. If he had
been, why was his other leg not in the same position? And
why did his hands show no sign of having been tied up?
Finally, the excavator
pointed out that the colour of the bones in the top half
of the skeleton was different from the colour of the bones
in the bottom half of the skeleton. This has been
accounted for by suggesting that because the 'victim' had
lost a lot of blood before the earthquake and fire, his
remains burned differently on the top half which had
little blood in them from the bottom half where the
remaining blood in the body had settled.
However, there are many
possible explanations for why the different parts of a
skeleton burn to different colours in a fire. One part may
have been more exposed to burning material than the other
part. Alternatively the bottom half of the body may have
been protected from the most intense flames by being close
to the ground.
There is a complete lack
of evidence for human sacrifice throughout the Minoan
period (one other often quoted example can also be given a
quite innocent explanation as Hughes demonstrates in his
book). It is surely best, therefore, to look at this wider
context before leaping to the conclusion that a human
sacrifice took place at Anemospilia.
A detailed description
of the excavations and finds at Anemospilia can be found
in the guide book to Archanes by J. and E. Sakellarakis,
published by Ekdotike Athenon, Athens 1991.
The site is now
extremely well fenced in and not generally open to the
public. However, a good view of the site can be had from
the south fence and the views from the road of the north
coast of Crete are spectacular.
The Minoan eruption (around 1613 BC) was one of
the largest plinian
eruptions on earth in the past 10,000 years.
The so-far established size estimations were
largely based on field data
from Santorini, neighboring islands, from the sea bed,
and western Turkey,
where the deposit can still be found in lake deposits.
The traditional and to-date most widely accepted
value of the erupted
magma volume of the Minoan eruption ranges between 30-40
cu km, corresponding
to a total tephra volumen of about 80-90 km3, and takes
into account various
field data obtained and modeling done between around
1970-1990 (e.g. Sigurdsson
et al, 1990).
Recently, new outcrops of the Minoan tephra (e.g.
2 m on Anafi Island,
on the sea floor around Santorini and elsewhere) have
become available. These
findings suggest that the eruption could be larger than
originally thought,
ranking in fact as VEI 7, which would make it perhaps
the second largest
explosive eruption in historic time on the planet (after
Tambora 1815).
The following is the original press release
published at the University
of Rhode Island about this hypothesis:
Santorini
eruption much
larger
than originally believed
An international team of scientists has found
that the second largest
volcanic eruption in human history, the massive Bronze
Age eruption of Thera in
Greece, was much larger and more widespread than
previously believed.
During research expeditions in April and June,
the scientists from the
University of Rhode Island and the Hellenic Center for
Marine Research found
deposits of volcanic pumice and ash 10 to 80 meters
thick extending out 20 to
30 kilometers in all directions from the Greek island of
Santorini.
“These deposits have changed our thinking about
the total volume of
erupted material from the Minoan eruption,” said URI
volcanologist Haraldur
Sigurdsson.
In 1991 Sigurdsson and his URI colleague Steven
Carey had estimated that
39 cubic kilometers of magma and rock had erupted from
the volcano around 1600 B.C.,
based on fallout they
observed on land. The new evidence of the marine
deposits resulted in an upward
adjustment in their estimate to about 60 cubic
kilometers.
(The eruption of Mount
Tambora in Indonesia in 1815 is the largest known
volcanic eruption, with
approximately 100 cubic kilometers of material ejected.)
An eruption of this size likely had far-reaching
impacts on the
environment and civilizations in the region. The
much-smaller Krakatau eruption
of 1883 in Indonesia created a 100-foot-high tsunami
that killed 36,000 people,
as well as pyroclastic flows that traveled 40 kilometers
across the surface of
the seas killing 1,000 people on nearby islands. The
Thera eruption would
likely have generated an even larger tsunami and
pyroclastic flows that
traveled much farther over the surface of the sea.
“Given what we know about Krakatau, the effects
of the Thera eruption
would have been quite dramatic,” said Carey, a co-leader
of this year’s
expeditions. “The area affected would have been very
widespread, with much
greater impacts on the people living there than we had
considered before.”
Press
release
by Todd McLeish /
University of Rhode Island, republished with kind
permission
Cited references
Sigurdsson, H., et al. (1990) "Assessment of
mass, dynamics and
environmental effects of the Minoan eruption of
Santorini Volcano", in:
Hardy, D. A., et al. "THERA AND THE AEGEAN WORLD -
PROCEEDINGS OF THE 3rd
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE", Vol. 3, p. 100-112
Measuring
the
size of large explosive eruptions
The size of large explosive eruptions is commonly
measured by the volume
of erupted ejecta (tephra) (or alternatively, magma
measured in DRE, dense rock
equivalent) and expressed on the logarithmic VEI scale.
Plinian eruptions rank VEI 5 or higher, i.e.
erupt more than 1 cubic
kilometer tephra. VEI 6 equals > 10 km3, VEI 7 >
100 km3.
The measurement of the volume of tephra erupted
during an explosive
eruption is actually a difficult task, but simplified,
it can be found by
integrating the surface of the deposit with its
thickness.
This direct method relies heavily on a
sufficiently large number of
field measurements of the original, undisturbed deposit
thickness in an area
representative for the total deposit. This is only
available for extremely few
and usually recent eruptions (e.g. Mt Spurr 1992
eruption).
In most other cases, parts of the deposit need to
be interpolated. To do
this, is one of the main tasks of physical volcanology.
Quantitative models
have been developed that describe the relationship
between total erupted magma
volume, magma eruption rate, eruption duration, the
height of the eruption
column, the type of tephra involved, degree of
fragmentation, the type of
deposition (e.g. fall versus pyroclastic flows), wind
dispersal from eruption
columns, and other factors.
These models were mainly developed in the past 3
decades and could be
successfully calibrated with a number of well-observed
or documented eruptions
(e.g. Vesuvius 79 AD, Mt. St. Helens 1980, Pinatubo 1991
etc.). In addition,
they are being refined with time and each major eruption
that can be used to
test the model.
