1
How silent the libations of distress,
And soft the brush of wrinkled feet on stone …
C. A. Trypanis, Cnossus
Mythology, Discovery and Chronology
As Odysseus says in Homer’s Odyssey:
Out in the dark blue sea there lies a land called Crete, a rich and lovely land, washed by the waves on every side, densely peopled and boasting ninety cities … One of the ninety towns is a great city called Knossos, and there, for nine years, King Minos ruled.1
The mythical tradition makes Minos the first to establish rule over the sea, yet he is also redolent with bull imagery, most notably in the tale of his wife’s erotic interest in one particularly fine animal that was consummated with the complicity of the architect Daedalus. It was the same engineer who subsequently constructed a highly complex underground structure called the Labyrinth to confine the fruit of this union: the Minotaur. Illustrations of the Labyrinth appeared on coins of Knossos; the first century CERoman author Pliny the Elder gave a fanciful description of it;2 and, in 1632, William Lithgow, who wrote The Totall Discourse, Of the Rare Aduentures, and painefull Peregrinations of long nineteene Yeares Trauayles, claimed that he was shown the entrance itself.
In 1878, a Cretan antiquarian, coincidentally named Minos Kalokairinos, discovered the remains of some large storage jars at Knossos, about 5 km from the sea in the middle of Crete’s northern coast, and initiated an international race to find the ancient city and turn myth into reality. The victor in that race was Arthur Evans, keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, who purchased the site from the ‘native Mohametans, to whose almost inexhaustible powers of obstruction I can pay the highest tribute’,3 and secured the agreement of the Greek authorities. Work commenced on 23 March 1900.
Evans had hoped to find an early system of writing; he uncovered an entire civilization as ancient as, albeit distinct from, that of Egypt. He called this culture ‘Minoan’, even though we don’t know how the people referred to themselves, and it is likely thatKeftiu(Egyptian), Kaptaru (Akkadian) and Caphtor (Hebrew) could all refer to them. As a good archaeologist should, Evans not only excavated voraciously, but published energetically, notably the four larger-than-life and deeply passionate volumes of The Palace of Minos at Knossos.4 Less laudable were what Evans called his ‘reconstitutions’ of the buildings that he created on the basis of fresco fragments – ‘You can’t tell the original from the restoration’ is a typical criticism – but, however irksome to the purists, the ‘reconstitutions’ are very much part of the modern ‘Minoan experience’, as enjoyed by the million-plus people who visit Knossos every year.
Fixing the precise dates of Minoan chronology is tricky. Scholars use the styles and sequences of pottery to establish ‘relative chronology’ (the order in which things happened), and try to plug this in to fixed dates derived from Egypt, combined withradiocarbondating and tree-ring calibration, to determine ‘absolute chronology’ (precisely when things happened). Minoan relative chronology comes in two types: Early Minoan (abbreviated to EM), Middle Minoan (MM) and Late Minoan (LM), each divided into I, II, and III; some of these phases are divided into A and B, and the Late Minoan is further subdivided by numbers: for example, Late Minoan III A 1 (LM III A1). A looser designation of Prepalatial, Protopalatial (Old Palace), Neopalatial (New Palace) andPost-palatial periods gives quite a straightforward overview of cultural and architectural development. Scholars pretty much agree on the order of events, but not on the absolute chronology, thereby leaving both expert and non-expert alike facing a confusing picture in which, for instance, the Late Minoan period can start as early as 1600 BCE (the ‘conventional’ chronology) or as late as 1700 BCE (the ‘high’ chronology).
The ‘Palace’ of Minos at Knossos
The centrepiece of the Minoan civilization is the enormous, multi-storeyed, richly decorated complex at Knossos. Displaying very high-quality architecture, and containing archives and storage facilities, it overcame earthquakes, fires, repairs, rebuildings and reorganizations, to remain in use for a very long time – at least the equivalent of that from Shakespeare’s day to ours. Initially it seemed a confused, confusing and labyrinthine ensemble, and Evans, believing that ‘the Palace traditionally built for Minos by his great craftsman Daedalus has proved to be no baseless fabric of the imagination’,5 called it ‘the Palace of Minos’. But this was premature, since there is nothing to prove that it was a king’s palace, let alone Minos’ palace.
The modern theories lean more towards seeing a harmonious design, sensitively integrated into the surrounding environment: a venue for public and private religious, political, ceremonial, commercial, manufacturing, artistic, social and other activities. One helpful analogy is that of a medieval monastery, overseeing a large agricultural economy and funding arts and crafts with the surplus, and it is from the phases of destruction and rebuilding of this complex that we derive the dates of the rise and fall of Minoan society.
Distinctive features of Prepalatial Cretan society (c.3650/3500 or 3000/2900 to 1900 BCE) include group burials in circular ‘tholos’ tombs, a mottled reddish-brown pottery known as Vasiliki ware, and the appearance of ‘peak sanctuaries’ – either holy caves or buildings, or a bit of both. Prepalatial Minoans manufactured stone vases, used seals both to label agricultural produce and as talismans, and made tools and weapons from copper. Archaeobotanical studies indicate the intense cultivation of the olive and the consumption of almonds, grapes, pears, cereals, legumes, broad beans and lentils, the last two of which can also be used as animal fodder and/or manure. Chemical analysis of cooking vessels shows that the Cretans were enjoying vegetable stews with lots of olive oil, eating foods that contain marine animal oil, consuming meat, leafy vegetables and fruit, and washing it down with resinated wine.
Further organic residue analysis of vases provides evidence for the production of aromatics. A key ingredient here was oil of iris, which nowadays is one of the most expensive commodities in the perfume industry. A papyrus from Egypt dating to c.2200BCEreads:
One sails to Byblos today, what shall we do concerning ‘s-trees’ for our mummies? One used to bury the priests with deliveries of them, one used to embalm the great with oil; as far as Keftiu they are unable to come and gold is lacking.6
The reference to Keftiu is possibly a moan about disruption of trade with Crete, maybe in an exotic commodity like perfumed oil, and it has been suggested that trade in such products might have generated some of the wealth that built the first palaces.
The Protopalatial (Old Palace) Period
The development of the ‘Old Palaces’ at Knossos, Mallia and Phaistos certainly inaugurated a new phase in Crete’s history (from MM I B to MM II or III A, c.1900 BCE onwards), although nowadays there is much debate as to how, when and why these complexes developed: some scholars prefer a ‘Steady State’ theory of gradual development; others lean towards more of a ‘Big Bang’.
The Old Palace at Knossos became a focal point for a major settlement, controlling territory in excess of 1,000 square kilometres. It was designed around an open Central Court, which was aligned towards Mount Iouchtas, and contained extensive food storage facilities. A distinctive West Court, situated outside the palace, seems to have been the venue for harvest festivals, ritual dancing or the redistribution of grain, although the interpretation of three distinctive large round pits, known as koulouras, is problematical: they lack moisture-proofing or roofs, which rules out grain storage on a long-term basis, and various theories link them to harvest ceremonies, planters for trees, or even rubbish pits. Further storerooms on the east side housed huge storage jars (pithoi), which were made in sections that were joined together while the clay was damp, and then decorated with relief patterns that often imitate the ropes used to manoeuvre them. In the mythological tale of ‘Pandora’s box’, Pandora released the evils into the world from apithos, not a box.
Religion, administration, trade, arts and crafts all seem to have taken place in the Old Palace. There was weaving on an industrial scale, and the exquisite wheel-made Kamares-ware pottery, the dark surfaces of which were attractively decorated with red, orange and white stripes and flowers, was exported to the eastern Mediterranean and Egypt. The Old Palace bureaucrats used pictorial signs known as ‘Cretan Hieroglyphics’ and a syllabary (where syllables are represented by a unique symbol) called ‘Linear A’: ‘linear’ because the signs, all left-justified, were written in horizontal lines from left to right. Numerals and ideographic signs for things such as ‘dog’, ‘wine’, etc., are clear enough, but sadly we do not know what language(s) these scripts represent. The content seems to be accounts, receipts or labels, dedicatory inscriptions, and graffiti, while sealings – not to be confused with seal-stones – were used to show that the string closing a container had not been tampered with.
We might not know their language, but we do know about their drinking habits. One tripod cooking pot contained wine flavoured with pine resin and toasted oak: retsina. The resin acts as a preservative, while the oak gives a taste similar to some single malt Scotch whiskies or ‘oaky’ chardonnays. It is possible that they enjoyed a beer or two as well, since an acid found in beer-brewing vats in Egypt has also been found in Minoan cooking vessels.
The Old Palace at Knossos was destroyed c.1700 BCE (late MM II B or early MM III A) in a fire that may have been caused by a seismic event, human agency, or a combination of the two. Some remarkable finds that fit this scenario were made at Anemospilia on Mount Iouchtas, a structure of which the contents suggest that it was a shrine. It was destroyed so quickly that whatever was going on there was frozen in time. A male, some forty-seven years old, lies face up, wearing a ring of iron (rare) and silver, and an agatesealstone; a female, approximately twenty-eight years old, is sprawled face-down; and an eighteen year-old male lies on his side next to what may be an altar, in a posture suggesting he had been tied up. A bronze lance-head is placed across his body. Could this be a priest and priestess making a human sacrifice, trying to ward off some impending catastrophe? If it is, it would be highly unusual, and consequently it has been rejected by many scholars, but embraced by the media.
Ironically, this devastation initiated the acme of Minoan wealth and influence. A new palace was constructed at Knossos, keeping the essential functions of the complex, but developing stupendous art and architecture that suggests that the wealth and quality of life of the Minoans was on a par with that of pharaonic Egypt. Minoan-style frescoes from this period at Tel Kabri in Israel and Tel el-Dab’a in Egypt indicate vigorous overseas trade, while domestic peace and security gave rise to a building boom.
As this era of wealth progressed, Crete became much more unified, possibly with Knossos as the ‘capital’ and Linear A as the script of choice for administrative purposes. Also from this era, perhaps, is the iconic Phaistos Disc, stamped on both sides with pictographic symbols arranged in a spiral with groups of signs divided by lines. Decipherment is practically impossible, and a significant swathe of opinion now regards the disc as a forgery.
At Knossos, access to the New Palace was controlled by the imposing west facade and by entrance porticoes on the south-west and north. The West Court continued to be used, with the Theatral Area, approached by the Royal Road, probably used for public events. Shrines and storerooms on the west side of the palace were approached via the Corridor of the Procession, where a fresco depicted around 350 life-size figures bearing gifts or offerings. The western half of the north end of the building was the administration area.
Throughout the palace complex, fabulous figured frescoes show us the physical appearance, dress, ships, plants and animals of the Minoans. The rough surface of the walls was covered with a layer of mud mixed with straw, and then two or three layers of lime plaster (stucco). A preliminary sketch was incised or painted (the yellow ochre cartoon can sometimes still be seen underneath the finished painting), with straight lines being created by stretching a string across the damp plaster to make a slight impression, which again is occasionally visible. The final painting began when the stucco was still damp (buon fresco), and individual details such as ornaments were added, either on to the dry stucco (fresco secco), or on to the still-wet painted parts. A basic palette of colours was used: red (obtained from ferrous earths and haematite); yellow (yellow ochre); black (carbon); blue (glaucophane; ‘Egyptian blue’, i.e. silicon, copper oxide and calcium oxide; perhaps azurite); white (the natural colour of the lime plaster); and mixtures to achieve greys, browns and pinks. Low relief was sometimes used to make subjects stand out. Eyes were usually depicted frontally, with heads in profile, and artists followed a conventional colour-coding practice: red for men’s skin and bronze; white for women’s flesh; yellow for gold; and blue for silver, and sometimes to represent the green of plants or the grey of monkey fur and shaven heads.
The most iconic and controversial of all the Minoan frescoes is the ‘Priest-King’ or ‘Lily Prince’, who is made up of several discrete relief fragments on a red background: a crown of lilies and peacock feathers; a torso with a lock of hair, a lily necklace, and a clenched right hand held diagonally across the body, which is adorned with floral motifs; part of a left arm; a kilt and codpiece, plus the upper left leg; and a fragment of a right thigh. Evans assembled these into a male figure leading a sacred bull. But challenges now abound: are all the fragments from one figure? Was the flesh red or white? The musculature is definitively male, but the lily crown is associated with Minoan sphinxes and priestesses, not with men. Should the pose be more commanding/confrontational? The evidence is too fragmentary even to determine the figure’s gender – Evans’ Priest-King might have been a Priestess-Queen, or something completely different. Still, this definitive image is now the logo for the Minoan Lines shipping company.
The heart of the palace complex lay between the west facade and the Central Court. The pillar crypts, incised with double-axe (labrys) marks, stand adjacent to the Vat Room, which contained objects thought to be part of the foundation deposit of the original palace. The Tripartite Shrine and the Throne Room complex were located in this area, with the latter sporting a splendid fresco of griffins flanking a smallish seat, on whose occupant they may confer power and protection. Evans believed that this was the throne room of the ‘Minos’ (a title rather than a name, similar to ‘pharaoh’), but the interpretation and dating of the space is tricky. Opposite the throne is a sunken chamber (adyton) accessed by a stairway. This might be a lustral basin. In the building called Xeste 3 at Akrotiri on Santorini there is a similar structure, featuring a painting of a girl with a bleeding foot, a bare-breasted adult woman, a (possibly) prepubescent girl in a translucent veil, and ‘horns of consecration’ covered with red (blood?) streaks, in a landscape teeming with crocuses (possibly used to alleviate period pains and/or as a dye for the yellow cloth worn by females). Another fresco shows girls taking crocuses to a seated woman/goddess. One ‘flower gatherer’ wears eye and lip make-up, and has most of her hair shaved off in a pre-adult manner, except for a single lock at the back, and wisps over her forehead. The imagery has been interpreted as relating to a girl’s first menstruation.
One of the most famous Minoan artefacts is the faience (glazed earthenware) ‘Snake Goddess’. She is bare-breasted, wears a flounced skirt, holds snakes in her hands, and has a feline creature on her head, perhaps indicating fertility and dominance over nature. Minoan religion was heavily focused on nature and regenerative forces, and the goddess who dominates the Minoan pantheon is frequently depicted descending from the sky or joining worshippers in fertility cults based on trees or rocks. The prominence of females in Minoan art leads some to assert that Minoan Crete was run by women, and others, such as ‘Sir Galahad’ to express outrage at the very thought of it:
Women, women, nothing but women, just like on the Riviera, overdressed, permed, in high heels, a naked young man or two around … no sign of venerable old men. There’s no place for them in a female realm … men are in subordinate positions, pages, cup-bearers, flautists, field-workers, or sailors … not one king, priest or hero. What was at first taken automatically to be a male ruler, on a half flaked fresco, turned out to be a woman too. Women are queens, priestesses, goddesses – never serving girls.7
Nevertheless the snake goddess, and the large number of representations of the double axe (labrys), which the archaeology suggests may have been used by Minoan priestesses, could well indicate that women held an influential position in some aspects of Minoan society.
The ‘Grandstand’ fresco, which depicts bare-breasted, flouncy-skirted Minoan ladies sitting either side of a tripartite pillared shrine, in the midst of a crowd of male faces, might provide a clue to the type of event that took place in the Central Court. However, another suggestion (alongside frequent attempts to bring the mythical tale of Theseus and the Minotaur into the equation) is that it was a ‘bullring’. Another fresco shows a white-skinned figure, whose hair is knotted at the nape of the neck, wearing a variegated kilt with a codpiece, calf-length boots and lots of jewellery, grabbing a mighty onrushing bull by the horns; in the centre a person with burnt-sienna coloured skin, a quite plain yellow kilt, and no jewellery, performs a back-flip over the bull’s back, which would bring the figure to earth facing away from the beast; behind the bull, facing it, with outstretched hands, stands a second white figure who resembles the first. Evans interpreted the activity as a girl acrobat trying to gain purchase for a somersault over the animal’s back, similar to what the person in the yellow kilt is performing, while the second female is about to catch the flying figure when he lands. But, if the white figures are girls, why are they wearing male clothes? Is this a rite of initiation in which young males emerge from a ‘feminine guise’ into adulthood by exhibiting their superiority over the bull? Are stunts like these feasible? Did they occur at all? If so, where? The answers are elusive, although there are enough representations in other media to indicate that this type of activity did take place, and the horns of some excavated bull skulls have been sawn down, presumably for ‘health and safety’ reasons.
The north end of the palace is divided by a passage coming up from the North Pillar Hall, which could have supported dining halls on the upper floor, and the north entrance of the palace was adorned with a large bull fresco. On the east side of the palace an impressive Grand Staircase led down from the Central Court to the so-called Queen’s megaron (a hall surrounded by windows, a fore-hall and a light-well, decorated with an exquisite dolphin fresco), and the Hall of the Double Axes. These rooms could have served as offices, meeting chambers, reception rooms or sleeping areas, or a combination of these. There were also highly advanced water systems, piping water to a lavatory and draining it away – Minoan domestic hygiene was excellent (they also shared their medical expertise with the Egyptians).
Minoan artistic skills extended to producing seals from gold, ivory, steatite and quartz, sometimes in the shape of animals with flat under-surfaces, sometimes lentoid (lens-shaped) or amygdaloid (almond-shaped) with slightly convex sides, or flattened cylinders. The confident, fluidly rendered designs range from linear patterns, swirls and spirals to pastoral and hunting scenes, birds, fish, plants and animals. Highly impressive pottery appears, most notably the dark-on-light ‘Plant Style’ or ‘Floral Style’, the shining example of which is the exquisite ‘Jug of the Reeds’ from Phaistos, and the stylized ‘Marine Style’, with its engaging octopuses, fish, shells and seaweed. Attractive small-scale sculpture in terracotta, representing deities or worshippers, and in bronze, exemplified by statuettes such as the British Museum’s man giving the ‘Minoan salute’, and its engagingly energetic depiction of a man leaping over a bull, confirm a high level of artistic sensibility.
The Downfall
Ultimately the Neopalatial period ended in widespread destruction by fire at the end of LM I B (c.1425 BCE ‘conventional’ or c.1550 BCE ‘high’ chronology), although the palace at Knossos itself does not show evidence of being too badly hit.
One intriguing find from this time is a series of buildings in which the bones of at least four children, with butchery marks, were found in a cooking pot along with some edible snails and at least one sheep. Did this signify human sacrifice and propitiatory ritual cannibalism, with the Knossians attempting to avert some imminent disaster? The jury is still out, but we can say with confidence that new people had by then arrived on Crete, and that they were making some radically different lifestyle-choices.
A great deal has also been made of the possibility that a volcanic eruption on the island of Thera (Santorini), 100 km to the north of Crete, caused the downfall of the Minoans. No one has since witnessed such a cataclysm. The Therans were in the process of rebuilding their property, damaged by a powerful earthquake that had hit the island, when the eruption began with four explosive steam blasts, which between them left an ash deposit 10–15 cm thick. This possibly prompted a mass exodus from the island – no bodies have yet been discovered in the archaeological remains, and there is hardly any precious material left behind. Perhaps the main eruption took place some weeks later, generating an eruption column some 30–40 km high in less than twenty-four hours. Thisdeposited around 6 m of debris, which buried and preserved much of the settlement at Akrotiri, filling the lower parts of the buildings, but leaving the uncovered areas exposed to the incredibly violent events that were to come. What goes up must come down and, as the eruption column collapsed, it created a ‘base surge’, where clouds of hot gas expanded outwards horizontally at very high velocity. This destroyed all the protruding parts of the buildings, and made dune-like deposits of pumice between 8 m and 12 m deep. Four enormous explosions then generated pyroclastic flows – fast-moving currents of hot gas and rock – which laid down deposits up to 55 m deep in places. Finally, further massive gas-rich and much more fluid pyroclastic flows deposited ash, pumice and small lithics to a depth of 40–50 m. The general consensus is that the entire event lasted just three or four days, emitting 30–40 cubic kilometres of material.
That much is widely agreed. Yet the big issues of the date and effects of the eruption are much more controversial. In the late 1960s Spyridon Marinatos excavated Akrotiri on Thera, which had a rather Minoan-looking culture, and posited that the eruption not only destroyed the Minoan civilization, but was also the origin of the Atlantis myth.8 The eruption might well have been considerably more devastating than the 1883 Krakatau eruption, whose consequent tsunamis took 35,000 lives, so the suggestion that tsunamis, air-borne debris, fire and temporary climate change might wipe out an entire civilization was attractive. However, subsequent studies, involving pottery analysis, Carbon-14 dating, dendrochronology (the study of the ‘bar-code’ created by the annual growth rings in trees), the acid detected in cores taken from the polar ice-caps, mapping the air-fall debris, and finds of pumice at Tel el Dab’a in Egypt, have been inconclusive, especially in regard to dating – an interval of between 90 and about 175 years between the eruption and the demise of the Minoans seems likely.
So if the Thera eruption did not destroy the Minoan civilization, what did? Architecture in the Cretan countryside shows that they started to place greater emphasis on security and storage. Was this the result of internal tensions? All of a sudden, Minoan exports went into decline and, in Egypt, as we enter the LM II pottery phase, the tomb paintings of Amenemhab, Kenemun and Anen, which purport to portray Keftiu, actually show figures that are not authentic Minoans. The Keftiu on the tomb of Useramon, dating from 1451 BCE, have their codpieces painted over with Mycenaean-looking kilts in the tomb of Rekhmire a generation later, perhaps indicating a new style of clothing on Crete. Something had gone wrong.
New funerary customs, very like those of mainland Greece, now appear: burial with bronze weaponry and boar-tusk helmets in ‘Warrior Graves’, or with large numbers of bronze vessels; pit graves; tombs with long, narrow, rock-cut entrance passages (dromoi) leading to rectangular burial chambers; tholos tombs of distinctly mainland style; and so on. And if all this suggests that new people were on the island, the appearance of clay tablets written in Linear B script, which expresses the Greek language, confirms who these military-minded, bureaucratically motivated people were. They were the Mycenaeans.
Notes – Chapter 1
1. Homer, Odyssey 19.172–9, trans. E.V. Rieu, Homer: The Odyssey, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1946.
2. Even though ‘no trace of it remained’ in his day: Pliny, N.H. 35.29.85.
3. Quoted by D. Powell, The Villa Ariadne, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1973, 22. Despite his frustration, Evans employed both Christian and Muslim workers, ‘so that the work at Knossos might be an earnest of the future co-operation of the two creeds … the experiment proved very successful’ (ibid., 260).
4. A.J. Evans, The Palace of Minos at Knossos, vols i-iv, with index volume, London: Macmillan, 1921–36.
5. Powell, The Villa Ariadne, 30.
6. The Admonitions of IPW-WER 3, Papyrus of Leiden.
7. Sir (pseud.: B. Eckstein-Diener) Galahad, Im Palast des Minos, Munchen: Albert Langen, 1913.
8. The Atlantis theory can no longer withstand serious analysis: see S.P. Kershaw, A Brief Guide to the Greek Myths, London: Robinson, 2007, 424 ff.