George Glasgow

“ The digging in Crete has created all the excitement of exploration. When the painted panel was discovered giving a sensational bull-baiting scene from a Minoan circus-show, or the Phæstos disc covered with picture writing, or the fresco painting of the Cupbearer at Knossos, the excitement reached its height. ”

“ Minoan Architecture and Fresco Painting
Perhaps the most vivid traces of the ancient civilization of Crete are the remains of the buildings which have been found in the soil. Here you have the rooms that were lived in, and the appeal to the imagination is direct. The relics of buildings are more extensive than those of any other kind, and they were the first discovered by the excavator, just as they are the first points of interest to the visitors who nowadays go to the island. ”

“ Classical Greece was the fusion of the two main elements of prehistoric times, the artistic Mediterranean people on the one hand, and the robust Northern invaders on the other. Just as the fusion was probably consummated in the Dark Age, so the first poet of classical Greece, Homer, whether one person or the embodiment of many, heralded their new life in poems which seemed to take their subject from that Dark Age. ”

“ Another difference between Cretan and classical Greek religion was that, as far as one can see, Cretan religion did not give rise to any great temples, nor left behind any more substantial traces of its activity than the small figures of the Earth Goddess to whom I have referred. It may be sound to regard the palace of Knossos as itself a temple, and it is true that legend makes of Minos a High Priest as well as a King. There seems, however, to be little room for doubt that the only places set aside specifically for worship were small private shrines used for family worship. ”

“ As the rise of Cretan civilization had been faithfully reflected in pottery, so was its fall. One can trace in it the general decadence of Crete. In the eventful Late Minoan II period, which saw the final destruction of Knossos and the sudden end of Cretan greatness, the pottery becomes stiff and grandiose. Plants and animals are rendered in a spiritless, conventionalized manner. Degeneration was rapid, and in Late Minoan III, which represented the last stage of Minoan culture, the potter held his brush quite still and let the spinning pot do the rest. ”

“ In the Middle Minoan II period large storage jars, or “pithoi,” made their first appearance. They were as big as a man, and almost exactly like the Cretan storage jars of to-day. Two interesting features in the decoration of these jars are cunningly practical in origin. One was an imitation in relief of the coils of rope which were used in moving the jars, the other a “trickle” ornament produced by allowing splashes of paint to trickle down the side of the jar—a device which made a virtue, in anticipation, of the inevitable trickles which would result from the storage of oil in it. ”

“ There is no doubt that Cretan architects were men of accomplishment. Mr. H. R. Hall says, in The Ancient History of the Near East (p. 47) , that, “in comparison with this wonderful building (the later palace at Knossos) , the palaces of Egyptian Pharaohs were but elaborate hovels of painted mud. Knossos seems to be eloquent of the teeming [Pg 32] life and energy of a young and beauty-loving people for the first time feeling its creative power.” ”

“ It was on first seeing some of the pictures of them that a French scholar compared the women of Knossos with those of Paris.
Minoan women enjoyed a far more “advanced” status than did other primitive women. In the art of their day they are represented as appearing in public and unveiled; they took part in the bull-fighting at Knossos, and their apartments in the palace were marked out by their special luxury. The greatest glory for an Athenian woman of a [Pg 89] later age was to be “as little mentioned as possible among men.” Not so for the women of Crete. ”

“ Pottery has been the chief instrument, too, in the formulation of a system of dating. By assuming a lapse of a thousand years for every yard of deposit—except in the Stone Age, when the accumulation of debris was quicker, because huts were built of ephemeral material such as mud and wickerwork—each successive layer is relatively dated according to its depth from the surface. Pots provide the nucleus for this scheme, being found in large numbers in every layer. ”

“ In this short time the spades of Sir Arthur Evans have revolutionized our whole conception of the early history of Europe. Excavation at Knossos, Phæstos and other sites in Crete has disclosed the existence of a people whose form of civilization, the earliest in Europe, flourished long before recorded history begins. ”

“ The establishment of the existence of the Mediterranean race has had, among other results, that of making it no longer possible, as was invariably the practice before Crete was excavated, of ascribing all obscure factors in the beginnings of Greece to a Phœnician origin. We now know, for instance, that the art of writing came from Crete, Phœnicia being the medium; and that Phœnicia itself was merely a late centre of the general Ægean civilization, and got its name merely because it was the best-known branch of the “red-skinned” [Pg 86] race ”

“ The Bronze Age, which followed, and which brought with it the Minoan period at Knossos, is remarkable for the first use of paint. The transition was gradual and slow, and indeed, at the beginning of the Bronze Age, there is a falling off in the quality of the pottery. This was due to an interesting result of the discovery of metal, which turned the attention of skilled artists to the new medium, and left the fashioning of stone and clay to inferior hands. ”

“ It is the last magnificent palace, built on the ruins of 1600 B.C., that predominates in to-day’s ruins; in it the Cretans reached the height of their culture. This period, to which belongs what is known as the “Palace Style” in art, was as short-lived as it was brilliant. Within fifty years (so the evidence seems to show) the palace was raided and burnt, and that was the end of Ancient Crete; for the [Pg 33] same invaders who sacked Knossos also destroyed the palace at Phæstos.
It is lucky, however, that Minoan libraries were made not of paper, but of clay tablets. ”

“ Whether the traditions of the Minoan Age in Crete were kept alive through the Dark Age in Ionia, whither it is thought that they were carried by Achæan refugees at the time of the Dorian invasion, which extended to Crete, or whether they remained dormant in Crete itself, and in the Mycenæan centres of the mainland of Greece, it is in either case certain that they were well preserved, for their traces are plainly to be seen throughout Greek civilization. ”

“ The Egyptian Osiris, for instance, could die, but not any of the Greek gods. The Cretan Mother Goddess is depicted on seal stones and rings dressed like an earthly queen, while Velchanos is seen descending from the heavens to the earth, a young warrior with a spear and an enormous shield. ”

“ And even the writing on the clay tablets cannot yet be read. We none the less get a vivid impression of Cretan life on its artistic side, and for this the main credit is due to the unique value of pottery in archæology. Pottery is almost indestructible. While it may decompose in soil that is damp enough, and the design may be obliterated when fire plays on it directly and when there is enough air for oxidization, yet the actual fabric, being made originally of clay baked hard by extreme heat, can never be destroyed by fire. It cannot rust. ”

“ Excavation in Crete was started in 1900, and the first year’s work yielded up hundreds of clay tablets inscribed with Cretan writing. Was Homer writing fairy stories when he made Proitus send his doomed Bellerophon to Lycia with his “folded tablet”? Or did he know that the Lycians were colonists from Crete?
A tentative sketch of the successive phases through which the art of writing passed may be made, even if it largely depends upon unconfirmed surmise. The temptation to fill in the gaps by what seems reasonable conjecture is hard to resist. ”

“ In view of the prominence given to the Bull in Minoan worship, one need not seek far for an explanation of the Cretan legend of the Minotaur, a monster half man, half bull, which lived in the labyrinth and exacted its human victims. Nor is it impossible that [Pg 79] the dangerous and cruel sport of bull-fighting formed part of the same cult. Bulls’ heads were made in pottery, and sometimes of gold, and used as votive offerings. The horns of the bull—Horns of Consecration—are found in shrines among ritual objects. ”

“ All the evidence tends to indicate that it was the family idea that predominated in Cretan worship. Private houses had their shrines, and the Knossian palace-temple itself had its lesser family shrines. These sanctuaries were always distinguished by a sort of sacred pillar, a sign which in Minoan art is often used as the only indication of a sacred place. There is an [Pg 78] example of it on a fresco painting found at Knossos. Another emblem associated with the cult is that of sacred trees, which on rings and seal stones usually form the background for the “choros,” or dance. ”

“ It was the natural centre towards which the mainlands of Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt converged, especially as its irregular coast afforded good harbours for the small ships of that time.
The first settlement of man in Crete took place at Knossos, in the later or “Neolithic” Stone Age. This fact is established by the nature of the relics found at the lowest level in the excavations, the level which represents the earliest period in time. Phæstos, on the south side of the island, received its first inhabitants at a later date, as is made clear by the pottery that has been discovered there. ”

“ It shows the consecutive development of pottery as a form of art, in itself interesting, and the corresponding changes in the taste of the people. As the art progresses, we find vases, for instance, with scenes painted on them illustrating contemporary customs, methods of burial, religious rites, styles of dress and buildings. The prehistoric pottery of Crete never reached this stage, but even so, it supplies the bulk of the evidence on which the [Pg 57] Minoan civilization is being reconstructed. ”

“ Thousands of sherds have been found on every site in Crete. Even when fragments cannot be pieced together, they reveal the kind of clay, decoration and thickness of the original vase, and complete examples are often found in tombs, where they were placed as tributes to the dead, in accordance with an almost universal custom in early Greek civilization. ”

“ There are complicating factors, and even pottery creates difficulties and irregularities. At Knossos, for instance, when the first palace was built, the top of the hill was levelled and a portion of the former deposit thus cut away. Obviously, too, heirlooms would belong to an earlier time than that of the layer in which they are found. Or a pot may be displaced in the earth. A safeguard, however, against mistakes is afforded by the abundance of pots, which makes the differentiation of general classes easy. ”

“ Traces of commercial intercourse overseas can be found as far back as the Neolithic Age. Among the deposits of stone implements in Crete are great quantities of obsidian knives, and the only source of obsidian in the Ægean was the island of Melos. Obsidian is a kind of volcanic glass which flakes off into layers, giving a natural edge. Excavators, who are as childish as most people, have shaved, and have had near shaves, with obsidian knives.
It is probable that the Minoan Empire had a navy as well as a merchant marine. ”

“ Schliemann deserved the explorer’s satisfaction which he enjoyed, and which manifested itself on one occasion when he sent a telegram to the King of the Hellenes announcing that he had found the tomb of Agamemnon at Mycenæ. One wishes that it had been literally true, as Schliemann thought it was. In any case it was he who laid the foundations for the whole structure of modern prehistoric research in the Eastern Mediterranean. ”

“ The mass of buildings in the west wing of the palace is divided into two halves by a long corridor running north and south, those in the east wing by one running east and west, and the four divisions thus made fall into a regular scheme.
In the west corridor, which is four yards wide and sixty-six yards long, there are still standing some of the huge stone vases, “big enough,” as Sir Arthur Evans has said, “to hide the Forty Thieves.” They were used for the storage of grain, oil, wine, dried fruits, and the like. ”

“ Towards the end of the Middle Minoan period the exaggerated use of colour which had marked the first introduction of polychrome ware gave way to a concentration upon design. Perhaps the most remarkable specimen of this later phase is the “lily vase” found at Knossos. It stands about two feet high, and for design has a simple row of lilies painted in white on a purple ground. The shape of the vase is artistically made to serve the design by enabling the lilies to bend slightly outward and then curve in a little at the top. ”

“ Cretan religion differed from that of classical Greece in that the chief deity worshipped was a goddess, Mother Nature or Earth-Mother, some at least of whose characteristics we find embodied in the Rhea of Greek mythology. Matriarchal religion seems to have been specially characteristic of very early times; through it primitive man expressed his veneration of womanhood. The Cretan Mother Goddess held an exalted position. She had supreme power over all Nature ”

“ They cannot yet be read. Scholarship has the hard but grateful task before it of discovering from these documents the Minoan language. It is lucky, again, that the sackers of Knossos had no use for clay tablets, which accordingly escaped the doom of more “valuable” loot. Dr. Burrows, in The Discoveries of Crete (p. 19) , quotes in comment a Reuter telegram which, in reference to the fire at Seville in 1906, announced that “the archives were totally destroyed, but the cash and valuables were saved!” ”

“ Buildings, for instance, cannot [Pg 26] have stood later than the date of the particular kind of pottery found in their ruins. It may be remarked in passing that the Egyptian trade thus indicated by the remains of Cretan pottery was responsible for a great improvement in that pottery. Towards the end of the early Minoan period the two great inventions of the firing furnace and the potter’s wheel were brought to Crete from Egypt. Before that time the vases had been roughly shaped by hand and hardened in the sun. ”

“ Mr. Hall gives the more definite date of c. 1196 for the second invasion. Not long after we find the Achæans, in Agamemnon’s famous expedition, fighting against the Trojans in Asia Minor. They took the city at last in 1184 B.C., if we accept the date which Greek tradition pointed to. It is their deeds in the latter war that were sung by Homer. Two generations after the Trojan war, shortly before 1100 B.C., Greece was overrun by the Dorians, who formed the second [Pg 92] great wave of Northern invaders. After that came the Dark Age, out of which about 800 B.C. emerged classical Greece. ”

“ Greece. Recorded Greek history begins about 800 B.C. [Pg 24]
Chapter 3: Minos and the Minotaur
If the nine Minoan periods into which Sir Arthur Evans has divided the Bronze Age in Crete are primarily a fanciful play upon the “nine seasons” of King Minos’s reign in Knossos, the system of dating itself is by no means fanciful. It rests on a solid basis. It has been made possible mainly by the fact that the ancient Cretans were sea-farers. Cretan products were exported to Egypt, and have been found there alongside Egyptian deposits of more or less known date. ”