Knossos

“ What brought about Great Knossos' fall?
Questions without answers, all of them. Mysteries like the Cretan's strange, undeciphered writing, and the final fate of lovely Princess Ariadne, Minos' daughter, and how Theseus, bare-handed, could have slain the mighty Minotaur.
It was all enough to drive a seven-eight-nine-ten-year-old boy to distraction!
Then a careless visitor's elbow knocked the bowl to the floor. It shattered into shards.
At ten, a boy's too old to cry—before company, at least. ”

“ In the palace at Knossos the system of drainage is superior to any known in Europe between that day and the last century. Most wonderful of all is the art; two small ivory figures of youths leaping, display a life and freedom nothing short of marvellous. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ Phæstos and Hagia Triada are as devoid of fortification as Knossos. Gournia and Palaikastro are open towns. Everything points to the existence of a strong and peaceful rule, allowing the natural bent of the island race to develop quietly and steadily during long periods in those lines of work, alike useful and artistic, whose remains excite our admiration to-day, and resting for generation after generation on the sea-power which kept all enemies far from the shores of the fortunate island and guarded the trade-routes of the Ægean. ”

“ It is early dawn about the year 1500 B.C. The great palace of Knossos lies quiet and still, for the inhabitants have not yet begun to stir. When they are aroused, the noise will be like the bustle of a town, for everything used in the palace is made there, from the bronze weapons used by the King when he goes out hunting to the great clay vessels in which not only wine and oil, but also other articles of food are kept. ”

“ In the Palace-shrine of Knossos there stands at last revealed to us the spacious structure which the skill of Daedalus is said to have imitated from the great Egyptian building on the shore of Lake Moeris, and with it some part at least of his fabled masterpieces still clinging to the walls. ”

“ The Empire of the Sea-Kings had not been immune from disaster and defeat any more than any other great Empire of the ancient world. The times of conquest and triumph, when Knossos exacted its human tribute from the vanquished states, Megara or Athens, or from its own far-spread dependencies, had occasionally been broken by periods when victory left its banners, and when the indignities it had inflicted on other states were retaliated on itself. ”

“ For the earliest period we are left with somewhat scanty evidence. Professor Petrie has found in some of the First Dynasty graves at Abydos vases of black hand-burnished ware, which are very closely allied, both inform and colour, to the primitive Page 143 'bucchero' discovered immediately above the Neolithic deposit in the West Court at Knossos; and he has suggested that, as the pottery is not Egyptian in style, it may have been imported from Crete. On various sites in the palace at Knossos there have been found stone vessels of diorite, syenite, and liparite, exquisitely wrought. ”

“ He wandered about the lonely places of Crete, still with faith in the Homer who led him to discover Troy, feeling sure that at Knossos he would find the fabled palace of King Minos, but death prevented him from making the biggest discovery of all.
The work that the German excavator left undone was taken up by Sir Arthur Evans. Unfolding his tent on the barren site of Knossos, Sir Arthur Evans set his diggers to work. They dug diligently, scanning every spadeful of earth for traces of man. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Middle Minoan II.—We now come to the period when the first undoubted traces of the Cretan palaces begin to reveal themselves. The chief architectural remains of the period are, however, not at Knossos, but at Phæstos. There the Theatral Area, at least, was in existence early in this period, possibly in the later part of the preceding one. But at Knossos the chief evidence for the high state of civilization attained in this period is the pottery, which reaches a very advanced development. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Evans was persuaded that Knossos was the spot where exploration was most likely to be rewarded, Page 65 and his purchase of part of the site of Kephala in 1895 was the beginning of a series of campaigns which have had results not less romantic than those of Schliemann, and even more important in their additions to our knowledge of the prehistoric Ægean civilization.
The political troubles of the time were unfavourable to exploration. Fighting was going on in the island, and religious prejudices ran very high. ”

“ Reproduced from The Journal of Hellenic Studies, by permission of the Council of the Hellenic Society
Of the social life of the people in these prehistoric times we know practically nothing. Only one inference, Page 230 possibly precarious enough, may be made from one of the features of the architecture of Knossos. There is no attempt to seclude the life of the palace from that of the town and country around it. On the contrary, the building seems almost to have been arranged with the view of affording the citizens of the Minoan Empire every facility for intercourse with the royal household. ”

“ The association of the labyrinth, by some of the Nordic Aryan peoples, with Troy instead of Knossos may perhaps be accounted for in this way.
The point with which we are most concerned at the moment, however, is the fact that the figure of the labyrinth, in each case, is connected with the idea of a ceremonial game or dance.
Another dance, possibly of similar character, associated with Knossos, is that mentioned in Homer's "Iliad" as having been invented by Daedalus for Ariadne. Youths with golden swords and maidens crowned with garlands performed it in ranks. ”

“ So long as the war-fleet of Minos was in being, Knossos needed no fortifications. No expedition of any size could force a landing on the island. If the crew of a chance pirate-galley, desperate with hunger, or tempted by reports of the wealth of the great palace, succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the Minoan cruisers, and made a swift rush up from the coast, there was the bastion with its armed guard, enough to deal with the handful of men who could be detached for such Page 77 a dare-devil enterprise. ”

“ Of actual traces of Mesopotamian influence singularly few are to be found in Crete. Dr. Evans has shown the correspondence of a purple gypsum weight found during the second season's excavations at Knossos, with the light Babylonian talent, while the ingots of bronze from Hagia Triada represent the same standard of weight. It may be that the drainage system so highly developed at Knossos and Hagia Triada found its first suggestion in the terra-cotta drain-pipes discovered at Niffur by Hilprecht, though it is by no means obvious that copying should be necessary in such a matter. ”

“ He did not know that there actually lived a King Minos in Crete, and that his palace, standing on a hill at Knossos, was built, if not of marble, at any rate of stone.
Up to the last half-century the whole story of classical Greece, as taught in the schools and in the Universities, was regarded as something original, as the beginning of things springing suddenly, like the mythical Athene, into life. The sculpture, architecture, philosophy, oratory, and drama of the fifth century B.C., were accepted unquestioningly and with awe as the spontaneous first-fruits of Greek genius. ”

“ Some of the frescoes are so lifelike that as they were brought to light during the excavations, it almost seemed as if the spirits of the long-dead Cretans were returning to the earth. The workmen felt the spell, and Sir Arthur Evans, who excavated Knossos, has described the scene as the painting of a young Cretan was found:
The colours were almost as brilliant as when laid down over three thousand years before. For the first time the true portraiture of a man of this mysterious Mycenaean race rises before us. ”

“ The result is curious, but can scarcely be Page 203 called beautiful (Plate IX. 2) . 'Ab-nub's child, Sebek-user, deceased,' whose statuette was found at Knossos, gives us a point of connection between the earlier part of Middle Minoan III. and the Thirteenth Egyptian Dynasty, while the alabastron of Khyan links the later portion of the period with the Hyksos domination in Egypt. The King who built the great tomb at Isopata, already described, must have reigned at Knossos during this period. ”

“ Naturalism, though failing, was still capable of great things, and its last efforts in the palace at Knossos gave us the magnificent reliefs of painted stucco, such as the bull's head and the King with the peacock plumes. Over the seas, the Egyptians of the Eighteenth Dynasty were setting down on their tomb walls those likenesses of the Keftiu which have helped us Page 173 to the date of this last development of Minoan greatness. ”

“ Men and Women, Clothes and Customs
When Knossos fell, Crete ceased to be the pre-eminent power in the Near East. The island itself was overrun by military or naval adventurers, and the centre of Mediterranean life shifted over to the mainland of Greece, whence, indeed, those adventurers came. The interesting thing, however, was that Cretan culture went with it, and neither for the last, nor probably for the first, time “the captive led captive her savage conqueror,” as Horace wrote centuries afterwards. Crete stooped to conquer Greece, just as Greece in her turn stooped to conquer Rome. ”

“ From the old S. gate of Candia a road (horse 3–4 fr.) leads in less than an hour to the site of Knossos, the ancient capital of the island. The *King’s Palace, excavated here since 1898 by Mr. Arthur Evans, dates from the second or middle Minoan period, but was already half burned down in the Mycenæan period.
The steamer next crosses the Cretan Sea, to the N.N.E., to two 417islands of the Cyclades (p. 492) : Anaphe (1349 ft.) ”

“ We have already seen the evidence for the migration of Minoan tribes of a later age in the assault of the Zakkaru and Pulosathu upon Egypt 200 years after the fall of Knossos, and the establishment of the latter tribe as an independent power upon the coast of Palestine—events which may have been due to the advance of another wave of Northern colonists upon the shores of Crete. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We have IIId Dynasty Egyptian vases from Knossos, which were certainly not imported in later days, for no ancient nation had antiquarian tastes till the time of the Saïtes in Egypt and of the Romans still later. In fact, this communication seems to go so far back in time that we are gradually being led to perceive the possibility that the Minoan culture of Greece was in its origin an offshoot from that of primeval Egypt, probably in early Neolithic times. ”

“ The King whose figure in low relief has been reconstructed from fragments found at Knossos, wears peacock plumes upon his head, while round his neck he has a collar of fleur-de-lys, wrought, no doubt, in precious metal.
The Minoan women are depicted with a perfectly white skin, which contrasts strongly with the bronzed hue of the men. The deep coppery tint of the men, and the dead white skin of the women is, of course, to be accepted only as a convention, similar to that adopted by Egyptian artists, meant to express a difference of complexion caused by greater or less exposure to the weather ”