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Title: The Minoans
Author: Glasgow, George
Language: English
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The Minoans
[Illustration: A LADY OF THE MINOAN COURT
From _The Annual of the British School at Athens_
[_Frontispiece_]
The Minoans
_by_ George Glasgow
[Illustration]
Jonathan Cape
Eleven Gower Street, London
_First published March_, 1923
_Second impression April_, 1923
_All rights reserved_
_Printed in Great Britain by_ Butler & Tanner, _Frome and London_
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
TO
RONALD MONTAGU BURROWS
MY GREAT FRIEND AND TEACHER
PREFACE
Sir Arthur Evans’ renewed campaign of excavation in Crete has again
attracted considerable public attention to the remarkable disclosures
of the last twenty years. Sir Arthur Evans himself is at present
engaged in compiling in three big volumes the consecutive story of
Minoan civilization as revealed by his own excavations. The present
writer is convinced that the story of Cretan discovery is such as to
appeal to the imagination of a wide public who have no specialist
interest in archæology. The story has all the interest of adventure and
exploration. This book is an attempt to meet what such a public wants.
I have tried to give a general picture of the world which existed in
the Mediterranean four thousand years ago, and of the amazing process
by which it has been revealed, so that it can be understood by those
totally unacquainted with classical study, and I have tried to give
it in one hour’s reading. For those who want to go further I give
references to other books. It must be understood that this book does
not aim at an exact account of the archæological position as it exists
to-day. With new excavations being carried out this very year, and with
new material in the hands of the excavators, as yet unpublished and
undigested, any attempt to be strictly up to date would merely mean the
progressive and indefinite postponement of the book. The broad lines
of the discovery of Minoan civilization are clear, and in the writer’s
opinion, even because a new campaign of excavation is now started,
ought to be presented now in a form to be easily understood. The
results of the discoveries of this spring, for instance, add important
details to our knowledge--some of which I have incorporated--but do not
affect fundamentals.
Some of the substance of the following chapters was published in
1920 and 1921 in _Discovery_, to the Editor of which I am grateful
for permission to re-publish them. In a somewhat different form the
substance was also published by me in 1914-1915 in the _National Home
Reading Magazine_.
It is to my friend Dr. Ronald Montagu Burrows that I, in common with
thousands, owe my interest in Crete. He died on May 14, 1920, before
his time. He was incredibly, challengingly young and vigorous both in
appearance and in activity, and at fifty-two was producing work at the
top of his brilliant form. His work was a mixture of youth and maturity
such as one does not often find. In 1907, when he first published
his _Discoveries in Crete_, men were confused by the avalanche of
discovery in Crete which had been going on since the opening of the
century. Burrows’s achievement--for which scholars and the intellectual
public have ever since been grateful--was to give a comprehensive and
interpretive account of the whole revelation and to place it in its
perspective. Before that even scholars as a whole had not seen wood for
trees.
Dr. Burrows’s own excavations at Pylos and Sphacteria and at Rhitsona
were typical of him. He cleared up the narrative and established the
good faith of the historian Thucydides. Scholars had in vain tried to
find any trace of the fortifications said by Thucydides to have been
erected there by the Spartans in the Peloponnesian war. Only a few
months before Burrows first went out--he was then a young man who did
not know the difficulty of what he attempted--a celebrated geographer,
Dr. Grundy, had explored the site and reported that there was no trace
of the fortifications. Burrows discovered substantial remains hidden
away under the brushwood, and succeeded in proving that they fully
corresponded with Thucydides’s account.
I am grateful to Professor R. S. Conway and to Sir Arthur Evans for
reading my manuscript and helping me with suggestions; but neither must
be held responsible for anything that appears in the book.
1922.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
PREFACE 7
1 CRETE THE FORERUNNER OF GREECE 13
2 THE SEA-FARING PEOPLE OF CRETE 20
3 MINOS AND THE MINOTAUR 24
4 KNOSSOS 30
5 PREHISTORIC ENGINEERING AND ARCHITECTURE 37
6 INTERNAL POLITICS: THE RELATIONS OF KNOSSOS
AND PHÆSTOS 44
7 MINOAN ARCHITECTURE AND FRESCO PAINTING 48
8 THE POTTERY 55
9 THE ORIGIN OF WRITING 65
10 CRETAN RELIGION 75
11 MEN AND WOMEN, CLOTHES AND CUSTOMS 83
12 FROM PREHISTORIC CRETE TO CLASSICAL GREECE 90
INDEX 93
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
A Lady of the Minoan Court _Frontispiece_
Bull Leaping _facing page_ 35
The Cupbearer ” 39
Polychrome Cups ” 62
Chapter 1: _Crete the Forerunner of Greece_
Mr. Veniselos was brought up in Crete. It is not the first time in
history that Crete has passed on her products to Greece and to Europe.
Four thousand years ago the very foundations of Greek and of European
civilization were laid in Crete, which was then mistress of the sea
and the dominant factor in the Ægean. Yet we none of us were aware of
this until Sir Arthur Evans, a few years ago, began digging in Crete.
When Mr. Veniselos was a boy the very existence of a prehistoric Cretan
civilization was unknown. Our knowledge of it has been almost entirely
revealed since 1900. 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. It
has told us about their daily life, games, amusements, art, religion,
writing (though the language is not yet understood); their physical
type, dress, the homes they lived in. The fashion of the women’s
dresses, as revealed on ornaments and other art relics, with an open
neck and flounced skirts, made a French scholar exclaim: “Mais ce sont
des Parisiennes!”
A big palace, as big as Buckingham Palace, has been unearthed
at Knossos. It has a drainage system which an eminent Italian
archæologist, Dr. Halbherr, has described as “absolutely English,” and
which certainly forestalls the hydraulic engineering of the nineteenth
century. This four thousand years ago.
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. It was not confined to the
excavators. An old workman who was on night duty watching the Cupbearer
fresco during the delicate operation of its removal, was woke up by
disturbing dreams and declared after that “The whole place was full of
ghosts.”
Charles Kingsley has no doubt turned in his grave. When he wrote _The
Heroes_ he was writing, as he himself explained, a fairy story for
his children. He little knew that his fairy story was in many ways
historical truth. He wrote, for instance, that the palace of King Minos
at Knossos was like a marble hill. 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. The history of Greece, as then understood, went back only to
the eighth century B.C., beyond which were the Dark Ages and nothing.
Before the time of Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides it is true there
had been a problematic poet, half mythical, half real, elusive and
shadowy, known as Homer. The fact that he was represented as having
been born in nine separate places was an illustration of the vagueness
in which the poet’s identity was enveloped. He (or they, if his poems
were a composite work) had sung of deeds and of men who seemed to
echo from those Dark Ages. Whatever speculation there was as to Homer
himself and his identity, no one ever doubted that if he was a real
person he certainly was the first real person that European history
could establish. During the last twenty years he has been shown to have
been not the beginning but the end of an enormous phase of Greek and
European history.
Now that the real beginnings of Greek civilization are beginning to be
known, it strikes one as remarkable that up to now they should have
been so completely buried in two senses. It is the more remarkable
because a good deal was known about other corresponding origins in the
Near East. In Egypt and Babylonia the old traditions had been passed on
by later generations to Greek writers, who preserved, imperfectly it is
true, the necessary connecting links. In the case of Greek civilization
not only were there no stepping-stones back to the corresponding phase;
it did not even seem to occur to anybody that there had been such a
phase. The unquestioning and complacent acceptance as myths (which
is the same thing as the tacit and complete disbelief) of the epic
stories which centred round Agamemnon and the Homeric heroes was never
challenged up to the middle of the last century. The historian Grote,
for instance, declared that “to analyse the fables and to elicit from
them any trustworthy particular facts” would be “a fruitless attempt”
(_History of Greece_, 2nd edition, 1849, p. 223).
Such was the outlook of Grote’s contemporaries. Then an important
thing happened. A poor boy named Schliemann had been told these Greek
fables by his father, and to his child’s mind the stories appeared as
literally true. One day a drunken miller came into the grocer’s shop
where he worked, and began to recite some lines of Homer. Schliemann
was fascinated, and, so the story goes, spent all his spare cash in
whisky wherewith to encourage the miller to repeat the lines again and
again; and then prayed God that he might some day have the happiness of
learning Greek himself. His literal faith in the “myths” remained with
him, and he made up his mind to find the walls of Troy. Being poor he
had to spend a lifetime of hard saving before he was in a position to
put his faith to the test. Late in life, however, he had saved enough
money for the purpose and went to Hissarlik, the spot in Asia Minor
where the town of Troy was said to have stood. He began digging into
the earth, and to his joy discovered the buried walls of a town. It was
proved later that the walls he discovered belonged not to the Homeric
city, as Schliemann naturally assumed, but to another city which had
existed on the same site a thousand years earlier. He had dug within
and through the circle of the Homeric walls without discovering them.
From Troy he went to Mycenæ and Tiryns on the Greek mainland, and
there discovered the visible relics of the Homeric stories centering
on the Greek mainland. Schliemann’s achievement was to establish the
historical existence of the “Mycenæan civilization.” We now know that
this civilization flourished from about 1400 B.C. to 1100 B.C. It is
a romantic story of the way in which Schliemann justified his simple
faith in the historic background of the Homeric poems. 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 most exciting and the most important part of that research has been
the opening up of Crete. The Cretan discoveries of Sir Arthur Evans
and other excavators, British, American and Italian, have proved that
the Mycenæan culture revealed by Schliemann was itself a late and even
decadent phase of a great Mediterranean civilization which had its
centre in Crete.
Chapter 2: _The Sea-Faring People of Crete_
The primitive Ægean people played a great part in the activities of
the Near East. They existed for several thousand years, and there are
traces of their activity on every shore of the Eastern Mediterranean.
Crete, as Homer says, was the land “in the midst of the wine-dark
ocean, fair and rich, with the waters all around” (“Odyssey,” xix.
172). 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. This is a
typical instance of the value of pottery as archæological evidence. The
earliest ware found at Knossos is unornamented; the next is improved
by “incised lines”--that is, lines cut in the clay with a pointed
instrument and often filled in, for greater effect, with a white
substance. At Phæstos, on the other hand, the pottery found lowest
down is already in this second stage in its artistic evolution, the
inference being that the men who settled there took the art with them
at the point to which it had been developed by the Knossians.
After the “Stone” Age came the “Bronze” Age. Men realized that not
stone, but a mixture of copper and tin, provided the best material
for instruments. A picturesque touch is added to this discovery by an
Italian archæologist, Angelo Mosso, who in _The Dawn of Civilization_
gives reason for believing that, even at so remote a period, the tin
was brought to Crete from Cornwall. He goes so far as to point out
the actual caravan route by which the tin was transported. It was
during this Bronze Age, which lasted about 2,000 years, that Cretan
civilization reached its highest level. Sir Arthur Evans has given
to it the picturesque name “Minoan,” and has divided it into three
stages--Early, Middle, Late--each with three subdivisions. Early
Minoan I (E.M.I) begins about 2800 B.C., Late Minoan III (L.M. III)
ends about 1100 B.C. (See _The Discoveries in Crete_, by Dr. Ronald
M. Burrows, p. 98.) These nine periods are a happy play upon “the
nine seasons” during which Homer speaks of King Minos as reigning
in Knossos: “And in Crete is Knossos, a great city, and in it Minos
ruled for nine seasons, the bosom friend of mighty Zeus.” (“Odyssey,”
xix. 179). The term “Minoan” should be carefully distinguished from
“Mycenæan.” After Schliemann’s discoveries at Mycenæ and Tiryns,
the term “Mycenæan” was used in a general sense, to cover the whole
prehistoric Ægean civilization; but now that Crete has put Mycenæ
into its right perspective, the term “Minoan” is used to indicate the
earlier and greater phase, while “Mycenæan” merely covers the latest
phase; the whole being designated “Ægean.” There is, to complete
the nomenclature, a further epithet, “Cycladic,” which is sometimes
substituted for “Minoan” when one speaks exclusively of the island
sites outside of Crete.
With the fall of Knossos, which took place shortly before 1400
B.C.--I adopt Dr. Burrows’s dating--the centre of influence in the
Ægean passed over from Crete to the mainland of Greece, and the true
“Mycenæan” period started. Thereafter followed the Dark Ages, which
themselves immediately preceded “historical” Greece. Recorded Greek
history begins about 800 B.C.
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. Hence a system
of sequence-dating can be established. It is obvious that a Cretan
vase found side by side with an Egyptian vase of 2500 B.C. belongs
to an earlier period than one found with deposits of 1500 B.C. This
fixing of landmarks is the first step. The second is to assign to them
absolute dates in the terms of our own chronology. Owing to the fact
that Egyptian dates (within at least certain limits) are known in terms
of our own, and that Egyptian ware has been found in Crete as well as
Cretan in Egypt, equation is possible. The chief difficulty is that
Egyptian chronology is itself variously interpreted, and one particular
version has had to be fixed on for comparison. Three convenient and
easily-remembered landmarks have been established:
(_a_) Early Minoan II corresponds to Dynasty VI in the early Dynastic
Period of Egypt, circa 2500 B.C. As the evidence for this equation is
slight compared with that for the other two, it must be accepted with
reserve at present as a good working hypothesis.
(_b_) Middle Minoan II corresponds to Dynasties XII and XIII in the
Middle Kingdom of Egypt, circa 1900-1700 B.C.
(_c_) Late Minoan II corresponds to Dynasty XVIII in the New Empire of
Egypt, circa 1500 B.C.
It is pottery again that has been the basis of this chronological
reconstruction. The beautiful Cretan many-coloured ware of the Middle
Minoan period, exported to Egypt during the Middle Kingdom and found
with objects of the Twelfth Dynasty, forms the chief equating factor
between those two periods, and the other equations are based on similar
facts. Pottery can be made in some cases to fix approximate dates
without the help of equations. Buildings, for instance, cannot 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. They now were “thrown”
with such a mastery of technique as to attain egg-shell thinness.
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. Minos was commonly represented as “Ruler of the Waves,” and the
Greek historians, Herodotus and Thucydides, refer to him as a mythical
character celebrated as the first possessor of a fleet. The extent
of the Minoan Empire can be gauged by the survival of many trading
stations and naval outposts on all the shores of the Ægean, from Sicily
in the East to Gaza in the West, which bore the name “Minoa.” There
was a bad chapter, according to tradition, in the Empire’s history.
When the King’s son Androgeos went to Athens to compete in the games,
he won everything, and was killed in jealousy; and the powerful Minos
therefore decreed that seven Athenian boys and seven girls should be
sent every nine years (or as other versions of the story say, every
year) to be eaten by the Minotaur, a monster half man, half bull,
which lived in the maze called the Labyrinth. That happened twice;
but on the third occasion the hero Theseus volunteered to go as one
of the victims; and with the aid of Ariadne, the King’s daughter, who
fell in love with him, he killed the monster. She gave him a sword
and some string, which he fastened to the entrance of the maze as he
went inside. He was thus able to find his way out again. Theseus had
promised his father, the old King Ægeus, that if he returned alive,
his ship would show white sails in place of the usual black, so that
the news of his safety could be read in the distance. Whether in his
elation or in his hurry to leave Naxos, where (according to the
story) he had deserted Ariadne, Theseus forgot his promise, and Ægeus,
watching from the cliffs, and seeing that the sails were black, threw
himself in despair into the sea. Hence the “Ægean” Sea. The discovery
of Ariadne by the god Bacchus is the subject of a famous picture, now
in the National Gallery, by Rubens.
Minos meanwhile reaped what he sowed. Dædalus, the architect of the
Labyrinth, also fell a victim to the King’s displeasure, and, making
himself wings, fled to Sicily. His son Icarus, who went with him, flew
too near to the sun; the wax which fastened his wings melted, and he
fell into the sea. Minos pursued Dædalus to Sicily, and was killed by
treachery. His subjects went on a punitive expedition to the island,
but never returned, and Crete was overrun by strangers.
That is legend. It is a fact, however, that the Minoan Empire did
come to a sudden and violent end. Remnants of it--“the men from
Keftiu” (“the Back of Beyond”), as the Egyptians called them--landed
on the shores of Asia Minor, and finally settled in Palestine as
the Philistines of the Bible. The mists of legend are clearing. The
huge palace at Knossos is one of the solidest sights revealed. In
its bewildering corridors, staircases, and rooms one recognizes
the Labyrinth itself--a recognition which is confirmed by evidence
disclosed within the palace.
In further excavation carried out in the early part of this year (1922)
Sir Arthur Evans discovered what he describes as “the opening of an
artificial cave, with three roughly-cut steps leading down to what can
only be described as a lair adapted for some great beast.” Lest fact
should overleap itself into fable again, Sir Arthur adds:--“But here it
is better for imagination to draw rein.”
The stories of Minos and the Minotaur came to be regarded by classical
Greece with something like awe. A ship, supposed to have been the one
that took Theseus to Knossos, was preserved and was sent every year
with special sacrifices to Delos. During its absence Athens was in a
state of solemnity, and no acts were performed which were thought to
involve a public stain. The execution of Socrates, for instance, was
postponed thirty days till its return.
Chapter 4: _Knossos_
“And in Crete is Knossos, a great city, and in it Minos ruled for nine
seasons, the bosom friend of mighty Zeus” (Homer, “Odyssey,” xix.
178-179). Those “nine seasons” were long periods of varied activity.
Ancient Crete was the home of an artistic, commercial and imperial
people--there was a Minoan Empire--and Knossos, the capital of Crete,
held the palace of Minos.
The Palace at Knossos was built on the slope of a low hill--the hill
now known as “tou tselebe he kephala” or the Gentleman’s Head--which
overlooks a secluded valley, three and a half miles from the north
coast of the island. It thus escaped the roving eye of passing pirates,
and at the same time commanded a view, from a neighbouring hill, of
the Minoan ships which lay beached in the harbour. That fleet was
practically its only defence. Knossos had no wall of fortification.
Like pre-war London she depended on her island security and on her
command of the seas. She was not exposed, as were the mainland cities
of Mycenæ and Tiryns, and as modern Paris, to the danger of invasion
by land. The lack of fortification was one of the first points that
struck the excavator. In his report of the first season’s work (1900),
Sir Arthur Evans says: “The extent and character of the outer walls are
not yet apparent, but it is clear that while the compact castles of the
Argolid were built for defence, this Cretan palace with its spacious
courts and broad corridors was designed mainly with an eye to comfort
and luxury” (_Journal of Hellenic Studies_, vol. xx, p. 168).
There were minor fortifications, chiefly near the north gate,
consisting of a guard-house and bastions, but strategic considerations
did not contribute to the main architecture at all.
It is an amazing structure. Built as long before Christ as the world
has existed since Christ, it seems incredible that, for instance, it
should have an underground drainage system. 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 life and energy of a young and
beauty-loving people for the first time feeling its creative power.”
The present ruins belong to three structures built at different times.
The first was built in M.M.I, or before 2000 B.C., and was burnt down
towards the end of M.M.II (about 1700 B.C.). It was later (about 1600
B.C.) rebuilt on a bigger scale, and this building in its turn, after
some three hundred years of use, was remodelled and enlarged. Sir
Arthur Evans made an important discovery in his 1922 excavation, which
proves that the Middle Minoan III period was brought to a violent end
by a big earthquake (about 1600 B.C.). He found some small houses
overwhelmed by huge blocks--“some about a ton in weight, hurled some
twenty feet from the Palace wall by what could only have been a great
earthquake shock.”
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 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. They were preserved, not destroyed, by the fire. The
baking they then underwent enabled them to survive the dampness of the
soil, and they remain to this day, a potential interpreter of much that
is still obscure. 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!”
The outer walls of the palace were mainly built of gypsum, a stone
composed of crystals of calcium sulphate, which is found plentifully
around Knossos. It was so soft that it needed a covering of lime
plaster to protect it against the weather. The exterior of the
building, therefore, presented an expanse of white plaster, relieved
perhaps in places by decoration or colour. (See Noel Heaton on
“Minoan Lime Plaster and Fresco Painting” in the _Journal of the Royal
Institute of British Architects_, xviii, p. 697 (1911).) The palace
was a square building covering about five acres, or as big an area
as Buckingham Palace, and had a flat roof. In shape it was a hollow
rectangle with a central court, measuring nearly two hundred feet from
north to south, and not quite half as much in breadth, so that the
encircling wings on the east and west were proportionately broader than
the strip of buildings on the north and south. The bulk of the building
was, in fact, divided up between these two wings, the one on the west
standing higher up the hillside and having fewer storeys than the one
on the east, whose foundations sloped down to the valley. Beyond the
west wing there was another court--the meeting-place for the people
of the town and the people of the palace; and out to the north-west a
smaller building--the Little Palace--connected with the palace proper
by what Sir Arthur Evans has called “the oldest paved road in Europe,”
while a little to the north-east was the Royal Villa.
[Illustration: BULL LEAPING
From _The Annual of the British School at Athens_]
If you follow the course of this paved road as it approaches the
Palace, you will see a small open space, forty feet by thirty,
enclosed on two sides by rising tiers of steps with a raised platform
in the corner between them. This was the theatre. Some scholars
identify it with the dancing-place (choros) which, so tradition tells
us, “Dædalus wrought in broad Knossos for fair-haired Ariadne” (Homer,
“Iliad,” xviii. 590); although Sir Arthur Evans thinks the choros was
in a Palace Court. It would hold about 500 spectators, who made part or
all of the “great throng that surrounded the lovely dancing-place, full
of glee” (to quote the same tradition). No doubt the boxing contests
and other forms of sport were held there. The Cretans, to judge by
the pictures which have been discovered, were given to strenuous and
exciting, possibly cruel, forms of sport. A painted panel depicts
a bull-fighting scene. In it are two girls and a boy, the girls
distinguished from the boy by their white skin, although all three wear
the same sort of “cowboy” dress. A bull, head down, is charging one
of the girls, who grips its horns in the attempt, apparently, to turn
a somersault over its back, a feat which the boy is represented as in
the process of accomplishing. He is half-way over, and the second girl
stands ready to catch him. (See _Journal of Hellenic Studies_, xxiii,
p. 381. There is a copy of the fresco in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.)
Fifty yards to the east of the theatre is the northern entrance of the
palace, which leads directly into the central court. Round this court
are grouped the various rooms of the palace.
Chapter 5: _Prehistoric Engineering and Architecture_
The plan of the palace of Knossos is at first sight rather confusing,
especially when one reflects that it represents only the ground floor
of the original building and that one has to imagine, in some places
two, and in others perhaps three storeys of rooms above it. If this is
the old labyrinth of legend, no wonder, you think, that Theseus needed
his Ariadne to show him a way out of it; and that Dædalus, who built
it, could himself find no other means of escape but by flying straight
up into the air!
But it is the nature of legend to exaggerate; and one can easily
understand how, years after the destruction of the palace, the
deserted ruins with their ghostly corridors and chambers would create
the impression of an “inextricable maze” which was crystallized by
tradition and became the setting for so many of the Cretan stories.
As it stood in the days of Minos, the palace would not, of course, be
anything so fantastic. The arrangement of the rooms and corridors,
though on a great and elaborate scale, was based on a simple plan. 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. Opening on this corridor from the west there is a series of
magazines and small chambers which were also used for storage purposes;
while under the floors, both of the magazines and of the corridor,
were strong cists, some of them lined with lead, which would perhaps
contain the State treasures. The entrance which leads from the west
court or market-place, and which is conveniently near the commissariat
quarters, would be used by tradesmen. Speaking of the outer wall of
the palace which borders on the west court, the Haweses (_Crete the
Forerunner of Greece_, p. 66) remark: “This has a projecting base,
whereon the peasants and humbler merchants could sit dozing, with
one eye upon their merchandise and pack animals. During the long
morning hours when traffic was busiest, this seat was always in the
shade--a pleasant refuge from the sun’s rays that beat so fiercely
on the open court.” The low narrow ledge would not, however, have
been particularly comfortable to sit on. In a narrow corridor to the
west of the south main entrance was found the fresco painting of the
Cupbearer, an astonishing work of art. It portrays a Minoan youth,
stiff with dignity, carrying a gold and silver vase before him. It did
not originally stand in the corridor in which it was found and to which
it has given its name, but on the west wall of the south entrance. It
fell into the corridor when the connecting wall broke down. There is
a reproduction of the Cupbearer on the cover of Dr. Burrows’s _The
Discoveries in Crete_, which lacks, of course, the brilliant colours of
the original.
[Illustration: CUPBEARER
From _The Discoveries in Crete_. By R. M. Burrows (John Murray)
[_To face page 39_]
On the other side of the central corridor of the west wing are the
rooms in which State and religious functions were held. In the Throne
Room, which is almost intact, the magnificent throne of Minos is still
standing, carved out of solid stone, and along the wall on each side of
it are the stone benches on which his counsellors sat. This would be
the chief room of the Minoan Government, in which foreign ambassadors
were received and the affairs of State generally administered;
important cases of justice would also be settled there, and Minos
would be Supreme Judge. It will be remembered that Minos was not only
the legislative head of a great sea empire. Being of divine origin
himself, he is represented as a great Law-giver and Priest of Zeus,
holding converse with the god every nine years in the Dictæan cave and
receiving from him, like the Moses of the Old Testament, a famous code
of laws which held good throughout the period of the Minoan Empire.
At his death, in accordance with the belief that men in the Lower World
carried on the duties of their lifetime, he became a Judge of the
Dead. Recounting his visit to the nether regions, Odysseus says: “Then
I saw Minos, the famed son of Zeus, with his golden sceptre, dealing
out justice to the dead, as he sat there; and around him, their King,
the dead asked concerning their rights, sitting and standing, in the
wide-gated house of Hades” (Homer, “Odyssey,” xi. 568-571).
Leaving the west wing of the palace and crossing the central court,
you descend into the east wing by the Great Staircase which, even when
found, was in a surprising state of preservation, and which by the
end of 1910 had had the remains of no fewer than five flights restored
to their original position. This staircase was traversed, as its
discoverer said, “some three and a half millenniums back by kings and
queens of Minos’ stock, on their way from the scenes of their public
and sacerdotal functions in the west wing of the palace to the more
private quarters of the royal household.” These quarters occupy the
south-east corner of the palace, built on the slope of the hill and
overlooking the valley. Approaching them from the central corridor
which runs due east from the central court, you pass first through the
men’s halls--the Hall of the Colonnades and the Hall of the Double
Axes--and thence by a dark crooked corridor, called from its shape the
Dog’s Leg Corridor, the effect of which was “to enhance the privacy of
the rooms beyond,” you come to the Queen’s Megaron, and the ladies’
apartments. A megaron was a sort of hall with columns across it, open
at one end to let in the light. In other parts of the building, light
was admitted by means of shafts sunk from the roof to the ground floor.
The queen’s megaron is especially luxurious; it is decorated on a
principle which, as Sir Arthur Evans says, was used later by the
Romans of the Empire. The wall paintings, done in perspective, included
a scene of the sea with fishes playing, another of forest life, and a
dado of dancing girls.
It was in this part of the building, too, that the drainage and water
supply put the engineers on their mettle. This was the lowest part of
the sloping hillside on which the palace stood, and the water supply,
which came from the neighbourhood of the North Gate, had to be so
organized as to prevent flooding--a stiff enough problem for engineers
of 4,000 years ago. They solved it by a system of parabolic curves
which subjected the flow to friction. Sinks, lavatories, underground
pipes suggest modern drainage. They, nevertheless, were in use at
Knossos.
The rooms of the building in this south-east part were arranged in
terraces at different levels on the hillside. The fact of the grand
staircase having five flights does not mean that there were five
storeys one on top of the other. As a result of the final restoration
of this staircase by Sir Arthur Evans and Dr. Mackenzie in 1910, it
appears that “the upper landing of the fifth flight does not lead on to
the ground floor of the central court, but answers in height to what
must have been the first floor of the rooms on the other or western
side. It must itself, therefore, have led on to some raised building,
probably a terrace, that ran along the eastern side of the court”
(_Britannia Yearbook_, 1913, “Crete,” p. 269. Dr. R. M. Burrows).
There remains the north-east section. This was occupied by the artists
and workmen of the palace. In one room olives were pressed, the oil
being carried away by a conduit which turns twice at right angles till
it reaches a spout set in the wall lower down the hill, more than fifty
feet away. There the oil-jars were filled, and oil-jars are still
standing in an adjoining room. Another room has been identified by the
imagination of Sir Arthur Evans as the schoolroom. In other rooms pots
were “thrown” and painted; stone vases carved; gold, silver, and bronze
work moulded; sculptures were chiselled; seal stones and gems cut; and
the favourite miniatures in ivory were carved which, in a compass of
ten or eleven inches, reproduced a human form to the minutest detail of
veins and finger-nails.
It will be seen, then, that the palace of Knossos was something more
than the seat of King Minos. It contained a community completely
organized within its walls, and independent of any outside connexion,
after the manner of a mediæval castle.
Chapter 6: _Internal Politics: the Relations of Knossos and Phæstos_
On the other side of the island, at Phæstos, there was another great
palace, which has been excavated by the Italian Archæological Mission.
In many ways this palace was as magnificent as that of Knossos. Like
Knossos, it was built on a hill on a foundation formed by levelling
the buildings that had existed on the site from the Neolithic Age;
and, like Knossos, though on a smaller scale, it consisted roughly
of a system of buildings grouped round a central court. Some of the
remains are in a better state of preservation than those of Knossos and
are, therefore, useful in supplementing our knowledge of the Golden
Age of ancient Crete, which we chiefly derive from Knossos. It must
be remembered, however, that owing to the architectural device of
levelling the old buildings as foundations for the great palaces, both
Knossos and Phæstos are of less value than the other sites in Crete,
as illustrating the Early Minoan Age--the period, that is, which
preceded these great palaces.
There were, then, two great palaces flourishing in Crete during the
same period. One naturally wonders what were the relations between them.
The established facts are few. It has been already shown, on the
evidence of their respective pottery, that the original settlers at
Phæstos came later than those of Knossos and took over the latter’s
ceramic innovations. The great palaces of the two cities were built
about the same time, possibly (in view of the likeness in style) by
the same architects. Both palaces were destroyed more than once,
and at approximately known dates. These are the bare facts revealed
by archæology, and the ice is thin for speculation on the internal
politics of the island.
Some think, with the Haweses (_loc. cit._, p. 70), that the first
palace of Knossos was “attacked and burned at the close of the Second
Middle Minoan period, _possibly by the rival ruler of Phæstos_.” Yet
the only certainty is that Knossos was burned down at that time and
Phæstos was not.
Mr. H. R. Hall has a different impression. He says (_The Ancient
History of the Near East_, p. 45): “At the same time that the king of
Knossos built his new palace in his capital ... he also built himself
a southern palace in the Messarà.... As from the near neighbourhood
of Knossos a fine view of the sea, the haven, and the ships of the
thalassocrats could be obtained, with Dia beyond and perhaps Melos
far away on the horizon, so from Phaistos itself an equally fine, but
different, prospect greeted the royal eyes; from this hilltop he could
contemplate on one side the snowy tops of Ida and on the other the rich
lands of the Messarà.” He thinks that before the palace of Phæstos was
built, the island, or at least the central portion of it, had been
unified under the rule of Knossos. Legend makes Phæstos a colony of
Knossos.
An obviously important fact to be remembered in any discussion on
this point is that, in sharp contrast to the Mycenæan cities of the
mainland, Knossos and Phæstos were in the main unfortified. It is true
that M. Dussaud has suggested that Knossos was fortified, but the
vast majority of scholars agree that his supposed “fortifications”
were nothing of the kind. Dr. Burrows has devoted a special chapter
to this point in the as yet unpublished revised edition of his
book, the manuscript of which he left in my care when he died. His
general conclusion is that, while there may have been some sort
of fortification in the early days of Crete, Knossos established a
peaceful regime when she won her supremacy in L.M.I. In any case,
Knossos was not fortified in the days of her empire. She had no fear
from within the island, and she had command of the seas.
Chapter 7: _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.
The buildings of the Stone Age have left hardly a trace of themselves,
because they were made of such perishable materials as mud, reed, and
wickerwork. Dr. L. Pernier has discovered, under the Minoan palace
at Phæstos, a bit of the floor of one of these mud huts. It consists
of red clay about four inches thick. Some houses, it is true, have
been found near the modern Palaikastro, built of unhewn stone, and
dating from the Neolithic Age, but they are exceptional. It was only
when metal tools were invented that stone could be used generally for
building. At the beginning of the Bronze Age the lower walls used to
be made of stone, and the upper of sunburnt brick, the latter being
further strengthened by wooden stays. Lime plaster was used even then
to protect the walls against the weather. Later in the Bronze Age,
when the great palaces were built, it became the practice to build
foundations and lower walls to a height of about two yards of strong
limestone blocks, some of them three yards long and one yard wide, and
of gypsum. A protective covering of plaster was then applied. The upper
storeys were generally of wood. Wood was extensively used. Professor
Mosso, in reference to a wall of the vestibule at the top of the great
staircase at Phæstos, says that “a base of alabaster having been made,
holes were made in it to fix slabs of wood all round. These were bound
together, and the hollow was filled with a mixture of lime and rubble”
(_The Palaces of Crete_, p. 47). Whole tree-trunks were sometimes used
as beams, and one can still see the holes in the stone into which they
were fixed.
There are many features of these palaces which are worth minute study.
In the building of the great palaces it was the practice to prepare the
ground with a thick mixture of lime and clay and pebbles. This mixture
set so hard that it has now to be broken up with explosives before
objects below can be removed. The staircase at Knossos measures nearly
fifteen yards from side to side, and the steps are two and a half feet
wide and hardly five inches deep. The most famous steps in Rome were
not more than five and a half yards from side to side. The doors of the
palace, of which there were many, were made to fit into the walls when
open, so as not to interfere with corridor space. At Hagia Triada the
drains of 4,000 years ago may still be seen working in wet weather. At
Knossos the main drain, which had its sides coated with cement, was
more than three feet high and nearly two feet broad, large enough for a
man to move along it; and the smaller stone shafts that discharged into
it are still in position.
The water supply entered the palace from the north. In 1904 Sir Arthur
Evans discovered some pipes in position to the north-west of the
palace, running alongside the paved road which leads to the Theatral
Area and the Little Palace. The necks of these pipes point eastward
towards the palace and they lead from the very hills on the west from
which the Venetian and Turkish aqueduct still supplies Candia. They
must, therefore, have been aqueducts and not drains, and probably
form part of the same system as the terra-cotta pipes discovered in
the earlier excavations further east, and at the time considered to
be connexions in the drainage system. They are thus described by Dr.
Burrows: “Each of them was about two and a half feet long, with a
diameter that was about six inches at the broad end, and narrowed to
less than four inches at the mouth, where it fitted into the broad end
of the next pipe. Jamming was carefully prevented by a stop-ridge,
that ran round the outside of each narrow end a few inches from the
mouth, while the inside of the butt, or broader end, was provided with
a raised collar that enabled it to bear the pressure of the next pipe’s
stop-ridge, and gave an extra hold for the cement that bound the two
pipes together” (_Ibid._, p. 9).
There were also baths at Knossos. At any rate, a good many people think
they were baths. Professor Mosso thinks they were chapels--a good
instance of the excitement which attaches to archæological research.
There is no arrangement, says Professor Mosso, for the supply or
discharge of water, a provision which, he argues, is necessary for
a bath; moreover, the basin is lined with gypsum, which is soluble
in water; one of them was placed in the Throne Room; and, finally,
they were not private. Professor Mosso’s subtle eye even detects an
enclosure, which he maintains was not put there for spectators of the
bath, but for a chapel choir. These are attractive arguments, but Dr.
Burrows answers quite simply that (1) the gypsum argument is ruled
out because it would be covered with plaster; (2) terra-cotta tubs
have been found close at hand, and the Knossians might quite well have
been content with tubbing instead of plunging into a large tank that
needed elaborate pipes; (3) the bath in the Throne Room was used for
ceremonial ablutions, for which little water would be needed; and (4)
no objects suggesting any cult (such as images or altars) have been
found to show that these places were chapels.
Or take the lighting arrangements. There was a system of shafts used
at Knossos, at Tylissos (a little palace a few miles west of Knossos),
at Phæstos, and at Hagia Triada. The light came down vertically at
the back of the room, where the roof had been left uncovered for the
purpose, and the floor specially cemented to stand exposure to the
weather. While Sir Arthur Evans speaks of the light “pouring in between
the columns” in one place, and in another of its “stealing in in cooler
tones,” Dr. Burrows was of opinion that in the latter case the cooler
tones were so cool that lamps had to be used. Many lamps have, in
fact, been found there. Big marble-standard lamps have also been found,
which probably held two or even four wicks; one of them was found in a
niche on a staircase at Tylissos.
The use of lime plaster on the outer walls gave an opportunity to
the Minoan artists, who not only painted frescoes on them, but
fashioned the plaster into relief. (See “Minoan Lime Plaster and
Fresco Painting,” by Mr. Noel Heaton, _Journal of the Royal Institute
of British Architects_, vol. xviii, pp. 697-710.) “Fresco” paintings
are made as soon as the initial setting of the plaster takes place,
and while it is still wet. Brilliant colours were used--red ochre in
the Early Minoan period (made by burning yellow clay), then yellow
(from the natural clay) and black; then blue, progressing from a
pale greenish tint in Middle Minoan to a dark blue in Late Minoan.
The cupbearer is an example of fresco painting, and the bull’s head
of high relief; the fresco painters merely attempted an outline and
wash of colour in two dimensions, not indicating shades or folds of
drapery. The main difference between Cretan painting on wet plaster
and Egyptian painting on fine white limestone is that the Cretan gives
a more vivid impression of movement, and the Egyptian more detail.
(See “The Relations of Ægean with Egyptian Art,” _Journal of Egyptian
Archæology_, vol. i, pt. 3, July, 1914, pp. 197-205.) This is partly
accounted for by the fact that Minoan painting was often done when the
plaster was still wet.
There are many other sites in Crete which cannot be dealt with
here--Gournia on the north coast, Palaikastro and others in the east,
and Vrokastro. Their main importance lies in their bearing upon Minoan
town-planning. Vrokastro has been explored by Miss E. H. Hall, who
published her results in 1914 (_Anthropological Publications of the
University of Pennsylvania_. Philadelphia). It has a special interest
because it belongs to the Iron Age, and shows the inferiority of this
age to its predecessor, the Bronze Age. In general, the houses in
these towns were huddled together with the object of leaving as much
ground as possible free for agriculture. They are poor specimens of
houses,--small two-storeyed cottages with windows on each side of the
door. Several rooms have been discovered in which upright faces of
rock served as walls--a device still used in Crete. An interesting
point about them is that they were built on rocky eminences or spurs
of mountains--a significant sidelight on the fall of Knossos and the
disappearance of her fleet.
Chapter 8: _The Pottery_
“Exceeding lightly, as when some potter sits and tries the wheel, well
fitting in his hands, to see if it will run.”--HOMER.
Crete is the only land of the “prehistoric” Near East which has left
no record of itself besides that revealed by excavation. 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. It cannot be pounded into
dust, because a small sherd has a tremendous power of resistance.
While the stone ruins at Knossos will one day vanish from exposure to
the weather, the pottery will remain. The defects of pottery are as
valuable to the archæologist as its qualities. Its brittleness led to
a constant deposit of breakages. The replacing of breakages in what
was a household necessity led to continuous production. Its cheapness
made it valueless to looters. When palaces were raided and burnt, metal
objects were “lifted” either for their actual value or their potential
value in the melting-pot. The pots remained. 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.
The evidence thus obtained has many uses. 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 Minoan civilization is being reconstructed.
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. Other objects
take their place according to the type of pots they are found with.
Not that the process is simple. 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.
Pots, then, are found at the lowest levels, just above virgin soil,
for the earliest people used them and broke them. The slowness of
development in that long-drawn-out period (the Neolithic or Later
Stone Age) is clearly indicated. There are some seven yards of deposit
belonging to it at Knossos, and the latest ware shows little or no
improvement on the first. The pottery is hand-made, the clay coarse,
generally of a sooty-greyish colour and more or less burnished. The
relics consist of the rims and handles of pots, rims of basins, bowls,
and plates and similar fragments, too incomplete to suggest original
shapes. Two interesting points, however, can be seen. The pots were
hand-polished both inside and out, and incised lines, or lines simply
scratched on the surface, were used as ornamentation. This primitive
manifestation of an artistic impulse was later extended by the filling
of the incised lines with a white substance for greater effect. Similar
ware has been found at Troy and in Egypt, and Dr. Mackenzie has thought
that these were an importation from the Ægean (_Journal of Hellenic
Studies_, vol. xxiii, p. 159).
The irresistible impulse manifested even in primitive people to
decorate their ordinary vessels is further illustrated by the fact that
the polishing was gradually heightened, and the glitter thrown into
relief by ripples, made with a blunt instrument, probably bone, and
suggestive of the ripples on the surface of water. Among the latest
Neolithic ware found at Knossos are two remarkable specimens of incised
ware, the design being that of a twig with leaves. On each side of the
stem is a row of small oblong punctuated points, filled in with white
chalk. This, it must be remembered, in a period which ended about 3000
B.C.
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. On the manufacturing
side, however, it is probable that a great step forward was taken at
that time. The fact that the clay is now of a terra-cotta or brick
colour, as opposed to the former peaty grey of Neolithic times, has led
to the surmise that the potter’s kiln was now used for baking.
The first paint invented was an almost lustreless black, which was
developed gradually into a lustrous black. Even this development was
at first used as a mere imitation of the Neolithic black hand-polished
vases. The paint was applied all over the vase, inside as well as
outside, whenever the neck was wide enough. Neolithic incisions again
were imitated by white geometric patterns painted over the black
background. This style was not usual till the end of the Early Minoan
period (E.M.III).
It was not till the beginning of the Middle Minoan period that any
serious development took place. Then, however, it came in leaps. The
potter’s wheel had been introduced, probably from Egypt, at the end of
Early Minoan I, and henceforth pots were “thrown” precisely as they
are to-day. One can imagine the keenness with which this great if
simple invention was exploited. The fashioning of clay with thumb and
fingers on a rotating wheel led so easily and inevitably to fineness
of technique that the potter was soon imitating the thinness of metal,
and by the end of Middle Minoan II was producing “egg-shell” vases. In
design the angular geometric patterns had been displaced by the end
of the Early Minoan period by curves and spirals, the logical outcome
of the use of a brush. Colour meanwhile became lavish and brilliant.
There were two styles: either the whole pot was first painted black to
provide a background for a light design, or a dark design was painted
on the original light-coloured clay. It was the first of these styles
that naturally lent itself to colour display, and the name “polychrome”
(“many-coloured”) has been given to it. The other style (monochrome,
or one-coloured) relied for its effect on a simple black-and-white
contrast. In the latter case the light natural background was improved
by a fine buff clay “slip” or wash. Quite naturally it was the
polychrome style that mostly exercised the artists at first. Bright
orange, lustreless white, yellow, red, crimson on a black background
were exploited to a sometimes fantastic extent as long as the novelty
of colour lasted.
The next development took place in the second Middle Minoan period
(M.M.II). Relief was then introduced, which created an effect of light
and shade on the black varnish. Mere blobs of colour, which constituted
the original form of relief, soon developed into raised lumps and horns
(the so-called “Barbotine” ware). Middle Minoan “Kamares” (so called
because the first specimens were found by Professor Myres in a cave on
the slope of Mount Ida above the village of Kamares), or polychrome
pottery, chiefly consisted of cups, “tea-cups,” jugs, amphoræ (or
two-handled jars), and fruit-stand vases. The three best specimens are
here reproduced. 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.
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.
[Illustration: POLYCHROME CUPS
From _Journal of Hellenic Studies_
[_To face page 62_]
Then came a curious clash in the separate evolution of polychrome
and monochrome ware. The latter had been used as an easy decoration
for ordinary vessels, but towards the end of the Middle Minoan period
the two styles began to coalesce in the form of a simple light design
on a dark ground. Then a final resolution took place by a “volte face”
into a monochrome dark on light brought about by the experience that
the black varnish was a more durable colour than the lustreless colour
pigments. The varnish, indeed, possessed a remarkable tenacity. It
probably was the forerunner of that used in the later Attic Black
Figure vases, whose secret still exercises the ingenuity of modern
potters. As yet nothing further has been established than that the
varnish was not a “glaze” in the modern sense. A contributing factor to
the final triumph of the monochrome over polychrome rested upon simple
necessity. When naturalist motives became dominant in the painter’s
art, the lack of a green pigment left no satisfactory alternative to
the general abandonment of variation in colour. In Late Minoan I,
when the complete absorption of the polychrome into the monochrome
style took place, we find a general use of a brilliantly lustrous
brown-to-black “glaze” paint on a buff clay slip, carefully polished
by hand on terra-cotta clay. The naturalism of plants and flowers now
extends to sea-objects--fish, shells, weeds, rocks--and is marked by
careful truth to life. A striking example of this style is a famous
“octopus” vase found at Gournia.
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. There was no decoration beyond an occasional group of horizontal
bands, the mere framework of earlier designs.
There were, of course, other forms of pottery besides vases. Cretan
potters, even more than those of to-day, used clay as the material for
hardware. Not only bricks, drain-pipes, ornaments, but lamps, kettles,
even cupboards and tables, were made of clay.
Chapter 9: _The Origin of Writing_
The Cretans had a system of writing as long ago as 2500 B.C. The
language therein embodied is still a mystery to us, in spite of Sir
Arthur Evans’s monumental work _Scripta Minoa_ (1909). The hope
is that Sir Arthur will find a clue to the mystery, but up to the
present the fact is that there is no starting-point for any attempt at
interpretation. If a bilingual inscription could be found--a Cretan
document, that is, side by side with a translation in some known
language such as Egyptian--a start could be made.
It was inevitable that the art of writing should be evolved early in
the history of man. Even in the most primitive stages of life there
would be the elementary necessity, for instance, of identifying one’s
own property, and for this the most likely means would be some system
of marking. Then, again, the development of communal life would
entail the duty of keeping appointments, or of doing a particular
thing at a particular time. It would, one thinks, have been too much
of a strain, even for the mind of a Stone Age man, to keep all the
details of his daily, still more of his annual, routine in his head,
and the handkerchiefs of those remote days may not have been of such a
material as to lend themselves readily to mnemonic knots. It is quite
conceivable, as an instance of the sort of necessity that would arise,
that at a given time it could be calculated how many days ahead the
provisions would last, and when, therefore, the hunter must be ready
for the hills. He might prepare a handy reminder with a pictographic
representation of some commonplace event that was to take place at the
same time, and by hanging the picture up in an obvious spot.
One’s range of activity would increase as time went on, and it might
conceivably be necessary to deliver a message to a man over on the
other side of the valley in circumstances where one could not take it
oneself. Such a contingency would produce some form of written message,
for the message might be private or unsuitable for oral transmission
by a third party. To give a concrete example from later times: Proitus
wanted to kill Bellerophon, but did not want to do it himself; he
therefore sent the doomed man to the King of Lycia “with letters of
introduction written on a folded tablet, containing much ill against
the bearer ... that he might be slain” (Homer, “Iliad,” vi. 169). Not
all people are original enough to transmit such a communication orally
by the bearer.
Fifty, even forty, years ago it was the general doctrine of Greek
scholars that the Homeric poems were never written down till long after
they were composed, perhaps even, so some thought, not until 560 B.C.
Till then, we used to be taught, they were preserved wholly by memory
and by oral transmission. But on the strength of the above passage from
Homer--the only passage in either “Iliad” or “Odyssey” where writing is
mentioned--Andrew Lang in 1883 argued that the art of writing must have
been known to the early Greeks. “It is almost incredible,” he said,
“that the quick-witted Greeks should have neglected an art which met
them everywhere in Egypt and Asia.” He argued better than he knew. Not
only was the art of writing known to the early Greeks, but it was known
to their forerunners a few thousand years earlier, forerunners whose
very existence was not suspected when Andrew Lang wrote. Curiously
there had been found no trace of writing in the Mycenæan remains,
although this fact has since been shown to be due to mere chance.
In 1893 Sir (then Mr.) Arthur Evans caused general astonishment by
communicating to the Hellenic Society his discovery of the fact that
certain seal stones which he had found in Greece, and which had been
assumed to be Peloponnesian, were, in fact, Cretan. This startling
revelation was clinched during the years that followed by the discovery
of further specimens of Cretan writing. 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.
Minoan writing must have started, quite naturally, with simple
pictographs, such as have, in fact, been found--simple pictures of a
man, a leg, a ship, representing a definite thing that it was desired
to indicate. They are called “ideographs” because they signify a
single idea. They next developed into “hieroglyphs,” that is, pictures
which had acquired by association a certain use among the people who
employed them, but whose original meaning has been lost, and can now
only be inferred. In the parallel case of Egyptian hieroglyphics,
guessing at such meanings has been shown to be dangerous work, for in
many cases the established interpretation is far other than what one
might have supposed.
The first pictographs were evolved in the Early Minoan period (c.
2800-2600 B.C.), and are found on seal stones. It may be fairly
assumed, therefore, that in Crete the first method of writing down
ideas was by seal impressions. By the Middle Minoan period the seal
stones are elongated, and contain a succession of designs, by which a
connected chain of ideas could be reproduced. The lines of pictures
are sometimes read from left to right, sometimes from right to left,
a feature in which, as in others, they resemble the Hittite system of
writing. In all cases the document is read in the direction in which
the figures it contains are facing. _Scripta Minoa_ (p. 203) gives
a typical example of this species: namely, a picture of a ship with
two crescent moons, of which the probable meaning was a voyage of two
months’ duration.
The next step in the evolution of writing came, no doubt, when
phonetic values were assigned to the pictures; that is, when the sound
made in pronouncing the name of a given thing or person or action
became associated with the conventional ideograph which represented
that thing or person or action. When that happened, the same ideograph
began to be used in writing out other, more complex, words in which the
same _sound_ occurred, although in _meaning_ there was no connection
with the original pictograph. To take a hypothetical example. Suppose
we were in that stage of evolution to-day. We may have formed the habit
of denoting an axe by a simple picture of that instrument; thereafter
the sign of an axe would have become a symbol for spelling the same
sound whenever it appeared in any other word. In spelling the word
“accident,” for instance, we should start with the picture of an axe.
This sort of thing seems to us mere “punning,” but it would cause no
more difficulty or hesitation to the primitive writer than it would
have, say, to Mr. Weller, senior, to whom the relation of the written
to the spoken word and of words to things was still mysterious. Once
begun, the method would be eagerly applied to fresh words.
The first attempt at “syllabics,” or the writing out of a word by
separate symbols for its separate syllables, was made more intelligible
by the use of “determinatives.” By “determinative” is meant a
pictographic representation of the idea denoted by the whole word.
These we find appended to the spelling of a word in order to give the
reader at least some inkling as to whether the word denoted mineral,
animal or vegetable. A man’s name, for instance, would be followed by a
picture of a man.
The physical strain involved in drawing pictures every time one wanted
to write down a word or two would obviously soon become intolerable.
It is not therefore to be wondered at that, by the time of the Middle
Minoan III period, the hieroglyphics have been simplified into
conventional signs which are easier to make. Herein is the germ of
what we call “linear” script, that is, of a system of writing based on
a set of regular forms, such as our own alphabet. By the Late Minoan
I period there was a full linear script in use throughout Crete, and
it was extended to Melos and Thera. Sir Arthur Evans has called this
script “Class A” to distinguish it from a parallel form of it which
was introduced in the next period (Late Minoan II), and which he
calls “Class B.” The latter is not a different script, but merely a
variation introduced, it is supposed, by a new dynasty at Knossos. Most
of the Knossian tablets that have come down to us belong to the “Palace
period,” and are written in the Class B style.
It was the usual practice to write the inscriptions with a stilus, that
is a pointed rod of metal, on a clay tablet, and this is the form of
most of the inscriptions that have been preserved. It is possible that
wooden tablets covered with a layer of wax were also used; but even if
they were, none of them, of course, could have survived the burning of
the palaces. More interesting still is the fact that pen and ink must
have been used even in those remote times. This fact is established
by the discovery of two cups (Middle Minoan III) which are inscribed
in ink. There can be little doubt, therefore, that long documents and
any literature there happened to be were written in ink on papyrus. It
is probable that we shall have to make up our minds to the complete
loss of all such literature, for Cretan soil lacks the dryness of the
Egyptian. If our worst fears prove true, we may experience the final
anti-climax of the discovery that the clay tablets, when read, will
contain nothing after all but lists and bills.
It is obvious that many of the tablets do consist of bills or
inventories. Although we cannot yet understand the language of the
script, it has been found possible, by studying the clay tablets, to
reconstruct the system of numbers that was used. We have, for instance,
what is evidently an inventory of arrows, a record surmounted by a
picture of an arrow. From this and other records it is apparent that
thousands were expressed by “diamonds,” hundreds by slanting lines,
tens by circles, units by straight lines, quarters by a small “v.” The
highest number recorded is 19,000.
Although it is true that scholars still wait a clear starting-point for
transcribing the Cretan script, there is one interesting and important
point already established by Sir Arthur Evans. He has proved to the
general satisfaction of classical scholars that the Phœnician alphabet,
which had always been supposed to be the original source of the Greek
alphabet, and therefore of the Latin alphabet from which comes our own,
was itself derived from Crete. This theory, however, is disputed by
Egyptologists.
There are in existence three fragmentary inscriptions, two of which
were found not long ago by Professor R. C. Bosanquet at Præsos, in
Crete--near to Mount Dicte, and not far to the north-east of the
boundaries of Knossos--which are written in Greek characters, and are
therefore quite legible to us, but which contain a language which is
not Greek. Is it the language of the Minoans? It is not yet possible to
say, although Professor Conway, who has examined the inscriptions at
length in the _Annual of the British School at Athens_ (vol. viii, p.
125, and vol. x, p. 115), may some day be able to give an answer.
Chapter 10: _Cretan Religion_
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; was associated with
doves, which symbolized her power in the air; was accompanied by lions,
the strongest animals of the earth; brandished snakes, that live under
the earth. Among the various “cult objects,” or ritualistic forms
used in worship, that have been found in her shrines are included
representations of cows with calves, goats with suckling kids, and the
like.
There was a god as well as a goddess in Minoan religion, but he was
of relatively little importance. Velchanos, the Cretan Zeus--if we
may assume that the Minoan god was the original of this figure of
the Greek legends--was represented as both the son and the husband of
Mother Nature. He was suckled, so the tradition ran, by Amalthea the
goat in the cave of Dikte, and brought up by his mother Rhea on the
slopes of Mount Ida. His insignificance in comparison with the goddess
appears from the fact that he was drawn on a smaller scale whenever
represented in her company. The two deities probably constituted, as
Mr. Hogarth has suggested, a “Double Monotheism”--a double godhead,
that is, worshipped to the exclusion of all minor deities. If this was
the case, the various Cretan prototypes of later Greek divinities must
be regarded as variant forms of the Mother Goddess herself. Aphrodite,
for instance, the goddess of Love, was worshipped generally in the
Levant, being known in Canaan as Ashtaroth-Astarte, and in Egypt as
Hathor; her Cretan name is unknown. The Greek Artemis, goddess of the
Wild Beasts, was foreshadowed in the Cretan Dictynna.
One great difference between the Cretan and the Hellenic Zeus was that
the Cretan Zeus was mortal, and was said to have died on Mount Juktas.
The mortality of their gods was one of the striking conceptions which
differentiated the Southern peoples of the Near East from the later
Greeks, who came from the North. 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.
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. 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
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. The
actual dance, no doubt, would be performed in sacred groves.
Many cult-objects have been found in the shrines, the commonest being
the mysterious Double Axe. The fact that this emblem was also specially
associated with the Carian Zeus at Labraunda has led to a generally
accepted theory that the Cretan “Labyrinth” corresponds to the Carian
“Labraunda,” or place of the “Labrus” or Double Axe; for the Knossian
palace must have been, in fact, the chief seat of the cult.
Side by side with the Double Axe one finds the constantly-recurring
sign of the Bull, an animal which was sacred not only because of its
physical strength, but of its use in sacrifice. A sarcophagus or
coffin of terra-cotta, found at Hagia Triada, contains a picture of a
sacrificial bull following a procession of women priests. 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 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.
Cult-objects were usually of a rude and inartistic kind. A striking
exception is found in some brilliantly-coloured figures of ware which
if it were modern would be called “faïence,” belonging to the Middle
Minoan III period. Perhaps the best example of this ware is a group
consisting of the Snake Goddess and her votaries, which was found by
Sir Arthur Evans in 1903, and which was used in a shrine of the royal
household.
There was a specially important element in Cretan religion reserved for
the cult of the dead.
It is obvious from the many tombs that have been excavated, that in
very early times it was the practice to bury the body of the dead in a
doubled-up position, the knees being drawn up to the breast. In later
times the body was laid out at full length. It is not clear whether or
not there was any particular significance in this choice of position.
There were various kinds of tombs and graves, all of which were used
contemporaneously, and of which, perhaps, the most interesting were
the “Tholoi.” The word “tholos” properly means a domed building or
rotunda, and the particular kind of tomb to which it is applied is a
vaulted chamber to which entrance is effected through an underground
tunnel, or “dromos.” It is likely that in form these “tholoi” were
based upon the huts used--at some period--by the living. There are
both round and square “tholoi” found in Crete. The “tholos” of Hagia
Triada has a circular ground plan, while the Royal Tomb at Isopata and
other elaborate tombs of the great palace-periods are rectangular. The
principle of the tholos-tomb was most in use in Mycenæan times, on
the mainland of Greece, where the “beehive tombs” almost all retained
in the original round formation. The hilly character of Crete led the
people to cut out their “tholoi” in the side of the rocky hills, the
“dromos,” or tunnel, in this case being driven into the hillside almost
horizontally.
Another style of grave was the shaft or pit-grave, which consisted of a
pit sunk into the ground, at the bottom of which was the grave itself,
closed over with slabs of stone. Still another kind was a combination
of the first two, and is known as the “pit-cave.” This was made by
first sinking a pit and then cutting out the tomb in the form of a
side-recess from the bottom of the pit. A simpler form of burial, known
as the “pot-burial,” was effected by trussing up the body, placing it
under an inverted jar, and then burying it in the earth. A sixth form
was that of the simple grave, like our own. Cremation was not practised
in Minoan times, although it was introduced into Crete from Greece in
the Iron Age. Clay coffins were first used in the Middle Minoan period,
being made in the form of deep boxes with sloping tops resembling the
roofs of houses.
Such were the physical conditions of burial. We knew practically
nothing of the cult of the dead until 1913-1914, when Sir Arthur Evans
published some important disclosures (_Archæologia_, 2nd series, vol.
xv, 1913-14). It was known before that the dead in their spacious tombs
were honoured with gift-offerings, which included weapons, jewellery,
and objects closely associated with them in their life; that food and
drink offerings were made and coal fires lighted, possibly with the
naïve or symbolic object of cheering the traveller on his mysterious
way. Now, however, a new series of tombs has been found at Isopata, one
of which, called by Sir Arthur Evans “the Tomb of the Double Axes,”
is proved to be not only a tomb, but a shrine of the Minoan Great
Mother. In this tomb were found libation vessels, including a “rhyton”
(or drinking-cup) in the shape of a bull’s head made of steatite, and
a pair of double axes; the grave which received the body is cut out
in the form of a double axe. “The cult of the dead,” says Sir Arthur
Evans, “is thus brought into direct relation with the divinity or
divinities of the Double Axes, and we may infer that in the present
tomb the mortal remains had been placed in some ceremonial manner under
divine guardianship.”
Chapter 11: _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.
The Cretans as a race were quite distinct from the contemporary
inhabitants of Greece, physical types being sharply divided by the
shores of the mainland. It may be asked: Is it worth while speculating
about the physical characteristics of a people which flourished 4,000
years ago, whose very existence was obscured by the Dark Age that
comes before Greek history, and whose existence was not rediscovered
until the other day? Yet archæology works wonders. It is true that
in this particular field, in which archæology is chiefly dependent
upon portrait-paintings and bones, there is more controversy and less
certitude than in the others; and that craniology, or the study of
skulls, with their much-disputed classification into “brachycephalic”
or broad-headed, “dolichocephalic” or long-headed, and “mesocephalic,”
midway between the two, is a fruitful source of confusion; that
the “cephalic” index--that is, the breadth of the skull above the
ears expressed in a percentage which gives the proportion of this
breadth-measurement to the measurement of the length of the same skull
from the forehead to the occiput--is a poor index of anything at all.
Still, there is ground for assuming that from the later Stone Age
onwards the islands of the Ægean were mainly peopled by members of the
“Mediterranean” race, small of stature, with oval faces, with what
craniologists might call rather “long” heads, with small hands and
feet, a dark complexion, dark eyes and black curly hair.
According to Professor H. L. Myres in his _Dawn of History_, the
north-west quadrant of the Old World resolved itself racially into
three belts, which were determined by geographical conditions. (Pp.
30 _et seq._ Williams & Norgate, 1912.) In the north were the pure
white-skinned “Boreal” men of the Baltic basin; next came the sallow
“Alpine” type, then the red-skinned “Mediterranean” man. The third was
an intruder from the South, not from far enough south for him to be a
negro, but probably from the northern shores of Africa. His intrusion
“formed part of a much larger convergence of animals and plants from
the south and south-east into the colder, moister regions which have
been released since the Ice Age closed.” The limit of the movement
seems to have been fixed by the shores of the mainland, further north
than which the lungs and constitution of the people concerned forbade
them to go.
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” race; for
“Phœnikes” literally means “Red-skins,” and in Homer Phœnix himself is
a King of Crete and grandfather of Minos.
The Minoan people, then, formed part of the Mediterranean race. Their
dress was much simpler than that of the classical Greeks. The men wore
a short pair of drawers or a loin-cloth, the upper part of the body
being bare, as in the cupbearer picture, a style emanating, as did
the men themselves, from the warm lands south of the Mediterranean.
Egyptian fresco-paintings reveal an almost exact analogy of type in the
clothing and appearance of the Egyptians. Those who have a keen eye for
the persistence of type may compare some of the forms of loin-cloth, as
depicted on seal stones, with the “brakais,” or baggy breeches, still
worn in Crete. Elders and officials apparently wore flowing cloaks for
their greater dignity. High-topped boots--again suggestive of those
worn to-day--were in general use. Men wore their hair long as did the
women, plaited and coiled up on the top of the head, thereby forming
the only headdress that was used.
Minoan war-equipment was limited. Their only weapons were a long
sword and a dagger, the latter of which is shown by pictures of clay
figurines to have been carried inside the belt at the front. Their only
defensive armour was a big shield of leather and a leather conical
helmet. The shield was framed in a metal band, but had no handle or
central boss; it was big enough to cover the body from head to foot,
and it could be bent so as to protect both sides. It is represented
in certain pictures in a curious 8-shape, pinched-in in the middle.
The origin of this may have been that it was the practice to sling it
over the left shoulder suspended by a strap, and for this purpose the
figure-of-eight shape may have been convenient.
Horses were apparently used both for war and for hunting, although we
have no pictures of them being ridden. The available evidence shows
them only in the shafts of two-wheeled chariots. This accords well with
Professor Sir William Ridgeway’s observation (made far back in the
’eighties of last century) that in Homer the horse was driven only, and
was no bigger than our donkey. There is reason for thinking that the
horses were imported, and imaginative people have recognized evidence
of this in the fact that a seal stone has been found which shows a
horse on board ship. Whether intentionally or merely from crudity
of draughtsmanship, one is left in little doubt as to what mostly
occupied the artist’s mind when he fashioned this stone, for the horse
covers three-quarters of the ship’s length, and towers high above it,
while the crew stand as high as the horse’s knees. On the fascinating
subject of the history of the horse, the reader should consult Sir W.
Ridgeway’s _Origin of the Thoroughbred Horse_ (Cambridge University
Press, 1905).
The women are readily distinguishable from the men in Cretan pictures
by reason of their white skin, suggestive of a more secluded indoor
life. They wore large shady hats, close-fitting, puffed-sleeved
blouses, cut very low in front, and projecting upwards into a
sort of peak at the back of the neck. They wore wide-flounced,
richly-embroidered skirts like crinolines, and had belts like the
men’s. 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 later
age was to be “as little mentioned as possible among men.” Not so for
the women of Crete. There may be some special significance in the fact
that the Lycians of Asia Minor, who were colonists from Crete, made a
practice of calling children by the mother’s, not the father’s, name
(Herodotus, i. 73). If this was the case also in Minoan Crete itself,
it may afford a possible explanation of the freedom enjoyed by Cretan
women, for the practice of naming children after their mother instead
of after their father is connected with states of society which have
not yet evolved any definite ideas of marriage, and in which, as
Herbert Spencer says, “The connection between mother and child is
always certain, whereas the connection between father and child would
sometimes be only inferable.”
Chapter 12: _From Prehistoric Crete to Classical Greece_
Towards the end of the Minoan Age Cretan culture began to spread
generally over the Ægean, and extended to the mainland. Cretan vases
are found as far north as Bœotia, and the many Cretan relics discovered
in Mycenæan tombs were not all war-souvenirs; some of them, belonging
to times before the fall of Knossos, were the peaceful product of
Cretan workmen who had been induced by the Lords of Mycenæ to emigrate.
The men from the North who finally overthrew what we call the
Minoan civilization, became to some extent the repositories of
Cretan tradition. They carried on a less splendid phase of Cretan
civilization, a phase which was distinguished by the name “Mycenæan.”
They had come to Greece from lands still further north, whence they had
themselves been driven to seek new homes. They came down in successive
waves of invasion, the men who formed the first wave being known as the
“Achæans,” the “yellow-haired Achæans” of Homer. It was they--so at
least some authorities hold--who sacked Knossos, and who afterwards,
during the thirteenth and twelfth centuries B.C., wandering about in
search of adventure, became the terror of the whole Ægean. An Egyptian
inscription of those times says: “The Isles were restless: disturbed
among themselves.”
Egypt herself felt the effect of the disturbances. From the “isles in
the midst of the Great Green Sea” there no longer came the peaceful
Minoans to pay friendly tribute to the King of Egypt; instead
there came the Achæans, on an unpeaceful mission. Two raids were
made--according to the students of Egyptian records--one about 1230
B.C., another about 1200 B.C. (See H. R. Hall, _The Ancient History of
the Near East_, p. 70. Methuen, 1913.) 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 great wave of Northern invaders. After that came the
Dark Age, out of which about 800 B.C. emerged classical Greece.
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.
What Homer wrote was probably less legendary than historical. 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. From the Greek writers they
descended to the poets of Rome, and so to the art and literature of
Europe.
INDEX
Achæans, 90, 91, 92
Ægean People, 20
Ægean Sea, 27
Ægeus, King, 27
Androgeos, 27
Architecture, 48-54
Ariadne, 27, 37
Babylonia, 16
Baths, 51;
or chapels, 51, 52
Bosanquet, Professor R. C., 73
Bronze Age, 21, 49, 54
Bull in Minoan worship, 78
Bull leaping, 35
Burial rights, 79-82
Burrows, Dr. Ronald Montagu, 8, 9, 22, 33, 39, 43, 46, 51, 52
Chapels (or baths?), 51, 52
Clay tablets, 33
Command of the Seas, 47
Commerce, 24, 26
Conway, Professor R. S., 10, 74
Cornwall, 21
Craniology, 84
Cretan race, physical characteristics, 83
Cupbearer, 14, 39
Dædalus, 28, 37
Dancing place, 35
Dark Ages, 15, 16, 23, 92
Dating, 24;
Egyptian equations, 25
Delos, 29
“Discovery,” 8
Dog’s Leg Corridor, 41
Dorians, 91, 92
Double Axe, 78
Drainage, 42
Dress, 86
Dromos, 80
Dussaud, M., 46
Egypt, 16
Evans, Sir Arthur, 7, 10, 13, 19, 29, 31, 32, 38, 42, 50, 52, 65, 67,
71, 73, 81
Fortifications, 30, 31
Fresco-painting, 53
Gournia, 54
Great staircase, 40, 41, 42, 50
Grote, 17
Grundy, Dr., 9
Gypsum, 49, 51, 52
Hagia Triada, 50, 52
Halbherr (Dr.), 14
Hall, E. H., 54
Hall, H. R., 31, 45, 91
Hall of Colonnades, 41
Hall of Double Axes, 41
Hawes, C. H. & H. B., 38, 45
Heaton, Noel, 34, 53
Herodotus, 26, 89
Hissarlik, 17
Hogarth (Mr.), 76
Homer, 15, 20, 22, 30, 40, 55, 67, 91, 92
Horses, 87
Iron Age, 54, 81
Kamares Pottery, 61
Kingsley, Charles, 14
Knossos, 13, 14, 15, 20, 22, 28;
palace, 30-43;
relations with Phæstos, 44-47;
main drain, 50
Labyrinth, 27, 29, 37
Lang, Andrew, 67
Lighting arrangements, 41, 52, 53
Lime plaster, 53
Lycia, 68, 89
Mackenzie, Dr., 42, 58
Mediterranean race, 86
Minoan earthquake, 32
Minoan Empire, 27, 28, 30
Minoan Libraries, 33
Minoan Periods, 21, 22
Minos, 26, 37;
Supreme Judge, 40, 43
Minotaur, 27
Mosso, Angelo, 21, 49, 51
Mycenæ, 18, 30
Mycenæan civilization, 18, 90
Myres, Professor, 61, 84
National Home Reading Magazine, 8
Nomenclature, 22
Obsidian, 26
Palace style, 32
Palaikastro, 48, 54
Pernier, Dr. L., 48
Phæstos, 13, 20, 21;
relations with Knossos, 44-47, 52
Phæstos Disc, 14
Philistines, 28
Phœnicia, 85
Pottery, 21, 25;
firing furnace and potter’s wheel, 26, 55-64;
value of in archæology, 55;
for purposes of dating, 57;
Stone Age, 58;
Bronze Age, 59;
polishing, 58;
paint, 59;
kiln, 59;
wheel, 60;
Kamares, 61;
“trickle” ornament, 62;
lily vase, 62;
naturalism, 64;
octopus vase, 64;
hardware, 64
Pylos, 9
Queen’s Megaron, 41
Religion, 75, 82;
Mother Goddess, 75;
Velchanos, 75, 76;
mortality of gods, 76, 77;
temples, 77;
family shrines, 77;
cult objects, 78, 79;
double axe, 78;
horns of consecration, 79;
tombs and form of burial, 79-82;
tholos, 80;
pit-cave, 80;
pot burial, 81;
graves, 81;
cremation, 81
Rhitsona, 9
Ridgeway, Sir William, 87, 88
Schliemann, 17, 18, 19, 22
Socrates, 29
Spencer, Herbert, 89
Sphacteria, 9
Stone Age, 20, 44, 48, 57
Theatre, 35
Tholos tomb, 80
Throne room, 39, 52
Thucydides, 9, 26
Tiryns, 18, 30
Tomb of the double axes, 81
Trojan war, 91
Tylissos, 52, 53
Veniselos, 13
Vrokastro, 54
War equipment, 86
Water supply, 42, 50, 51
Women, 88, 89
Wood, Use of in building, 49
Workrooms of palace, 43
Writing, origin of, 65-74;
clay tablets, 68;
pictographs, 69;
hieroglyphs, 70;
determinatives, 71;
linear script, 71;
pen and ink, 72;
inventories, 72, 73;
numerals, 73;
Præsos inscription, 73
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