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My Minoans of Crete Section

The Minoans of Crete
'From King Minos and his minotaur to the Minoans and their palaces.'

What began for Sir Arthur Evans, a British archeologist, in 1900 as a search for the island of Crete's history in the Bronze Age at the ruins of Knossos, the legendary home of King Minos, ended with not only the discovery of King Minos' throne on March 13^th 1900 but also the discovery of an unknown ancient civilization he would eventually name the Minoans after King Minos.

Knossos in ancient Greek mythology was not only the home of King Minos but also Minos' Minotaur. Knossos and the Minotaur's Maze within Knossos in Greek legend was commissioned by King Minos and built by the great architect, Daedalos, as a prison for Minos' Minotaur to which King Minos fed 7 Athenian boys and 7 Athenian girls every 9 years as payment for Athens' freedom from the invasion by the great navy of King Minos. Eventually with the help of the great architect Daedalos and Minos' own daughter, Ariadne, who fell in love with Theseus, Prince Theseus of Athens killed Minos' Minotaur and he and the other boys and girls to be sacrificed escaped back to Athens.

The Minoans of Crete may have been the first ancient civilization to built warships in order to protect their large merchant fleet. However, unlike in the myth of King Minos, they were neither a sea power nor cruel to their neighbors. The Minoans of Crete were actually just the opposite, a peaceful civilization of traders who were never aggressive toward their neighbors except for the time of colonization between 1650bc and 1500bc, when they, due to over population, colonized the islands of Thera, Melos, Kea, Rhodes, the southwestern coast of Asia Minor near Miletus, and, Athens of Greece.

The Minoan civilization began around 3000bc, as the early Minoans took refuge in the thousands of caves upon Crete due to either invaders or immigrants (most likely from Asia Minor). Eventually, the Minoans left the safety of Crete's caves and began building villages alongside those from Asia Minor.

Early Minoan villages were composed of several buildings, made of rubble and held together by either clay or earth. They had flat roofs and earth-beaten floors. Along with the building of villages came temples, which normally contained within their walls a clay vase in the shape of a woman, most likely a goddess, and an altar which the clay vase set upon. Surprisingly, during this early time around 3000bc, the Palace of Gournia was the center of Minoan civilization and not Knossos, the most famous palace of Crete, which probably served as either a very important religious and/or government location for a large part of the Minoans 2000 year history. Gournia, as well as other early Minoan palaces, were 2 story buildings just slightly larger then the largest early Minoan house and were similar to the later palaces of Knossos, Zakro, Phaistos, and, Mallia , in that they were surrounded by housing, temples, and even paved roads.

Between 3000bc and 2000bc the Minoans moved from the scattered villages and multiple clans of earlier times to cities. Surprisingly, these cities had a plumbing system in place as early as 2000bc to 1700bc. Furthermore, the Minoans built bridges and had paved and cobblestone roads with median strips for pedestrians in their cities and palaces as well as throughout the Creten countryside. By about 1700bc, after destruction due to earthquake and fire spread across Crete and the entire Minoan civilization, the Minoans replaced their earlier cities which were up until 1700bc central to Minoan culture with the great Minoan palaces of Knossos, Zakro, Phaistos, and Mallia.

Agriculturally advanced early on due to Cretes' fertile land and self-containment, the Minoans used a fairly complex plough to sow the ground as well as a several agricultural tools such as a 2-sided axe for deforestation, 2-sided adze, for hoeing and weeding, sickles, for gathering grain, and a axe-adze combination for, deforestation, hoeing and weeding.

Socially the Minoans, unlike other ancient civilizations, built housing for all its people, not just royalty, and all its people were also buried within collective tombs along side one another. The Minoans didn't have tombs set aside for the upper class and royalty. Women were given more respect and freedom than women in other ancient cultures. The Minoan women were permitted to work within any occupation they chose, participate in the Minoan sports events, such as wrestling, hunting, running and jumping as well as religious based sports events, such as boxing and bull-jumping. The Minoan women were also a major part of religious ceremonies, and it appears as though the Minoan civilization, as a whole, was a matriarchy. The equality that the Minoan women were given by Minoan men and the Minoan civilization in general was most likely a direct result of the fact that the Minoans worshipped not only things of nature, such as, trees, springs, hillsides, etc, but also one goddess of many faces, most likely, or multiple goddesses.

Economically strong, the Minoans began trading with other nations of the Mediterranean around 2000bc. 2000bc is also the same timeframe in which the Minoans began to employ a hieroglyphic system of writing, which would eventually evolve into Linier A, which to date has not been deciphered. It would further evolve into Linear B around 1500bc, an early form of Greek. All three of the Minoan writing systems were developed for one purpose, and that was to allow the Minoans to record transactions for their mercantile system. Unlike other early civilizations which depended on the import of raw materials, many of which were exported from Crete and the Minoans, the Minoans themselves imported very few goods. Those they did import, such as gold, silver, emery (an abrasive used in the making of pottery), obsidian, spotted obsidian, etc, were used exclusively in the making of luxury items; for their island Crete, due to its' fertile land and wealth of raw materials, was able to sustain the Minoans independently from their neighbors.

The mercantile system of the Minoans and the Minoan civilization as a whole, were most likely controlled by several independent states, the palaces; they were ruled over by either independent kings and queens, or by kings and queens working with either a senate or council of elders until around 1450bc when Knossos appears to have ruled over all of Crete as well as its mercantile system. Based on the presence of large country estates outside of the palaces and the variety of Minoan houses, either small and humble, large and splendid, or anything in between within Minoan society, there appear to have been free citizens of different economic levels, such as a merchant proprietor class, a noble land owning class, a peasant class, a slave class. Unlike other early civilizations the slaves of the Minoans were treated very well and were given an extreme amount of freedom aside from the participation in religious ceremonies.

The uniqueness of the Minoans and their civilization did not stop with their economic strength, religious beliefs, social structure, or their technical advancements. The Minoans were also artistically unique from their neighbors in that they surrounded themselves with art which was generally not created to serve religious or political purposes but instead for its beauty alone.

The Minoans artistic endeavors began, like many early cultures, with the making of pottery. Minoan pottery changed so drastically throughout its history that their history, in itself, has been broken down into 16 periods, 6 early periods, 5 middle periods, 4 late periods, and 1 Sub-Minoan period based solely on their pottery. The Early Minoan Period pottery from around 3000bc to 2200bc was most often vase-shaped or thin-waisted and included spouted jugs, and bowls on pedestals with anti-splash rims. Furthermore, Early Minoan Period pottery was usually decorated with basic geometric shapes, such as loops and squares, using red, black, white, or brown paint on both dark and light surfaces. During the Middle Minoan Periods from around 2200bc to 1575bc the Minoans began to use ridges, as well as more than one color, usually red and white, on their pottery; they also began to reproduce metal vases from abroad using clay. Also during the Middle Minoan Periods the Minoans perfected the creation of dark-surfaced pottery and began to decorate their pottery with naturalistic motifs, such as palm trees, and octopuses. By the Late Minoan Periods from around 1575bc to 1025bc naturalistic motifs spread throughout Crete and the Minoans began to decorate their pottery, in many cases with whole naturalistic scenes. They included not only birds but birds with flowers, and not only starfish but starfish with rocks and seaweed.

The Minoans and their artistic abilities were certainly not limited to pottery. Starting near the end of the Minoan Middle Period, around 1700bc, the Minoans began to cover the walls and floors of their palaces, temples, and homes, even the homes of the lower class in many cases, with wall-sized and floor-sized frescoes. These frescoes were usually painted with red, yellow, black, and blue paint and were either naturalistic frescoes of things such as dolphins, monkeys, and trees, or frescoes of trivial things, such as a cat hunting a heath cock, a group of Minoans participating in a sports event, or even mundane details of everyday life.

The downfall of the Minoans began around 1500bc as the palace centers of the Minoans as well as a large part of their civilization were destroyed by earthquakes that swept over Crete. Around 1450bc more earthquakes on Crete and the catastrophic eruption of the Thera island volcano equivalent to a 600 kiloton atomic bomb decimated the Minoan civilization even further. By 1400bc, spurred on by the natural disasters occurring around 1500bc and 1450bc as well as the Minoans lack of a strong military and their lack of proper defenses, the Mycenaeans of mainland Greece invaded Crete, finally putting an end to the Minoans of Crete and their unique civilization.

Bibliography:

'Herakles (Hercules) and Theseus'

by Unknown Author http://www.uwm.edu/Course/mythology/0900/herakles.htm

'Bureaucrats & Barbarians, The Minoans'

by Richard Hooker http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/MINOA/MINOANS.HTM

'The Minoans, The Story of Bronze Age Crete'

by Sinclair Hood

published 1971 by Praeger Publishers Inc., New York, NY

'Vol. 1, Fifth Edition, Culture and Values, a Survey of the Humanities'

by Lawrence Cunningham and John Reich

Interactive Bronze Age Map

Interactive map of the Minoan Palace Knossos