Minoan civilization

Fresco from the "Palace of Minos", Knossos, Crete

The Minoans were a pre-Hellenic Bronze Age civilization in Crete in the Aegean Sea, flourishing from approximately 2600 to 1450 BC when their culture was superseded by the Mycenaean culture, which drew upon the Minoans. Based on depictions in Minoan art, Minoan culture is often characterized as a matrilinear society centered on goddess worship.

The term "Minoan" was coined by the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans after the mythic "king" Minos, associated with the labyrinth, which Evans identified as the site at Knossos. It is possible, though unsure, that Minos was indeed a term for a Minoan ruler. What the Minoans called themselves is unknown, although the Egyptian place name "Keftiu" and the Semitic "Kaftor" or "Caphtor", both evidently referring to Minoan Crete, are suggestive.

Chronology and history

Minoan chronology
3650-3000 BC	EMI	Prepalatial
2900-2300 BC	EMII
2300-2160 BC	EMIII
2160-1900 BC	MMIA
1900-1800 BC	MMIB	Protopalatial (Old Palace Period)
1800-1700 BC	MMII
1700-1640 BC	MMIIIA	Neopalatial (New Palace Period)
1640-1600 BC	MMIIIB
1600-1480 BC	LMIA
1480-1425 BC	LMIB
1425-1390 BC	LMII	Postpalatial (At Knossos, Final Palace Period)
1390-1370 BC	LMIIIA1
1370-1340 BC	LMIIIA2
1340-1190 BC	LMIIIB
1190-1170 BC	LMIIIC
1100 BC	Subminoan

Rather than give calendar dates for the Minoan period, archaeologists use two systems of relative chronology. The first, created by Evans and modified by later archaeologists, is based on pottery styles. It divides the Minoan period into three main eras—Early Minoan (EM), Middle Minoan (MM), and Late Minoan (LM). These eras are further subdivided, e.g. Early Minoan I, II, III (EMI, EMII, EMIII). Another system, proposed by the Greek archaeologist Nicolas Platon, is based on the development of the architectural complexes known as "palaces" at Knossos, Phaistos, Malia, and Kato Zakros, and divides the Minoan period into Prepalatial, Protopalatial, Neopalatial and Post-palatial periods. The relationship between these systems is given in the accompanying table, with approximate calendar dates drawn from Warren and Hankey (1989).

All calendar dates given in this article are approximate, and the subject of ongoing debate.

The Thera eruption occurred during a mature phase of the LM IA period. The calendar date of the eruption is extremely controversial; see the article on Thera eruption for discussion.

Historical overview

The oldest signs of inhabitants on Crete are ceramic Neolithic remains that date to approximately 7000 BC. See History of Crete for details.

The beginning of its Bronze Age, around 2600 BC, was a period of great unrest in Crete, but it also marks the beginning of Crete as an important center of civilization.

At the end of the MMII period (1700 BC) there was a large disturbance in Crete, probably an earthquake, although an invasion from Anatolia has also been suggested. The Palaces at Knossos, Phaistos, Malia, and Kato Zakros were destroyed at this time. After that, population increased again, and the palaces were rebuilt on a larger scale, initiating the Neopalatial period. New settlements were built all over the island. This period (the 17th and 16th centuries, MM III / Neopalatial) represents the apex of the Minoan civilization.

At the end of the LMIB period, the Minoan palace culture failed catastrophically. All palaces were destroyed, and only Knossos was ever restored.

A short time after this catastrophe, around 1420 BC, the island was conquered by the Mycenaeans, who adapted Linear B Minoan script for their Mycenaean language, a form of Greek. After about a century of partial recovery, most Cretan cities and palaces went into decline in the 13th century; Knossos remained an administrative center until 1200 BC; the last of the Minoan sites was the defensive mountain site of Karfi.

Geography

File:Minoan Crete.png

Map of Minoan Crete

Crete is a mountainous island with natural harbors. There are signs of earthquake damage at Minoan sites.

Homer recorded a tradition that Crete had 90 cities. The site at Knossos was the most important one. Archeologists have found palaces in Phaistos and Malia as well. The island was probably divided into four political units, the north being governed from Knossos, the south from Phaistos, the central eastern part from Malia and the eastern tip from Kato Zakros. Smaller palaces have been found in other places.

Some of the major Minoan archaeological sites are:

• Palaces
  • Knossos - the largest Bronze Age archaeological site on Crete; was purchased for excavations by Evans on March 16, 1900.
  • Phaistos
  • Malia
  • Kato Zakros
  • Galatas
• Agia Triada
• Gournia - town
• Pyrgos
• Vasiliki
• Fournu Korfi
• Pseira - island town with ritual sites
• Mount Juktas - the greatest of the Minoan peak sanctuaries
• Arkalochori
• Karfi - last of the Minoan sites

Society and Culture

Minoan copper ingot

The Minoans were primarily a mercantile people engaged in overseas trade. Their culture, from ca 1700 BC onwards, shows a high degree of organization. Many historians and archaeologists believe that the Minoans were involved in the Bronze Age's important tin trade: tin, alloyed with copper apparently from Cyprus, was used in the manufacture of bronze. The decline of Minoan civilization and the decline in use of bronze tools in favor of superior iron ones seem to be correlated. The Minoan trade in saffron, which originated in the Aegean basin as a natural chromosome mutation, has left fewer material remains: a fresco of saffron-gatherers at Santorini is well-known. This inherited trade pre-dated Minoan civilization: a sense of its rewards may be gained by comparing its value to frankincense, or later, to pepper. Archaeologists tend to emphasize the more durable items of trade: ceramics, copper, and tin, and dramatic luxury finds of gold, and silver.

Objects of Minoan manufacture suggest there was a network of trade with mainland Greece (notably Mycenae), Cyprus, Syria, Anatolia, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and westward as far as the coast of Spain,

Minoan men wore loincloths and kilts. Women wore robes that were open to the navel and had short sleeves and layered flounced skirts. The patterns on clothes emphasized symmetrical geometric designs.

The statues of priestesses in Minoan culture and frescoes showing men and women participating in the same sports (usually bull-leaping) lead some archaeologists to believe that men and women held equal social status, and that inheritance might even have been matrilineal. The frescos include many depictions of people, with the sexes distinguished by colour: the men's skin is reddish-brown, the women's white. The colour serves as an identifying code in the pictures.

Language and writing

Cretan hieroglyphs on the Phaistos Disc

The language of the Minoans, about which little is known, is referred to as Eteocretan. It may have been written in the Cretan hieroglyphs and the Linear A script, both undeciphered. Approximately 3,000 tablets bearing writing have been discovered so far, many apparently being inventories of goods or resources. The hieroglyphs came into use from MMI and were in parallel use with the emerging Linear A from the 18th century (MM II) and disappeared at some point during the 17th century (MM III).

In the Mycenean period, Linear A was replaced by Linear B, recording a very archaic version of the Greek language. linear B was successfully deciphered by Michael Ventris in the 1950s, but the earlier scripts remain a mystery.

Art

A fresco found at the ancient Minoan site of Knossos

The great collection of Minoan art is in the museum at Heraklion, near Knossos on the north shore of Crete. Minoan art, with other remains of material culture, especially the sequence of ceramic styles, has allowed archaeologists to define the three phases of Minoan culture (EM, MM, LM) discussed above.

Since wood and textiles have vanished, the most important surviving Minoan art are Minoan pottery, the palace architecture with its frescos that include landscapes, stone carvings, and intricately carved seal stones.

Main article:Minoan pottery.

In the Early Minoan period ceramics were characterised by linear patterns of spirals, triangles, curved lines, crosses, fishbone motifs and such. In the Middle Minoan period naturalistic designs such as fish, squid, birds and lilies were common. In the Late Minoan period, flowers and animals were still the most characteristic, but the variability had increased. The 'palace style' of the region around Knossos is characterised by a strong geometric simplification of naturalistic shapes and monochromatic paintings. Very noteworthy are the similarities between Late Minoan and Mycenaean art.

Politics

Throne hall at Knossos

In Minoan art, women vastly outnumber men. Women are shown seated on thrones, and in commanding positions. Women are often saluted by people and/or animals. Whereas depictions exist of men showing deference to women, not one shows women deferring to men. Unlike their contemporaries, who possessed obvious “strong-man” male rulers, the Minoans show almost no trace of male rule at all.

"In Minoan imagery ... female figures seem preeminent. Males, to be sure, appear on frescoed walls, engraved sealstones, and gold rings and in small-scale statuary, but by and large these are not the bearded kings and warriors of Egypt and the ancient Near East. They are youths, who often, though not always, attend a dominant female..."

According to Jacquetta Hawkes, “The absence of … manifestations of the all-powerful male ruler that are so widespread at this time and in this stage of cultural development as to be almost universal, is one of the reasons for supposing that the occupants of Minoan thrones may have been queens” “In the scenes from the seal stones, not only is the Goddess always the central figure, being served and honored in a variety of ways; she is sometimes shown seated on a throne. Supposing that a king did rule as consort of the Goddess, one would expect at the very least that at the royal court, which elsewhere, in Egypt and the Orient, was seen as the human reflection of the divine order, there would have been a throne for the queen as the counterpart of the Goddess. Yet in the sacred room at Knossos, and apparently also in the state apartment in the residential quarter, the throne stood single and alone.”

Like Egyptian rulers, Minoan queens may have had divine status:

“… [I]t is not impossible that Minoan Crete was run by women…. [I]n the so-called Camp Stool Fresco from Knossos, which depicts women sitting on stools and toasting each other, the principal figure (known as La Parisienne since the days of Evans) is painted twice the size of the others – a clear sign of importance and probably of divinity, to judge from Egyptian art, where the divine pharaoh is regularly shown in this way” .

Goodison and Morris suggest that contemporary ideas of sexual roles have colored our interpretation of the place of women in Minoan society: “Is there … perhaps a hint of modern sexual asymmetry in interpretations which now admit males to the world of [Minoan] divine power, but still exclude females from temporal power, distancing them in the realm of the transcendent as goddesses or priestesses?”.

Warfare and Minoan Peace

The paucity of evidence for Minoan warfare has often been used to argue that the Minoans engaged in little, if any, internal or external armed conflict. This condition is known as "Pax Minoica," or "The Minoan Peace." As with many other topics in Minoan studies, it is difficult to draw firm conclusions from the evidence, and there is disagreement over the meaning of the evidence we do have.

A fresco from the Cycladic site of Akrotiri with warriors, shepherds, and a shipwreck

This is a subject of some debate. S. Alexiou has pointed out (in Kretologia 8) that a number of sites, especially Early and Middle Minoan sites such as Aghia Photia, are built on hilltops or are otherwise fortified. As Lucia Nixon said, "...we may have been over-influenced by the lack of what we might think of as solid fortifications to assess the archaeological evidence properly. As in so many other instances, we may not have been looking for evidence in the right places, and therefore we may not end with a correct assessment of the Minoans and their ability to avoid war." .

Chester Starr points out in "Minoan Flower Lovers" that Shang China and the Maya both had unfortified centers and yet still engaged in frontier struggles, so the lack of fortified centers itself cannot be enough to definitively show the Minoans were a peaceful civilization unparalleled in history.

On the other hand, when Minoan archaeologists met in 1998 in a conference in Belgium to discuss the possibility that the idea of Pax Minoica was outdated, the evidence for Minoan war proved to be scanty. At the conference archaeologist Jan Driessen said the Minoans frequently show ‘weapons’ in their art, but only in ritual contexts, and that “The construction of fortified sites is often assumed to reflect a threat of warfare, but such fortified centers were multifunctional; they were also often the embodiment or material expression of the central places of the territories at the same time as being monuments glorifying an emerging leading power” .

Stella Chryssoulaki's work on the small outposts or 'guard-houses' in eastern Crete represent possible elements of a defensive system, however. Claims that they produced no weapons are erroneous; type A Minoan swords were the finest in all of the Aegean .

However, Keith Branigan notes that 95% of so-called Minoan weapons possessed hilts or handles that would have prevented their use as weapons.

Paul Rehak maintains that Minoan figure-eight shields could not have been used for fighting or even hunting, since they were too cumbersome . Finally, Cheryl Floyd concludes that many Minoan “weapons” were merely tools used for mundane tasks such as meat-processing. Although there are few parallels in the historic or ethnographic record of meter-long swords and large spearheads being used as mundane devices, there is ample evidence that such swords are used in ceremonial (versus combat) contexts.

About Minoan warfare in general, Branigan concludes that “[T]he quantity of weaponry, the impressive fortifications, and the aggressive looking long-boats all suggested an era of intensified hostilities. But on closer inspection there are grounds for thinking that all three key elements are bound up as much with status statements, display, and fashion as with aggression…. Warfare such as there was in the southern Aegean EBA [early Bronze Age] was either personalized and perhaps ritualized (in Crete) or small-scale, intermittent and essentially an economic activity (in the Cyclades and the Argolid/Attica)”. Olga Krzyszkowska concurs: “The stark fact is that for the prehistoric Aegean we have no direct evidence for war and warfare per se..."

A final bit of telling evidence against Minoan warfare: the constant warmongering of almost all their ancient contemporaries—the Egyptians and Hittites, for example—is well documented: massively walled cities; obvious martial art; obvious and numerous warrior graves; evidence of violence on skeletal remains; etc. (Although on the mainland of Greece at the time of the Shaft Graves at Mycenae, there is little evidence for major fortifications among the Mycenaeans -- the famous citadels post-date the destruction of almost all Neopalatial Cretan sites).

Religion

"snake goddess with big boobies" (MM III).

File:Labrys.jpg

Minoan symbolic labrys of gold, 2nd millennium BC: many have been found in the Arkalochori cave.

The Minoans worshipped goddesses. Although there are some indications of male gods, depictions of Minoan goddesses vastly outnumber depictions of anything that could be considered a Minoan god. There seem to be several goddesses including a Mother Goddess of fertility, a Mistress of the Animals, a protectress of cities, the household, the harvest, and the underworld, and more. Some would argue that these are all aspects of a single goddess. According to Marinatos, "That a powerful goddess of nature was the chief deity of the Minoans was recognized already by Evans and has never been seriously questioned." They are often represented by serpents, birds, poppies, and a somewhat vague shape of an animal upon the head. Some suggest the goddess was linked to the "Earthshaker", a male represented by the bull and the sun, who would die each autumn and be reborn each spring. Though the notorious bull-headed Minotaur is a purely Greek depiction, seals and seal-impressions reveal bird-headed or masked deities.

Walter Burkert warns, "To what extent one can and must differentiate between Minoan and Mycenaean religion is a question which has not yet found a conclusive answer", and suggests that useful parallels will be found in the relations between Etruscan and Archaic Greek culture and religion, or between Roman and Hellenistic culture. Minoan religion has not been transmitted in its own language, and the uses literate Greeks later made of surviving Cretan mythemes, after centuries of purely oral transmission, have transformed the meager sources: consider the Athenian point-of-view of the Theseus legend. A few Cretan names are preserved in Greek mythology, but there is no way to connect a name with an existing Minoan icon, such as the familiar serpent-goddess. Retrieval of metal and clay votive figures— double axes, miniature vessels, models of artifacts, animals, human figures—has identified sites of cult: here were numerous small shrines in Minoan Crete, and mountain peaks and very numerous sacred caves—over 300 have been explored—were the centers for some cult, but temples as the Greeks developed them were unknown. Within the palace complex, no central rooms devoted to cult have been recognized, other than the center court where youths of both sexes would practice the bull-leaping ritual.

Minoan sacred symbols include the bull and its horns of consecration, the labrys (double-headed axe), the pillar, the serpent, the sun-disk, and the tree.

Evidence for human sacrifice

Evidence that suggests the Minoans performed human sacrifice has been found at three sites: (1) Anemospilia, in a MMII building near Mt. Juktas, interpreted as a temple, (2) an EMII sanctuary complex at Fournou Korifi in south central Crete, and (3) Knossos, in an LMIB building known as the "North House."

The temple at Anemospilia was destroyed by earthquake in the MMII period. The building seems to be a tripartite shrine, and terracotta feet and some carbonized wood were interpreted by the excavators as the remains of a cult statue. Four human skeletons were found in its ruins; one, belonging to a young man, was found in an unusually contracted position on a raised platform, suggesting that he had been trussed up for sacrifice, much like the bull in the sacrifice scene on the Mycenaean-era Agia Triadha sarcophagus. Additionally, a bronze dagger was found among his bones, and the discoloration of the bones on one side of his body suggest he died of blood loss. The bronze blade (with images of a boar on either side) was 15 inches long. The young man was found on a raised platform in the center of the middle room, next to a pillar with a trough at its base. The positions of the other three skeletons suggest that an earthquake caught them by surprise—the skeleton of a 28-year old woman was found spread-eagled on the ground in the same room as the sacrificed male. Next to the sacrificial platform, the excavators found the skeleton of a man in his late 30s, with his legs broken. His arms were raised, as if to protect himself from falling debris, which suggests that his legs were broken by the collapse of the building in the earthquake. In the front hall of the building, another skeleton was found, too poorly preserved to allow determination of age or sex. Nearby 105 fragments of a clay vase were discovered, scattered in a pattern that suggests it had been dropped by the person in the front hall when s/he was struck by debris from the collapsing building. The jar had apparently contained bull's blood.

Unfortunately, the excavators of this site have not published an official excavation report; the site is mainly known through a 1981 article in National Geographic (Sakellarakis and Sapouna-Sakellerakis 1981, see also Rutter).

Not all agree that this was human sacrifice. Nanno Marinatos, for example, says the man supposedly sacrificed actually died in the earthquake that hit at the time he died. She notes that this earthquake destroyed the building he was found in, and also killed the two Minoans who supposedly sacrificed him. She also argues that the building was not a temple and that the evidence for sacrifice “is far from … conclusive." Dennis Hughes concurs with Marinatos: the building was not a temple and the man was not sacrificed. Hughes also argues that the platform on which the young man lay was not necessarily an altar; the blade was probably not a knife, but a spearhead; finally, this spearhead was not necessarily placed on the young man, but could have fallen during the earthquake from shelves or an upper floor.

At the sactuary-complex of Fournou Korifi, fragments of a human skull were found in the same room as a small hearth, cooking-hole, and cooking-equipment. This skull has been interpreted as the remains of a sacrificed victim.

In the "North House" at Knossos, the bones of at least four children (who had been in good health) were found which bore signs that "they were butchered in the same way the Minoans slaughtered their sheep and goats, suggesting that they had been sacrificed and eaten. The senior Cretan archaeologist Nicolas Platon was so horrified at this suggestion that he insisted the bones must be those of apes, not humans."

The bones, found by Peter Warren, date to Late Minoan IB (1580-1490), before the Myceneans arrived (in LM IIIA, circa 1320-1200) according to Paul Rehak and John G. Younger.. Dennis Hughes and Rodney Castleden argue that these bones were deposited as a 'secondary burial'.. Secondary burial is the not-uncommon practice of burying the dead twice: immediately following death, and then again after the flesh is gone from the skeleton. The main weakness of this argument is that it does not explain the type of cuts and knife marks upon the bones.

Architecture

The Minoan cities were connected with stone-paved roads, formed from blocks cut with bronze saws. Streets were drained and water and sewage facilities were available to the upper class, through clay pipes.

Minoan buildings often had flat tiled roofs; plaster, wood, or flagstone floors, and stood 2-3 stories high. Typically the lower walls were constructed of stone and rubble and mudbrick was used for upper stories. Ceiling timbers would hold up the roofs.

Palaces

Ruins of the palace at Knossos

File:Knossos-palace-air.jpg

Aerial view of the palace at Knossos

The first palaces were constructed at the end of the Early Minoan period in the third millenum BC (Malia). While it was formerly believed that the foundation of the first palaces was synchronous and dated to the Middle Minoan at around 2000 BC (the date of the first palace at Knossos), scholars now think that palaces were built over a longer period of time in different locations, in response to local developments. The main older palaces are Knossos, Malia and Phaistos.

The palaces fulfilled a plethora of functions: they served as centres of government, administrative offices, shrines, workshops and storage spaces (e.g., for grain), although it should be kept in mind that these distinctions might have seemed artificial to the Minoans.

The use of the term 'palace' for the older palaces, meaning a dynastic residence and seat of power, has recently come under criticism (see Palace), and the term 'court buildings' has been proposed instead. However, the original term is probably too well entrenched to be replaced. Architectural features like ashlar masonry, orthostats, columns, open courts, staircases (implying upper stories) and the presence of diverse basins have been used to define palatial architecture. Often the conventions of better known, younger palaces have been used to reconstruct the older ones, but this practice may be hiding fundamental functional differences. Most older palaces had only one storey and no representative facades. They were generally smaller than the later palaces, but with a big central court. The plan was U-shaped.

The late palaces are characterised by multi-storey buildings. The west facades had sandstone ashlar masonry. Knossos is the best-known example. See Knossos.

Columns

One of the most notable contributions of the Minoans to architecture is their unique column. The Minoan column is called an 'inverted' column. Most Greek columns have a greater diameter at the bottom than the top, creating an illusion of greater height; the Minoan column is the opposite, having a greater diameter at the top. Their columns were also made of wood as opposed to stone, and were generally painted red. They were mounted on a simple stone base and were topped with a pillow-like, round piece.

Agriculture

Storage jars in Knossos

The Minoans raised cattle, sheep, pigs, goats, and grew wheat, barley, vetch, chickpeas, cultivated grapes, figs, olives, and grew poppies, for poppyseed and perhaps opium. The Minoans domesticated bees, and adopted pomegranates and quinces from the Near East, though not lemons and oranges as is often imagined. They developed Mediterranean polyculture, the practice of growing more than one crop at a time, and as a result of their more varied and healthier diet, the population increased.

Farmers used wooden plows, bound by leather to wooden handles, and pulled by pairs of donkeys or oxen.

Theories of Minoan demise

Thera eruption

Thera is the largest island of Santorini, a little archipelago of volcanic fragments about 100 km distant from Crete. The Thera eruption (estimated to have had a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 6) has been identified by ash fallout in eastern Crete, and in cores from the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean seas. The postulated sulfur dioxide and ash clouds emitted by the volcano are thought to have destroyed some settlements and resulted in volcanic winters and poor harvests for several years. The massive eruption of Thera also led to the volcano's collapse into a submarine caldera, causing massive tsunamis which destroyed naval installations and settlements near the coasts. The impact of the Thera eruption on the Minoan civilization is debated.

(The calendar date of the eruption is much disputed. Many archaeologists believe that synchronisms with Egypt require a date around 1500 BC; radicarbon, however, puts the date in the late 17th century BC. See Thera eruption for details.)

Other

There is evidence that the trade networks collapsed, and that Minoan cities perished by famine. The Minoans' grain supply is believed to have come from farms on the shore of the Black Sea.

Many scholars believe that ancient trading empires were in constant danger from uneconomic trade, that is, food and staple goods were improperly valued relative to luxury goods, because accounting was undeveloped. The result could be famine and decline in population.

One theory of Minoan collapse is that increasing use of iron tools impoverished the Minoan traders. When the trade networks ceased, regional famines could no longer be mitigated by trade.

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See also

• Linear A
• Peak Sanctuaries
• Sacred Caves
• Philistines
• Atlantis
• Phaistos Disc