The Minoan Civilization
The origin of the Minoans is unknown, but by 1600 BC they dominated the Aegean region. They lived on Crete from about 2500 BC to 1400 BC, when they were conquered by Mycenaeans from the Greek mainland. Their prosperity depended upon seafaring and trade, especially with the Middle East and with Egypt.
In 1900 the British archaeologist Arthur Evans began excavations at Knossos that eventually revealed a great palace that covered 5.5 acres (2.2 hectares). There were no surrounding walls at Knossos, as in the Mycenaean cities. The palace and the city had been protected by a powerful navy. Evans found storerooms with huge oil jars still in place, elaborate bathrooms, ventilation and drainage systems, and waste disposal chutes. The pottery was as fine as porcelain. Paintings on walls and pottery showed the dress of the women, with puffed sleeves and flounced skirts. The palace of Knossos was destroyed during the 14th century BC.
The Minoans worshiped a mother goddess, whose symbol was the double-bladed ax, called a labrys. The name of the symbol and the maze of rooms in the palace recall the story of the labyrinth. According to Greek mythology, Daedalus built a labyrinth for Minos to house the man-eating Minotaur, half man and half bull (see Theseus). Painted on the palace walls are pictures of acrobats vaulting over the backs of bulls. This sport may have given rise to the myth. After the Greeks conquered the Minoans they absorbed such stories into their mythology.
Mycenae and Other Achaean Cities
In 1876 Heinrich Schliemann began excavating Mycenae (see Schliemann). Still visible today is the acropolis, with its broken stone walls and Lion Gate. Within the walls Schliemann uncovered the graves of bodies covered with gold masks, breastplates, armbands, and girdles. In the graves of the women were golden diadems, golden laurel leaves, and exquisite ornaments shaped like animals, flowers, butterflies, and cuttlefish.
Schliemann thought he had found the burial place of Agamemnon and his followers. Later study proved the bodies belonged to a period 400 years earlier than the Trojan War. Rulers of another dynasty were buried outside the walls in strange beehive tombs.
Other great cities of the same period were Pylos, the legendary capital of King Nestor, and Tiryns. It is not known to what extent Mycenae controlled other centers of the Achaean civilization. It is known that Mycenaean trade extended to Sicily, Egypt, Palestine, Troy, Cyprus, and Macedonia.
Scholars once believed that the Mycenaeans had no written language. The evidences of culture in their massive walled cities, their fine goldwork, pottery, and vases were attributed to the influence of the Minoans, who established settlements on the mainland in about 1600 BC.
In 1952 great light was thrown on the Mycenaean civilization by the deciphering of an ancient writing on clay tablets, known as Linear Script B. Michael Ventris, a young English architect, accomplished the task on which scholars had labored for 50 years. These tablets were among some 2,000 uncovered at Knossos on Crete by Evans. With them were tablets in an older writing, which Evans called Linear Script A, and some still older hieroglyphics. Linear Scripts A and B are forms of writing in which symbols are used to represent syllables (see Writing). In 1939 about 600 more tablets 0n Linear Script B were found at Pylos, on the Greek mainland, and in 1952 and 1953 some were discovered at Mycenae.
Ventris found that Linear Script B is an archaic Greek dialect. It is the oldest Indo-European system of writing yet discovered (see Language, “Related Languages”). The language is at a stage 700 years older than the earliest classical Greek. The tablets appeared at Knossos because the Mycenaeans had earlier conquered the Minoans.
The tablets are only inventories of palace storerooms and arsenals; however, they reveal a great deal about the Mycenaeans. They engaged in agriculture, industry, commerce, and war. A king headed the society. Under him was a “leader of the people,” perhaps an army commander. There were landowners, tenant farmers, servants and slaves, priests and priestesses. There were many trades and professions. The Mycenaeans worshiped Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Ares, Artemis, and Athena and the other gods of Mount Olympus (see Mythology, “Greek Mythology”).
The language of Linear Script A has not yet been deciphered. It was in use on Crete from about 1700 BC to 1600 BC as a replacement for an earlier hieroglyphic writing system—possibly adopted from the Egyptians (see Hieroglyphics).
In about 1100 BC Greece was overrun by an invasion of barbaric tribes from the north. The Dorians and, later, the Ionians occupied the areas where the Minoan-Mycenaean cultures had flourished. Greece was not to be so rich and powerful again until the golden age of Athens under Pericles in the 5th century BC. (See also Greece, Ancient; Pericles.)