Category: History - Ancient
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 a...
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 founda...
2. Chapter 2: _The Sea-Faring People of CreteThe 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...
3. Chapter 3: _Minos and the MinotaurIf 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...
4. 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...
5. Chapter 5: _Prehistoric Engineering and ArchitectureThe 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...
6. Chapter 6: _Internal Politics: the Relations of Knossos and PhæstosOn 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 magni...
7. Chapter 7: _Minoan Architecture and Fresco PaintingPerhaps 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...
8. Chapter 8: _The PotteryCrete 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...
9. Chapter 9: _The Origin of WritingThe 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 Mino...
10. Chapter 10: _Cretan ReligionCretan 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...
11. Chapter 11: _Men and Women, Clothes and CustomsWhen 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 lif...
12. Chapter 12: _From Prehistoric Crete to Classical GreeceTowards 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 m...