“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.