Perhaps 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, and the appeal to the
imagination is direct. The relics of buildings are more extensive
than those of any other kind, and they were the first discovered by
the excavator, just as they are the first points of interest to the
visitors who nowadays go to the island.
The buildings of the Stone Age have left hardly a trace of themselves,
because they were made of such perishable materials as mud, reed, and
wickerwork. Dr. L. Pernier has discovered, under the Minoan palace
at Phæstos, a bit of the floor of one of these mud huts. It consists
of red clay about four inches thick. Some houses, it is true, have
been found near the modern Palaikastro, built of unhewn stone, and
dating from the Neolithic Age, but they are exceptional. It was only
when metal tools were invented that stone could be used generally for
building. At the beginning of the Bronze Age the lower walls used to
be made of stone, and the upper of sunburnt brick, the latter being
further strengthened by wooden stays. Lime plaster was used even then
to protect the walls against the weather. Later in the Bronze Age,
when the great palaces were built, it became the practice to build
foundations and lower walls to a height of about two yards of strong
limestone blocks, some of them three yards long and one yard wide, and
of gypsum. A protective covering of plaster was then applied. The upper
storeys were generally of wood. Wood was extensively used. Professor
Mosso, in reference to a wall of the vestibule at the top of the great
staircase at Phæstos, says that “a base of alabaster having been made,
holes were made in it to fix slabs of wood all round. These were bound
together, and the hollow was filled with a mixture of lime and rubble”
(_The Palaces of Crete_, p. 47). Whole tree-trunks were sometimes used
as beams, and one can still see the holes in the stone into which they
were fixed.
There are many features of these palaces which are worth minute study.
In the building of the great palaces it was the practice to prepare the
ground with a thick mixture of lime and clay and pebbles. This mixture
set so hard that it has now to be broken up with explosives before
objects below can be removed. The staircase at Knossos measures nearly
fifteen yards from side to side, and the steps are two and a half feet
wide and hardly five inches deep. The most famous steps in Rome were
not more than five and a half yards from side to side. The doors of the
palace, of which there were many, were made to fit into the walls when
open, so as not to interfere with corridor space. At Hagia Triada the
drains of 4,000 years ago may still be seen working in wet weather. At
Knossos the main drain, which had its sides coated with cement, was
more than three feet high and nearly two feet broad, large enough for a
man to move along it; and the smaller stone shafts that discharged into
it are still in position.
The water supply entered the palace from the north. In 1904 Sir Arthur
Evans discovered some pipes in position to the north-west of the
palace, running alongside the paved road which leads to the Theatral
Area and the Little Palace. The necks of these pipes point eastward
towards the palace and they lead from the very hills on the west from
which the Venetian and Turkish aqueduct still supplies Candia. They
must, therefore, have been aqueducts and not drains, and probably
form part of the same system as the terra-cotta pipes discovered in
the earlier excavations further east, and at the time considered to
be connexions in the drainage system. They are thus described by Dr.
Burrows: “Each of them was about two and a half feet long, with a
diameter that was about six inches at the broad end, and narrowed to
less than four inches at the mouth, where it fitted into the broad end
of the next pipe. Jamming was carefully prevented by a stop-ridge,
that ran round the outside of each narrow end a few inches from the
mouth, while the inside of the butt, or broader end, was provided with
a raised collar that enabled it to bear the pressure of the next pipe’s
stop-ridge, and gave an extra hold for the cement that bound the two
pipes together” (_Ibid._, p. 9).
There were also baths at Knossos. At any rate, a good many people think
they were baths. Professor Mosso thinks they were chapels--a good
instance of the excitement which attaches to archæological research.
There is no arrangement, says Professor Mosso, for the supply or
discharge of water, a provision which, he argues, is necessary for
a bath; moreover, the basin is lined with gypsum, which is soluble
in water; one of them was placed in the Throne Room; and, finally,
they were not private. Professor Mosso’s subtle eye even detects an
enclosure, which he maintains was not put there for spectators of the
bath, but for a chapel choir. These are attractive arguments, but Dr.
Burrows answers quite simply that (1) the gypsum argument is ruled
out because it would be covered with plaster; (2) terra-cotta tubs
have been found close at hand, and the Knossians might quite well have
been content with tubbing instead of plunging into a large tank that
needed elaborate pipes; (3) the bath in the Throne Room was used for
ceremonial ablutions, for which little water would be needed; and (4)
no objects suggesting any cult (such as images or altars) have been
found to show that these places were chapels.
Or take the lighting arrangements. There was a system of shafts used
at Knossos, at Tylissos (a little palace a few miles west of Knossos),
at Phæstos, and at Hagia Triada. The light came down vertically at
the back of the room, where the roof had been left uncovered for the
purpose, and the floor specially cemented to stand exposure to the
weather. While Sir Arthur Evans speaks of the light “pouring in between
the columns” in one place, and in another of its “stealing in in cooler
tones,” Dr. Burrows was of opinion that in the latter case the cooler
tones were so cool that lamps had to be used. Many lamps have, in
fact, been found there. Big marble-standard lamps have also been found,
which probably held two or even four wicks; one of them was found in a
niche on a staircase at Tylissos.
The use of lime plaster on the outer walls gave an opportunity to
the Minoan artists, who not only painted frescoes on them, but
fashioned the plaster into relief. (See “Minoan Lime Plaster and
Fresco Painting,” by Mr. Noel Heaton, _Journal of the Royal Institute
of British Architects_, vol. xviii, pp. 697-710.) “Fresco” paintings
are made as soon as the initial setting of the plaster takes place,
and while it is still wet. Brilliant colours were used--red ochre in
the Early Minoan period (made by burning yellow clay), then yellow
(from the natural clay) and black; then blue, progressing from a
pale greenish tint in Middle Minoan to a dark blue in Late Minoan.
The cupbearer is an example of fresco painting, and the bull’s head
of high relief; the fresco painters merely attempted an outline and
wash of colour in two dimensions, not indicating shades or folds of
drapery. The main difference between Cretan painting on wet plaster
and Egyptian painting on fine white limestone is that the Cretan gives
a more vivid impression of movement, and the Egyptian more detail.
(See “The Relations of Ægean with Egyptian Art,” _Journal of Egyptian
Archæology_, vol. i, pt. 3, July, 1914, pp. 197-205.) This is partly
accounted for by the fact that Minoan painting was often done when the
plaster was still wet.
There are many other sites in Crete which cannot be dealt with
here--Gournia on the north coast, Palaikastro and others in the east,
and Vrokastro. Their main importance lies in their bearing upon Minoan
town-planning. Vrokastro has been explored by Miss E. H. Hall, who
published her results in 1914 (_Anthropological Publications of the
University of Pennsylvania_. Philadelphia). It has a special interest
because it belongs to the Iron Age, and shows the inferiority of this
age to its predecessor, the Bronze Age. In general, the houses in
these towns were huddled together with the object of leaving as much
ground as possible free for agriculture. They are poor specimens of
houses,--small two-storeyed cottages with windows on each side of the
door. Several rooms have been discovered in which upright faces of
rock served as walls--a device still used in Crete. An interesting
point about them is that they were built on rocky eminences or spurs
of mountains--a significant sidelight on the fall of Knossos and the
disappearance of her fleet.