MINOAN OR ÆGEAN CIVILISATION
So far our study of ancient civilisation and architecture has been
fairly consecutive. We have now to break the continuity of the story and
take a leap back into a remote past and explore the origins of a
civilisation which was a forerunner of that of Greece. This civilisation
had been called “Mycenæan” because its existence was first brought to
modern knowledge by Schliemann’s discoveries in Mycenæ. But subsequent
exploration has proved that the civilisation was far spread and that
Mycenæ was not even the centre of it.
One of the most astonishing results of recent exploration is the
knowledge of a civilisation that developed without break from the
polished stone age and reached its highest point contemporaneously with
the New Empire in Egypt; ending, that is to say, about 1000 <small>B.C.</small> Not the
least interesting feature of the discovery is that it throws a new light
on the civilisation of prehistoric Greece.
The classical writers of Greece pointed to Mycenæ and Tiryns in Argolis
as being the principal evidence of a prehistoric civilisation, which was
assumed to belong to the Homeric period or even farther back to a rude
heroic beginning of Hellenic civilisation. This opinion continued to be
held by scholars until <small>A.D.</small> 1876. In this year, however, Dr. Schliemann,
opening up the graves which are just inside the Lion Gateway of the
citadel at Mycenæ, came upon a quantity of objects which proved the high
state of civilisation to which the prehistoric inhabitants of the city
had attained. Furthermore, they corresponded in character to the vases
and gold, silver, and bronze objects which, three years earlier, he had
dug from the ruins of the “Burnt City” (Troy) at Hissarlik in the Troad.
These objects from the peninsula of Peloponnesus and the mainland of
Asia Minor were not only similar in character but also of a fabric and
decoration which differed from those of any known art. But a relation
between the objects of art described by Homer and these “Mycenæan”
treasures was generally allowed.
In 1884-1885 Schliemann and Dörpfeld, exploring the ruins of Tiryns,
came upon a building which offers the most complete example in Greece of
a palace of the “Mycenæan” age, belonging to a period probably between
1400 and 1200 <small>B.C.</small> During the subsequent years of the nineteenth
century, when exploration was extended to other parts of the
Peloponnesus and Northern parts of Greece, dome or beehive tombs, such
as had been found at Mycenæ, were discovered in Attica, Thessaly, and
elsewhere. By degrees, exploration was carried beyond the mainland of
Greece to the Ionian Islands and the islands of the Ægean, particularly
to Cyprus and Crete and the mainland of Asia Minor. This resulted in
further discoveries of objects, related in a common family, distinct
from that of any other art division. Meanwhile, objects of similar
character were met with in Egypt, Italy, Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain.
Finally, the culmination of all this mass of corroborative evidence was
reached by the explorations of Dr. A. J. Evans, at Cnossus in Crete,
which have been followed up by explorations in Phæstus, and other Cretan
sites. The net result is to establish the knowledge that Crete was the
centre of a civilisation which had dealings with Egypt and Mesopotamia
and extended to the sea-coast of Asia Minor and Phœnicia, the other
islands of the Ægean Archipelago, the Ionian Islands, and the mainland
of Greece and spread its offshoots along the west shores of the
Adriatic, into Sardinia and Spain and took deep root in Sicily. To the
far-extending ramifications of this civilisation has been given the
comprehensive name of Minoan or Ægean.
In a most remarkable way the discoveries in Crete have corroborated the
Greek legends of the Cretan King Minos. It is conjectured that a Minos
may have been the founder of a dynasty and that the name passed into a
title of all the rulers, corresponding to the title, Pharaoh, in Egypt.
Scholars, therefore, have given the name Minoan to the civilisation of
Crete; dividing it into Early, Middle, and Late Minoan.
In the Early Minoan Period, represented in the contents of early tombs
and dwellings and such objects as stone vases and seal-stones, there is
evidence that the Cretans had already reached considerable cultivation
and had opened up communications with the Nile Valley. The date of this
period is conjectured to have centred around 2500 <small>B.C.</small>, and to have
corresponded, roughly speaking, with the earlier of the Egyptian
dynasties. Most remarkable of Dr. Evans’s discoveries was the finding in
1900 of whole archives of clay tablets in the palace of Cnossus, which
prove that the Cretans had a highly developed system of hieroglyphics
and lineal script 2000 years before the time when the Phœnicians
introduced writing into Greece. Incidentally, this knowledge
corroborates the statement of the historian Diodorus, that the
Phœnicians did not invent letters, but only altered their forms.
The Middle Minoan Period centres round 2000-1850 <small>B.C.</small>, and corresponds
with the Twelfth Dynasty in Egypt. It was the age of the earliest palace
building. Already appears the beginning of a school of wall-painting,
while a manufactory of fine faience was attached to the palace at
Cnossus.
The Late Minoan Period covers the period of the Hyksos usurpation in
Egypt and reached its own culmination about the time of the Eighteenth
Dynasty when the New Egyptian Empire or Second Theban Monarchy
commenced. We have already noted the appearance in Egypt of this Cretan
influence, inducing a habit of naturalistic representation in place of
the old conventionalised forms of sculpture and painting. To this late
Minoan period belongs the greatest development of palace building, as
seen at Cnossus, Phæstus, and Tiryns, while the painting on walls and
vases becomes more free and animated than anything of the kind in Egypt.
Toward 1400 <small>B.C.</small> a period of decline becomes apparent in Cretan art,
which is reflected all over the Ægean area. The conclusion is that the
islands and mainland of Greece had been invaded by less civilised
conquerors, who, having no cultivation of their own, adopted the art
they found and spoiled it. Probably they came from the North of Greece
and were precursors of the later “Hellenes.”
Finally, about 1000 <small>B.C.</small>, the palace at Cnossus was again destroyed,
never again to be rebuilt; and at the same time the “Bronze Age” of
Minoan and Mycenæan civilisation came to an end. It fell before a
nation, barbarous, but possessed of iron weapons; probably the tribes
which later Greek tradition and Homer knew as Dorians. Then followed a
period of several centuries of unrest, as, successively, Achaæn, Æolian,
and Doric migrations came from the North through the mainland of Greece
and the islands of the Ægean, while an Ionian migration from Armenia
spread to the west shore of Asia Minor. Finally, when the Ægean area
emerges into history, it is dominated by Hellenes.
The Ægean Archipelago has been called the ancient bridge between the
civilisations of the East and West, and the imagination pictures Crete
at the southern end of it, within easy distance of three continents and
engaged in peaceful intercourse with all; the head of a maritime
confederacy of sea-rovers who planted their trading stations throughout
the Mediterranean, their art everywhere following their trade. She
herself was protected from aggression by her island walls; while the
outposts of culture on the mainland of Greece--Mycenæ and Tiryns--were
compelled to erect their palaces within citadels.
From the fact that no remains of Minoan and Mycenæan temples have been
found, but only shrines within the precincts of the palaces, it has been
concluded that, as in Assyria and Babylonia, the monarchs were also
priests. Evidence points to the principal Minoan divinity being a kind
of Earth Mother, who was associated with a satellite god. One part of
her religious attributes survived in the later Aphrodite, the other in
Rhea, the mother of the Olympian Zeus. While images of the deity were
made as early as 2000 <small>B.C.</small> the principal objects of worship, or
fetishes, in the Minoan age were natural objects: rocks and mountain
peaks, trees, and curiously shaped stones, and even artificial pillars
of wood and stone. Sometimes, as in the famous instance of the Lion Gate
at Mycenæ, the fetish object--here a pillar--was guarded by animals.
A special form of fetish for the two principal divinities was that of
the double axes: one double-headed axe above another on the same handle.
“It has been discovered,” says the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th
edition), “that the great Minoan foundation at Cnossus was at once a
palace and a sanctuary of the Double Axe. We can hardly any longer
hesitate to recognise in this vast building, with its winding corridors
and subterranean ducts, the Labyrinth of later tradition. It is
difficult, also, not to connect the repeated wall-paintings and reliefs
of the palace, illustrating the cruel bull sports of the Minoan arena,
in which girls as well as youths took part, with the legend of the
Minotaur, or Bull of Minos, for whose grisly meals Athens was forced to
pay annual tribute of her own sons and daughters.” Actual figures of a
monster with a bull’s head and man’s body have been found on seals in
Crete, and evidence points to these bull sports being part of a
religious ceremony.
Even the smaller houses were of stone, plastered within, while the
palaces suggest a luxurious mode of living; being richly decorated, with
separate sleeping apartments and large halls, fine stairways,
bath-chambers, windows, folding and sliding doors, and remarkably modern
arrangements for water supply and drainage. The furniture included
thrones, tables, seats, constructed of stone or plastered terra-cotta; a
great variety of cooking utensils and vessels of all sorts from stone
wine jars, ten feet high, to the tiniest ointment-holders.
Ladies, in curiously modern costumes, formed a favourite subject both
for wall-decoration and miniature painting; many of the latter showing
groups with architectural and landscape surroundings, done with
remarkable spirit and naturalness.
The clay tablets are almost exclusively concerned with inventories and
business transactions, and prove that a decimal system of numeration was
used.
Next to Cnossus the most important sources of knowledge concerning this
ancient civilisation have been Hissarlik, Mycenæ, Phæstus, Hagia Triada,
and Tiryns.
[Illustration: WALL DECORATION IN PALACE OF CNOSSUS
SHOWING MALE AND FEMALE BULL-FIGHTERS. P. 93]
[Illustration: LYON GATEWAY AT MYCENÆ
P. 98]
[Illustration: PLAN OF THE ACROPOLIS OF TIRYNS
P. 100]
[Illustration: PARTS OF STAIRCASE IN PALACE OF CNOSSUS
P. 96]
[Illustration: COUNCIL CHAMBER WITH GYPSUM THRONE
IN PALACE OF CNOSSUS. P. 96]